The slides my father took on my First Communion Sunday, 15 May 1966, in Fall River, Massachusetts, serve as a colorful time capsule of a bygone era. Sacred Heart Church, now closed, once covered the largest geographical parish in the center of the city. On that morning, more than 60 children, girls in white and boys in black, having fasted for twelve hours in preparation for communion, processed into church with disciplined precision. We returned to church in the afternoon to receive scapulars, prayer books, and rosaries, and then processed out of the church east along Pine Street for the May crowning.
From first through fourth grade, as part of “Patrol Three Linden,” I walked four times a day to and from Sacred Heart School along five blocks of Linden Street. I knew almost everyone on that street, including three-generation families. As a six-year-old, I gave little thought as to who lived in these houses at the turn-of-the-twentieth century.
Fast forward to the present. Unresolved genealogical questions always simmer on the back burner. A missing death record remains a puzzle to solve. Consider the case of my Vermont-born father-in-law’s great-grandmother, Flavie Coté. In 1843, she married widower Michel Marquis in L’isle Verte, Québec, 286 miles northeast from Montréal. Flavie bore thirteen children over the next two decades. By the mid- 1860s, farm families like the Marquises could no longer wrest a living from exhausted soil, and they moved into the Eastern Townships, where in the 1871 Canada census Michel, Flavie, and several of their children were counted in the town of Durham, Québec. Michel Marquis died in 1882; his children widely scattered, often finding seasonal work in New England’s mill cities. Flavie has not been found in Canada’s 1891 census, a likely indication she was then living with one of her children in the United States.
Much to my surprise in 1900, I found “Fivali” Marquis living at 143 Linden Street in Fall River[1] — a house I had passed hundreds of times!
Flavie’s eldest daughter, thrice-widowed Melvina Adam, headed the household which included four daughters who worked in the mills. Mistakes abound in “Fivoli’s“ census line, including her age, off by four years; the number of years married; and the number of living and deceased children. Although Flavie and family lived a stone’s throw from Sacred Heart Church, they would have walked another mile to attend Mass at Notre Dame Church, the French-speaking parish in Fall River’s Flint Section.
Flavie and family moved again with the next year. She died on 15 March 1901 at 78 North Eighth Street, Fall River; her death certificate is notable in recording correctly her age, husband’s name, and parents Jacob Cote and Angelique Colombe.[2]
Flavie’s obituary, however, has a number of curious anomalies:[3]
Mrs. Flavie Cote, widow of Michael Moquin [sic], died at her residence, 78 North Eighth Street, at the advanced age of 84 years. She was one of the oldest residents of this city. She leaves a grown-up family most of whom are living out West. The funeral will take place tomorrow.
I don’t know of anyone in her family who went “out west,” but what a delightful discovery to have made that my French-Canadian Vermont family touched down in my old neighborhood.
[1] 1900 U.S. Census, Fall River, Bristol, Mass., E.D. 155, p. 5. At least four other families lived in the house.
[2] Mass. VRs, 1841–1910, 516:191. She is buried in Notre Dame Cemetery, Fall River.
[3] Fall River Daily Herald, 15 March 1901, 8.
