Marie Louise Souliere 1854 – 1945
Marie Louise Soulière
Birth: 8 December 1854 · Baptism: 10 December 1854, Saint-André-d'Argenteuil
Father: Janvier Soulière, journalier (Episode 5) · Mother: Elisabeth Gravel
First marriage: 20 May 1879, Saint-André — Évangéliste Guilbault (d. 5 December 1883)
Second marriage: 7 February 1886, Chicago — Pierre Chrysologue Thébault (d. 1912)
Children: six — three Guilbault, three Thébault
Death: 27 December 1945, Chicago — aged 91 · buried 31 December, All Saints, Des Plaines
A note on evidence
This page follows the standard of the rest of the series. What a record states is kept separate from what a database reports. Parish acts reproduced here are from the copy photographed at the presbytery or the greffe; where an act is quoted the transcription is a working reading rather than a collated one.
Where the sources change. Everything before 1886 is Quebec parish registers and Canadian censuses. Everything after is American: civil marriage returns, federal censuses, a border crossing, a death index and a newspaper. The second kind is thinner. It gives names and ages and almost nothing else, and it gets things wrong — her own death record names the wrong birthplace.
Saint-André, December 1854
She was born on 8 December 1854 and baptised two days later at Saint-André-d'Argenteuil, the third child of Janvier Soulière and his second wife Elisabeth Gravel. The priest wrote her name Marie Marguerite Louise. She was Louise for the rest of her life.
| Parish | Saint-André, Argenteuil |
| Born | 8 December 1854 |
| Father | Janvier Soulière, journalier |
| Mother | Elisabeth Gravel |
| Godparents | Gédéon Campeau and Priscille Soulière |
Her father was fifty-eight when she was born and had already buried a wife and several children. She was one of nineteen children he fathered across two marriages, and the third of the eight Elisabeth Gravel bore him. Only one of those eight died small: Alfred, in March 1854, at thirteen months. Seven reached adulthood.
| Her full siblings | Born | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Emma | 6 May 1851 | m. Isaïe Therrien 1870; died January 1879, aged twenty-eight |
| Alfred | 12 Feb 1853 | died 27 March 1854 — thirteen months |
| Marie Marguerite Louise | 8 Dec 1854 | the subject of this page |
| Marcelline | 2 Feb 1857 | m. Joseph Ladouceur 1883; died 1912 |
| Marie Olivine Anne | 19 Feb 1859 | m. Joseph Clement 1882, Thomas Carrière 1918; died Ottawa 1943 |
| Louis Jacques Joseph | 11 Sep 1860 | to Ottawa in 1872; died 1947 |
| Marie Elizabeth Zéphirine | 14 Sep 1862 | m. Charest Clement 1883 — and signed her own name |
| Hercule | April 1867 | married in 1887 as Arthur |
Four sisters who lasted
Louise, Marcelline, Anne and Zéphirine all lived into their fifties or beyond, and were photographed together about 1911. Marcelline died the following year. Louise outlived all three of them, and every one of her nineteen half-siblings and siblings, by decades.
The Household of 1871
1871 She appears once between her baptism and her marriage: as Louisa, aged sixteen, in her father's house at St. Andrews. The enumerator recorded ten people, gave her father's trade as Mason, and ticked the columns for over 20 unable to read and unable to write against both her parents' names.
| Name | Age | Occupation |
|---|---|---|
| Souliere, Janvier | 69 | Mason — cannot read or write |
| Elizabeth | 49 | — cannot read or write |
| Manuel | 26 | Shoe Maker |
| Demitille | 22 | — |
| Louisa | 16 | — |
| Marceline | 14 | — |
| Anna | 12 | — |
| Joseph | 9 | — |
| Zephire | 8 | — |
| Hurcule | 4 | — |
Évangéliste Guilbault, 1879–1883
20 May 1879 At twenty-four she married Évangéliste Guilbault at Saint-André. He was born at Saint-André on 15 November 1845, son of Gabriel Guilbault, journalier, and Madeleine Larocque dit Rocbrune, who was already dead. The act records a dispensation from the publication of banns, granted by Mgr Hypolyte Moreau, vicar general. Her sister Emma had died that January, aged twenty-eight; her father was seventy-three and would live another ten years.
What the records call him
The baptism of his daughter in August 1883 gives him as journalier. The 1881 entry is not legible enough to be read with confidence. No other act states a trade for him, and none is supplied here.
He was not present when that daughter was christened. Four months later he was dead.
They had three children in four years.
| Child | Baptised | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Isidore Georges | 26 Feb 1880Saint-André | of Montreal by 1945, per his mother's obituary; died 1954 |
| Jean Baptiste Gabriel | 4 Jun 1881Saint-André-Avellin | “John Gilbert” in Chicago; died 1941 |
| Elisabeth Emma | 17 Aug 1883Saint-André — born the 13th | Episode 7 — m. Thomas Henry Hamall; died 1970 |
Emma's baptism, and who stood for her
On 17 August 1883 the priest at Saint-André christened Guilbeault Elizabeth Emma, born on the thirteenth, daughter of Évangeliste Guilbeault journalier et de Louise Soulière. The godparents were the child's grandfather Janvier Soulière and his third wife Sophie Rousson, and the priest recorded that they had declared they could not sign. Le père absent.
Three days later, in the same church and on the same page of the register, Louise's youngest sister Zéphirine married — and signed the act in her own hand, the first person in this family ever to do so.
December 1883
Burial, 7 December 1883, Saint-André
« Le sept Décembre mil huit cent quatre-vingt trois, nous curé soussigné avons inhumé dans le cimetière de cette paroisse le corps d'Évangéliste Guilbeault, époux de Louise Soulière, décédé l'avant-veille, âgé d'environ trente-six ans. Témoins: Joseph Ladouceur et Joseph Clément de cette paroisse, lesquels ont déclaré ne savoir signer. »
Parish register of Saint-André-d'Argenteuil, 1883, folio 25, entry S.33. Signed J. B. Bourget ptre. Working reading, September 2026.
He died on 5 December 1883. His daughter was not four months old.
No cause is stated, and none is claimed here. The witnesses were her own brothers-in-law — Joseph Ladouceur had married her sister Marcelline that April, Joseph Clément her sister Anne the year before. Her sisters' husbands carried him, and neither could sign.
He was thirty-eight, whatever the records say. Baptised at Saint-André on 15 November 1845, he was thirty-eight when he died. The burial act says about thirty-six and the census of 1881 gives him as twenty-nine. Both stated ages run light, and the baptism settles it.
The register at Saint-André, December 1883. Entry S.33: Évangéliste Guilbeault, époux de Louise Soulière.
The Missing Years, 1883–1886
She was twenty-nine, widowed, with a three-year-old, a two-year-old and an infant. Twenty-six months later she married again, in Chicago.
Nothing documents the crossing
No border record, no ship or rail manifest, no city directory, no Chicago parish entry has been found for her between December 1883 and February 1886. This is the largest undocumented stretch of her life. Limited prospects, family already in the city, the pull of industrial work — all are plausible, and none of them is written down.
What is written down is a burial in Argenteuil in December 1883 and a marriage licence in Cook County in February 1886, with a border and two years between them.
| Bride | Louise “Mrs. Gilbaut”, age given as 30 |
| Groom | Chrisologue Thibault, age given as 51 |
They had three more children: Louis John (1887–1967), Joseph Charles (1891–1968) and Rose Marie (1892–1972, who married a Rinker). Six children in all — three Guilbault, three Thébault.
Chicago
| Year | Record | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 | Federal census, West Town, Chicago | Louise and Peter with John Gilbert, Emma Gilbert, Louis, Joseph and Rosie |
| 1910 | Federal census, Chicago | Louise with Joseph and Rose; Peter living |
| 1912 | — | Pierre Chrysologue Thébault dies. She is widowed a second time, at fifty-seven |
| 1918 | Border crossing, Port of Montreal | Travelling to visit her son George Guilbault; contact at home her daughter Rosie Rinker |
| 1920 | Federal census, Chicago | Living with her daughter Emma Hepp and grandson Thomas |
An open identity
A Marie Louise Thébault appears in the 1931 census of Canada at the Hôtel-Dieu in Nicolet, Quebec. Whether this is the same woman — who had been in Chicago since 1886 and had crossed the border at least once — or another of the same name has not been determined. It is listed here because it is unresolved, not because it is believed.
Four Generations
1932 A photograph was taken that year of four generations: Marie Louise, approaching seventy-eight; her daughter Emma; Emma's son Thomas Eugene Hamall; and his infant son Thomas Kenny Hamall.
1932. Marie Louise, her daughter Emma, her grandson Thomas Eugene Hamall, and her great-grandson Thomas Kenny Hamall.
Florida, and What Was Remembered
Her last years ran between Chicago and Florida, where her daughter Emma and her son Louis both had connections. Family photographs and family memory place her in Miami in the early 1940s, in her late eighties.
Thomas Kenny Hamall, born in 1932, told his daughter about fishing with his great-grandmother in Miami when she was in her nineties. He remembered her clearly — one of his earliest memories. He did not know she had been born in Quebec before Confederation, or that she had been widowed twice, or that she had raised six children in two countries. He knew that she was very old, that she was kind, and that she taught him to fish.
— Family oral history, preserved by Mary Hamall Morales
27 December 1945 She died at Chicago, aged ninety-one, and was buried on the thirty-first at All Saints, Des Plaines.
| Born | 8 December 1854 |
| Birthplace as recorded | Montreal, Que, Canada |
| Died | 27 December 1945, Chicago |
| Buried | 31 December 1945, All Saints, Des Plaines |
| Father as recorded | John Ouilleir |
| Mother as recorded | Elizabeth Esevent |
| Spouse | Peter Thebault |
| Age | 91 |
Chicago Tribune, 29 December 1945
THEBAULT — Louise Marie Thebault, beloved wife of the late Peter, dear mother of George Guilbault of Montreal, Emma Hamell, Louis J., Joseph, Rose Rinker, and the late John Gilbert. Funeral Monday, 9:30 a.m., from funeral home, 2500 N. Cicero avenue, to St. Bartholomew church. Interment All Saints'.
All six children are in it — the three Guilbault and the three Thébault, sixty-five years and one border apart, in one line of newsprint.
The Line Behind Her
Seven generations
On the name
Tranchemontagne is a soldier's nom de guerre, of the kind carried by hundreds of men in seventeenth-century France. Nothing is recorded about why Nicolas carried it, or where he picked it up. It travels with the family for six generations and then, at Saint-André, quietly stops.
Through her mother Elisabeth Gravel, Louise connects to the line traced elsewhere in this archive back to Marie Lorgueil, a fille à marier who came to New France in the 1660s. Through her grandmother Marie Elisabeth Poulin, she connects to the Marie Chapelier case study and its donation dispute.
What She Outlasted
She was born in a colony called Canada East, in a parish where her father could not write his name, and she died in Chicago in the year the Second World War ended. She buried two husbands, raised six children on both sides of a border, and outlived every one of her eighteen brothers and sisters and half-brothers and half-sisters.
And she lived long enough for one of them to remember her. Her granddaughter's son fished beside her in Florida at ten years old and carried it for seventy years — a memory with no story attached, until the records were found and put back around it.
Her daughter Elisabeth Emma Guilbault, born at Saint-André in August 1883 and christened by a grandfather who could not sign, is the subject of Episode 7.
Document Gallery
From her baptism at Saint-André in 1854 to her obituary in Chicago in 1945. Click any image to view it full size.
Saint-André, Argenteuil
Soulière household
Louisa, aged sixteen
Évangéliste Guilbault
Isidore Georges
Évangéliste 29, Louise 25, George 1
Jean Baptiste Gabriel
Elisabeth Emma — le père absent
Évangéliste Guilbault, 36
Chicago — Chrisologue Thibault
West Town, Chicago
With Joseph and Rose
Port of Montreal
With Emma and grandson Thomas
Hôtel-Dieu, Nicolet
Chicago
Chicago Tribune
Marie Louise, later years
The four sisters
The Thébault family
Four generations
With all six children
Marie Louise and Emma
Sources
Parish registers — parish copy, examined
- Burial of Évangéliste Guilbeault, 7 December 1883, Saint-André-d'Argenteuil, folio 25, entry S.33. Transcribed above.
- Baptism of Elizabeth Emma Guilbeault, 17 August 1883, Saint-André, folio 18, entry B.56. Godparents Janvier Soulière and Sophie Rousson; le père absent.
- Baptism of Marie Marguerite Louise Soulière, 10 December 1854, Saint-André; marriage to Évangéliste Guilbault, 20 May 1879, Saint-André; baptisms of Isidore Georges (1880, Saint-André) and Jean Baptiste Gabriel (1881, Saint-André-Avellin). Examined; not transcribed here.
Censuses and civil records
- 1871 Census of Canada, District 96 Argenteuil, sub-district e, St. Andrews, p. 84, household 266 / family 283. Rendered above as a table. Badly indexed — the head of household's forename has been transcribed several ways.
- Censuses of Canada, 1861 and 1881; United States federal censuses, 1900, 1910 and 1920; Cook County marriage return, 7 February 1886; border crossing, Port of Montreal, December 1918; Illinois deaths index, 1945. Examined.
- Chicago Tribune, 29 December 1945. Quoted above.
Photographs
- Collection of Mary Hamall Morales, with identification assistance from Deborah Stakenas. The c. 1911 sisters' portrait is by J. A. Lessard, Hull, Quebec.
Not located, or not resolved
- Évangéliste Guilbault's baptism — would settle whether he was born about 1847 (from his burial) or about 1852 (from the 1881 census), and give his parents from an act rather than a recital.
- What he died of, and whether any tutelle or inventory followed. A search for a tutelle has been made without result.
- Anything at all between December 1883 and February 1886 — the crossing to Chicago.
- The 1931 Hôtel-Dieu entry at Nicolet — same woman or another of the name.
- The sequence of Emma's own marriages: Hepp in the 1920 census, Hamell in the 1945 obituary. Episode 7's question.
- Sources for the six children's death years, several of which are carried from compiled trees rather than records.
Storyline Genealogy
From Research to Story
Are You Connected to the Souliere Line?
If you descend from the Souliere, Suliere, or Soulier (dit Tranchemontagne) family of L’Assomption and St-André-d’Argenteuil, from the nineteen children of Janvier Souliere Sr., or from the allied Gravel, Poulin, Migneron, Lacasse, or Lesage lines — whether your branch stayed in Quebec or came to Chicago — I’d like to compare notes. Documented trees, DNA matches, family papers, and even half-remembered stories have all moved this research forward.
Get in Touch About This FamilyCousin connections are informal and reciprocal — no fee, no obligation, just shared work on shared ancestry.
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