Hello WikiTreers!
Week 44 of the WikiTree Challenge for Claire Brisson-Banks has wrapped up. It was an incredible rollercoaster of a week with many exciting dips and turns as records were broken and brick walls all came tumbling down! Team members once again took on the challenge and then took it to the next level with their discoveries.
Challenge participants added 410 profiles to her branches, and connected hundreds more! An amazing 92 direct ancestors were beyond Claire's brick walls and completely new to her! With a majority of the records documented in French, this was amazing!
Altogether, more than 31 members made 3,191 edits to her ancestor profiles. Many did research, while others worked on profile narratives, looked up articles, added categories, and contributed in other ways.
Here are some highlights from our discoveries:
- Pierre Julien Fortin, Claire’s 7th great-grandfather, born 1669 is a good example of a distant ancestor found through a more recent ancestor connection. He married Marie-Gertrude Hudon in 1697. The image of their marriage is on their profiles. Pierre had 11 siblings and then had 13 children of his own! Each of the children has a birth, marriage, and death record linked to their profile if it was available. There were 33 more direct ancestors beyond the 12th generation!!
- Servant Bernard, Claire’s 6th great-grandfather, suffered tragedy early on in life. His first wife, Marie Françoise Boiry, drowned with four other people, just a few months after their marriage. The weather was to blame. Servant married a second time, to Marie Fournier. Servant and Marie lived a long, presumable loving, life with both dying within a day of each other. They were both buried on the 31st of December 1758. Many neighbors and friends attended the funeral. They had been married for twenty-three years.
- Zacharie Cloustier, a carpenter by profession, led an interesting life. He migrated to Canada in 1634 with his father, a master carpenter. His wife and four of their children joined him the following year. His father had signed a contract committing himself to Robert Giffard for three years, after which he was to receive half the land he and his son cleared, food and board in the meantime, two cows, and an additional amount of parcels for building Robert a house. Zacharie Sr. failed to complete his obligations after the three years were up and it dragged out in the courts until 1646. Zacharie Junior lived to the age of 87. His wife Sainte died three years later. They had raised six children, with all but one of them reaching the age of adulthood. Hundreds of direct ancestors were connected on these lines once the more recent ancestors were created!
- Aaron Littlefield, the seventh great grandfather of Claire, was taken by Native Americans (along with his mother and two of his sisters) to Canada. He was nine years old. He was later baptized in Quebec as Pierre Augustin Littlefield, where he married and settled. He was granted letters of administration for his father Moses' estate in 1727. More than one hundred direct ancestors were connected on this line!!!
- Joseph Theroux was a broom manufacturer and ran a saloon in Pawtucket, Rhode Island where he sometimes skirted the liquor laws. He died from injuries sustained when he fell in a store's cellar. His funeral was the largest in the French community at the time, attracting more people than could be accommodated in the church. There were 43 carriages in his funeral procession. There were hundreds of direct ancestors connected to Claire's branches!!!
- There are only six direct ancestors missing from Claire's 9th generation! Her WikiTree branches are now incredibly full!
Team Captain: Cheryl Hess
MVP: Greg Clarke
Top Bounty Hunter: Greg Clarke
Honorable Mention: Greg Lavoie & Nicole Adams
For more information see the challenge scoring explanation and check out the week 44 statistics to see a summary of all contributors.
If you missed the wrap-up LiveCast and want to see Claire's reaction to our endeavors, you can view it at any time on YouTube.
