Margaret Lavelle

The Tanguay Family Dictionary is a great resource for a lot of information in a little paragraph. That being said, how to interpret the results is important for accuracy of data entry (based on the Tanguay information and it's level of accuracy).

b= BAPTISM not birth, this is important to understand because missionaries in the areas had to travel and weren't readily available exactly when a birth just took place. Sometimes there are multiple baptisms on or near the same date, they weren't necessarily multiple births in the same family (twins, etc).

s= BURIAL not death, but it would have taken place pretty quickly after a person died

m= MARRIAGE

How to read the record attached to this profile:

The large BOLD number is the year in which the man married the woman, the man is in LARGE capitals, the woman is the small capital letters a few lines down.

The ROMAN NUMERAL - I - before the name LAVILLE means that he was the FIRST ancestor in the Tanguay record to come basically be in the records, and likely was the first in that family in New France.

Now the next symbol is the number 3, floating in the air near the word Beauce. This means that every time you see the floating 3, it is the SAME NAME PLACE (in this case, St. Joseph, Beauce). The next time you see a new number floating, like the number 4 after the NAME PLACE, Quebec, it means that the 4 means Quebec. This is ONLY for this paragraph of text. The next time you find another paragraph you research will have DIFFERENT names for the floating numbers.

I will break it down to demonstrate the way this works, going piece by piece with this ancestor's record.

1763, (5 juillet) St- Joseph, Beauce I- LAVILLE (4), Pierre, b 1737; fils de Pierre et d'Anne Dotte, de St-Sauveur, diocese de Milan, jurisdiction de Bazas.

1763, 5 July at St. Joseph, Beauce First generation LaVille, Pierre, baptised in 1737, son of Pierre LaVille and Anne Dotte, of St. Sauveur, Diocese of Milan, Jurisdiction of Bazas. married:

This piece shows a new person, PIERRE III. This means that Madeleine's father is Pierre Mateau. The III represents the number of ancestors BEFORE Madeleine. Making her the THIRD from the ancestor who came to North America, thus her grandfather was the first Mateau here.

MATEAU, Madeleine, [PIERRE III b 1744; s 14 avril 1791, a Quebec

Mateau, Madeleine [daughter of Pierre, the third generation in New France records] baptised 1744; buried 14 April 1791 in Quebec

Children of the named couple (remember the capital letters), are noted in ITALICS.

Marguerite, b 29 avril 1764; m 27 nov. 1787, a Jean-Frederic Meinekey

Margureite, baptised, St-Joseph, Beauce 29 April 1764, married, Quebec, 27 November 1787 John Frederick Meineke*

(*remember, the name is German, turned to French, which is then turned it to English later; it is all the same person!)

Pierre, b 8 et s 30 mars 1766,-- Marie-Francois, b 24 mai et s 25 aout 1767-- Victoire,b... m 24 fevrier 1794, a Gabriel PETITCLERC

Pierre, baptised St. Joseph, Beauce, 8th, and buried, 30 March 1766.

Marie-Francois baptised St. Joseph, Beauce, 24 May and buried St. Joseph, Beauce, 25 August 1767

Victoire baptised... [not given], married Quebec 25 February 1794, to Gabriel Petitclerc

It appears like we can glean a lot from this small record. Margaret's 3 siblings, 2 which didn't not live very long after their birth; her parents names, and some vital statistics for them; that she was the granddaughter of the first Mateau to arrive in New France; that her husband was the first LaVille to be recorded in New France (there is more about this at the end of the record) and who Margaret married.

At the end of the page, there is a foot note section used for extra information which may relate to one person in the paragraph, for example. The number (4) that you noticed after LaVille (4), Pierre; in the first section, is for the foot note. This gives us a special treat, for it discloses that Pierre arrived in Quebec in 1751 aboard a ship called the Queen Angel (loosely translated). What a find!

From the above information, further research, (online) I found that he was a crew member aboard the ship, which was a MERCHANT vessel; doing the math, he was all of 14 years old when he boarded the ship and came to the new world!