Essay: The joy of genealogy, where secrets are revealed

By Paul Carrier

The cult of celebrity baffles me. So I never got too excited when I saw the Hollywood types who used to turn up on the now-defunct NBC genealogy series, Who Do You Think You Are? Still, I am fascinated by history, including family history, and my curiosity always outweighed whatever reservations I may have had, as the series helped yet another star find his or her roots.

So it was a few years ago, when the program featured actress Ashley Judd, who appeared to be so deeply moved by her journey back in time that I couldn’t help but empathize. Judd not only discovered a Civil War ancestor whose leg was amputated before he was taken prisoner by Confederate forces, but her inkling that she might have New England roots turned up a remarkable family connection. More about the latter in a bit.

Working on my own genealogy over the course of several years has shown that, when it comes to ancestry, family lore ranges from the incomplete to the downright unreliable.

My roots are French Canadian. All four of my grandparents were working-class Québec natives or, in one case, the American-born child of Québec natives. All of them grew up in French-speaking homes. And all of their families arrived in New England fairly recently -- in the late 19th or early 20th centuries.

From this set of facts, combined with information supplied by relatives, some things seemed clear as I began my research. First, my ancestry appeared to be entirely French Canadian. Second, there was no reason to believe there is any fame to be found in my humble family tree. It was reasonable to assume all of my early Québec ancestors were "habitants" (farmers). And third, because of the relatively late timing of my grandparents' migration to the United States, we had no evidence that my family played any role in the early history of this country.

All of which is dead wrong.

For one thing, it turns out there are Puritan branches in our Québec family "arbre." During French and Indian raids on Massachusetts in 1704, two English children from different towns - Mathias Farnsworth of Groton and Thankful Stebbins of Deerfield - were kidnapped and taken north. Both settled in French Canada and eventually married into the families of my French ancestors. As a result, I had roots -- English roots! -- in colonial New England, long before my Québécois ancestors settled here. And there's more on that score. One of my early French ancestors, explorer Jean Nicolet, fathered a daughter -- my 10th generation grandmother -- with a Nipissing Indian whose name has been lost to us. So my ancestry, unexpectedly, includes a bit of Indian blood as well.

As for the presumed obscurity of everyone in my family tree, the aforementioned Nicolet is believed to have been the first European to cross Lake Michigan and reach present-day Wisconsin. Another ancestor was the brother of Louis Jolliet, the famed explorer of the Mississippi River. A third, Jacques Hertel de La Fresnière, was one of the first settlers of Québec and a prominent interpreter who was skillful in Indian languages.

Accepting how little one knows is a sign of wisdom. Just ask Ashley Judd, who used to describe herself as a Sicilian hillbilly with Italian-American roots in Kentucky. That was before she learned that she also descends from William Brewster. If that name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because he sailed to Massachusetts in 1620 . . . aboard the Mayflower.