First, this past weekend was the reopening of the famed Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.  There is lots of media about this event.  Here’s two snapshots of Notre Dame by my brother-in-law Mike in 1972 (RIP 2006).

COLLET

My father was 100% French-Canadian.  His mother was Josephine Collette, born 1881, Dakota Territory, her parents Clotilde and Octave Collette.

As family history researchers know, success in reconstructing family history is a game of inches, false starts, wrong turns, dead-ends…but also, patience and persistence is often rewarded.

My cousin Remi Roy recently connected a few more dots about our first Collet in Quebec, Francois, “the very last of our forebears to settle in Canada” in 1757 (that is, 19 years before upstarts declared independence for the in progress United States of America).  Our first French-Canadian ancestor came to what is now Quebec in 1618.

What follows is Remi’s most recent amendment to his history of our family.  Our Collet came from Brest, the westernmost part of France.   He arrived at St. Vallier QC, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence across from Ile de Orleans, and over the next 100 plus years his descendants lived in the area immediately to the south of Quebec City, thence to migrating to St. Paul-St. Anthony beginning 1857; thence Dayton MN, thence ND, and Manitoba and all over beginning 1878.

Every family has their story.  Thanks Remi, for some insights on ours.

You can read much more about the Collette family here.  Scroll down to Bernard-Collette by Dick Bernard, and further, Roy-Collette by Remi Roy.  (Page 134-38 of the Roy-Collette book includes the original of the below, the amended text.)

COLLET François (1741-1805)

François Collet, born around 1741, remains one of the more enigmatic ancestors. He arrived in from Brittany in 1757 at just sixteen years old, the very last of our forebears to settle in Canada. His arrival coincided with France’s military reinforcement during the Seven Years’ War. From 1755 to 1758, warships from Brest transported thousands of soldiers to North America. Too young to enlist, François likely secured passage as a ship’s boy or drummer, as there were no immigrant ships during that period. When his vessel anchored near Île d’Orléans and the south shore of the St. Lawrence River that summer, François may have jumped ship and made his way to St-Vallier.

On July 26, 1762, in St-Vallier, François Collet married Marguerite Tanguay, who had been baptized there on September 22, 1744. Marguerite was the daughter of André Tanguay and Marie Josephte Roy who was a great-granddaughter of Roy family ancestors Nicolas Leroy and Jeanne Lelièvre. Therefore, all descendants of François Collet are also descendants of these early Roy ancestors. In the marriage record, François stated that he was from the parish of St-Louis in Brest, one of the city’s four parishes, and identified his parents as Alexis Alain Collet and Marie Mau. L’Abbé Cyprien Tanguay, in Dictionnaire Généalogique des Familles Canadiennes, describes François as a menuisier(woodworker) from the diocese of Lyon, also referred to as the diocese of St. Pol de Léon, where the parish of St-Louis was located.

The surname “Collet” is both French and Breton in origin. While François may have been ethnically Breton, his upbringing in Brest—a cosmopolitan port city where French was the dominant language—makes it likely that French was his first language. This linguistic and cultural background likely distinguished François from the Tanguay family, whose Breton heritage was probably more pronounced. Marguerite’s grandfather, Jean Tanguay, originated from Ploudiry, a town in the same diocese about 20 miles from Brest. He immigrated to Canada in 1691 and was among the last of our ancestors to settle in New France, though this occurred 66 years before François Collet’s arrival. At the time, French was predominantly spoken in Brest, while the surrounding areas primarily used the Breton language. This linguistic divide persisted until the French Revolution, which significantly accelerated the spread of French across Brittany.

Brest records reveal several interconnected Collet families descended from Estienne Collet, born around 1650, who worked as blacksmiths and woodworkers in the shipyards. François was a skilled woodworker, reputed for carving the pulpit for the church in St-Vallier. In 1759, he also contributed to constructing a house in St-Jean-Port-Joli that still stands today.

Before marrying, François testified that he had spent five years in St-Vallier, living with Pierre Corriveau and François Brideau. Later, Pierre married Marguerite’s sister. Pierre’s cousin was the infamous Marie-Josephte Corriveau, better known as La Corriveau, a notorious figure in Canadian folklore. Convicted by a British military court for murdering her husband, she was hanged, and her body was displayed in an iron cage at Pointe-Lévis as a public warning. Given their familial connection, François undoubtedly knew of her, adding an air of intrigue to his own story.

François lived to the age of 82, passing away in 1805 in St-François-de-la-Rivière-du-Sud. Marguerite followed in 1809, dying in St-Henri-de-Lévis, where some of their descendants lived for generations. Together, François and Marguerite had 17 children, of whom eight married—their descendants now number in the thousands across North America. Among them, their son Denis married Louise Leclerc. Their grandson Denis II married Marguerite Clément, and their great-grandson Denis III married Mathilde Vermette, continuing the lineage to Philippe Collette and his daughter Mae Collette.

POSTNOTE: Remi passed along a vignette relating to the American Revolution and Francois Collet.  As noted earlier, Collet arrived in Canada just a few years before the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Collet Bad Parishes