1818: The Sixth Generation in Canada

Alexis III was born in Chambly, Que. in 1818. He came to Chatham with his parents in 1836 at age 18 and married Euphrosine Mignier dit Lagacé (she was known as Phoebe to the family and I found her elsewhere as Euphébée) at the church of St-Pierre, in Tilbury East on the 7th of January, 1839. Phoebe was the daughter of Germain Lagacé-Mignier and Euphrosine Tardif, both living in Chatham at the time of the wedding, although Phoebe had been born in Madawaska in 1820.

Neither Phoebe nor Alexis could sign the register; like all of his male ancestors before him, Alexis was illiterate. Any teaching that had been done in the rural communities of Lower Canada had likely been done by the parish priest and consisted mostly of religious studies. Some of the young women were taught to read and write by the nuns and at least one of our female ancestors, Marie Magdeleine Fafard (wife of Prudent) had signed her marriage contract and register. The move to Ontario, however, changed all that. Later in life Alexis became very involved in education in the community of Pain Court and probably learned to read and write.

Their marriage contract is also the last time that a Robert referred to himself in a legal document as "dit Lafontaine". The Roberts had all used the full Robert dit Lafontaine on almost all documents in Quebec but after 1839 they referred to themselves on paper as Robert only.

The Lagace-Mignier and Tardif Families The Acadian Connection

Phoebe's parents were married in Saint-Basile, N.B., in 1811.

Phoebe's mother was a Tardif and the Tardif family was Acadian. There are records that show that the Tardifs, probably her father and other family members, owned land in Madawaska.

Most of the Madawaska colonists were Acadians who had been banished from Nova Scotia by the English in 1755. Some of them returned to Canada to settle in the area of Fredericton but were again forced to move out in 1784 when 12,000 Loyalists established themselves in the lower part of the St. John River. The Acadian families were uprooted again. The government of New Brunswick offered then land in Madawaska on the upper St. John River bordering on Quebec. Through 1786 and 1787 they moved up the river to the area around Ste-Anne-de-Madawaska. Because of the economic distress in Quebec at this time many French-Canadians also moved to New Brunswick and especially to Madawaska, Phoebe's father's and possibly other Lagasses among them.

In 1831 a Germain Lagasse had four acres in cultivation on the St-John River next to the the church of Ste Basile in Madawaska: this could have been Phoebe's father; a Joseph Lagasse had seventeen acres in the same area.

Her father, Germain Lagacé-Mignier was a descendant of André Mignier dit La Gachette, a soldier with the Carignan-Salières regiment who came to Quebec in 16?? via the Antilles where he'd been fighting with the French army. His descendants now use the names Lagassé, Lagacé, Mignier or Meunier. Phoebe's father used Lagassé-Mignier; in the marriage register at St-Pierre she used Mignier dit Lagassé.

The original Mignier, André Mignier dit La Gachette, married a fille du roi, Jacquette Michel, in 1668 in Québec City. Jacquette lived with her children in Quebec but André travelled a great deal and in a census taken in N.B. in 16?? he is listed as living with an unidentified adult woman and her children in N.B. The speculation is that he was maintaining two households.

The Quebec government suggested that the new settlement of Madawaska should be part of the Province of Quebec but New Brunswick refused. The residents of Madawaska were in the difficult position of not knowing which government actually exercised civil authority: Madawaska sat in the triangle formed by the as yet undetermined borders of Quebec, New Brunswick, and the United States. The border between Quebec and New Brunswick was eventually settled in favour of New Brunswick but the border between New Brunswick and Maine was under dispute until 1842 when the Webster-Ashburton Treaty divided Madawaska and granted part of it to the United States (Maine) and part to New Brunswick. Many former New Brunswick residents suddenly found themselves American.

A souvenir album of Pain Court published in 1925 states that Euphrosine was born in Madawaska, Quebec. However, at the time she was born the governance of Madawaska was probably still under dispute. In the same album, Alexis is said to have been born in Madawaska too; this is an error as he was born in St-Mathias, Que., near Chambly.

Alexis Robert's bride, Phoebe, had now brought Acadian blood from her mother's side to the Robert descendants.

Alexis and Phoebe lived in Chatham next door to his parents in a single story frame house. Phoebe worked as a straw hat maker as did her sister-in-law Celeste Robert. They probably were in business together.

Alexis was a steamboat engineer and "was well known in his calling"³

By 1833 Chatham was already noted as a centre for building sailing ships and steamboats. By 1841 Chatham had 812 inhabitants and was rapidly developing as a port and trading centre. There were two steamboats travelling between Chatham and Amherstburg or Detroit; these were the Brothers and the Western. Alexis Robert would have been working on one of these two. The Brothers "was advertised as having large comfortable cabins and a saloon filled with the choicest wines."⁴ The steamboats were used for the export of products from the Thames river area such as wheat, staves, and walnut lumber and also provided transportation for many travellers and emigrants between the eastern and western parts of the United States who preferred travelling via the shorter land route through Canada, rather than the longer route via Lake Erie or by land south of the lake.

Stagecoaches had run from Queenston or Niagara to Sandwich at least once a week, later three times a week but by the 1830's the coaches were making connection with the steamboats which plied between Chatham and the Detroit River and most people used the water route in the summer for that part of their journey.

Smuggling of American goods into Canada was extensive; high duties were imposed upon many articles such as coffee, nuts, spices, drugs, silk, leather, cotton, and sugar; and other articles were prohibited from trade entirely, for example, tea. Large numbers of the population were involved in smuggling and Alexis' work as a stoker on a steamboat plying back and forth between Detroit and Chatham probably put him in an excellent position to bring back illicit goods for sale. In 1854 Canada signed the ten-year Reciprocity Treaty with the U.S. This agreement wiped out most of the tariffs and probably put an end to widespread smuggling.

The Act of Union in 1840 united the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.

In 1856, at the age of 38, Alexis retired to Pain Court where he bought a fine farm of seventy -five acres. He never engaged in its cultivation although he made his home there for the rest of his life.

For nine years he served as a school trustee, although when he was married in 1839 he was unable to sign his name.

Pain Court is situated about seven miles southwest of Chatham on the banks of the Thames River. During the 1820's a French-speaking community from Detroit had settled in the area and by 1830 773 acres had been surveyed and title granted to the inhabitants. This combination of available land and similar cultural community attracted many residents of the lower Richelieu valley in Quebec.

The first settlers had picked their land carefully, choosing properties that were a combination of plains and forest thus getting land already cleared for planting and wood for fuel and building. The first years were difficult because of frequent flooding and because of the lack of a mill for grinding their wheat. Frequently by mid-winter there was very little bread left to feed the families and when the missionaries came to minister to the people (there was no church at that time and they were served by the church of St-Pierre at Tilbury East) there was1 not enough bread to offer them. The settlers would tell the priests "Le pain est court" and this expression was eventually shortened to "Pain court" which was how the missionaries referred to the community until the name was officially adopted.

Alexis and Phoebe had ten children, seven boys and three girls. Their stories follow.

William died in 1865 at age 16.

Francis (b.1840) married Linire Belanger. He was a miller, he fathered six children, and he died in 1893 at age 53.

Alexis Jr. (b.1842) lived with his parents until his marriage to Marguerite Faubert (b.1831 in St. Martin, Que.) in 1865.

He then came to his present farm, which at that time consisted of but one hundred acres, and this he was obliged to clear. He had paid $300 for the first fifty acres, and later purchased fifty more. In those days no road led from this part of the township to Chatham, and all was in its natural uncultivated state. Mr. Robert was by nature industrious and far seeing. He bravely set to work to carve out his home, and how well he succeeded one needs but to see his broad acres of well cultivated and improved land to judge. He continued to buy land until he acquired 240 acres, and then he distributed it among his children and settled down in retirement to enjoy the fruit of his well directed efforts. Mr. Robert has always been a man of progressive ideas, and always quick to grasp any suggestion that meant improvement. In spite of the hours of labor it was necessary for him to spend upon his land he never lost sight of public affairs, but on the contrary made a careful study of all subjects of public interest, until he is one of the best versed men in his township. In politics he is a Conservative, and has been returning officer since 1874, and school trustee for the past fifteen years...Honorable in all his dealings, wise in his judgment, and upright in his private life, Alexis Robert is a man of whom any community might well be proud. He has lived his life and reared his children in a most exemplary manner, and no citizens in the county are more deserving of the high esteem in which they are held.⁵

Alexis and Marguerite had six children, one of whom died young. Their four sons were all farmers in Dover Township or Pain Court and their daughter married a farmer from Belle River, Ont.

Alexis Jr. was the only male child of Alexis Sr. and Phoebe who continued to farm in Kent County but all of his children were farmers and probably any Roberts of this line still living in Pain Court are their descendents.

Olive Robert, the fourth child of Alexis Sr. and Phoebe, married Anthony Faubert, a Chatham farmer, and had ten children.

Joseph, their fifth child, married Kitty Paquette, then Margaret Campbell and worked as an engineer in Detroit, Mich.

Peter, their sixth child, is our ancestor and is mentioned in detail below.

Mary married Louis Charbonneau, was widowed by 1904, and lived in Windsor, Ont.

David, their eighth child, married Marie Belanger and worked as a miller in Grand Junction, Colo.

Rose married John B. Bechard and lived in Cohoes, N.Y.

John, their last child, was a miller in Kansas; in 1901 he was in St. Louis, Mo.

Alexis died at the age of 82 (83?) and was buried in Pain Court. His obituary appeared in the Chatham Daily Planet of May 25, 1901:

The death of Alexis Robert, sr., took place last Wednesday, May 21st. Mr. Robert came to these parts from Montreal (sic) in 1836 and has resided in the county ever since. He died at the advanced age of 83.

Mr. Robert leaves a wife and a family of five sons and three daughters. The sons are Alexis, jr., farmer, living near the Town Hall, Dover; Joseph, engineer of the Peninsula Stove Works, Detroit; Peter in this city; David, St. Louis, Mo.: and John B of Great Bend, Kansas. The daughters are all married and are Mrs. A. Fobert (sic) of Chatham Township; Mrs. Charbonneau of Lansingburg, N.Y.; Mrs. G.H. Bechard of North Pownal, Vt.

All are expected to be present at the funeral.

The funeral will take place Monday, the 27th, from his late residence at Pain Court, to Pain Court Church and thence to Pain Court cemetery.

After his death Phoebe continued to live on the farm but by 1914 had moved in with her son Pierre at 29 Third St. in Chatham. She died in Chatham in 1916 at age 96 and was buried in St. Anthony's Cemetery. The Chatham Daily Planet of November 30, 1815 reported her death:

Death of an Aged Respected Chatam Lady Mrs. Phoebe Robert Passes Away in her Ninety Sixth Year

The death occurred yesterday of an aged and well respected Chatham lady, Mrs. Phoebe Robert, in her ninety-sixth year, relict of the late Alexis Robert.

Mrs. Robert was taken suddenly ill on Friday morning of last week, and, in view of her advanced age, little hope was held for her recovery.

Mrs. Robert is survived by four sons: Joseph of Detroit; Peter of Chatham; David of Millicen, Colo.; and John of Port Oregon, and two daughters, Mrs. Mary Charboneau (sic) of Windsor, and Mrs. J.H. Bechard. Deceased is also survived by ninety six grandchildren, one hundred and thirty great grandchildren and thirty five great great grandchildren.

Mrs. Robert was born in 1820 and in the year 1835 came to reside in Chatham and has spent the greater part of her life in this city. In January, 1839, she was married in St. Peter's Church on the River Road, the only church which had been built in this district at the time. Part of her married life was spent in Pain Court where she made a great number of friends. After her husband's death, fifteen years ago, she came to again reside in Chatham and since that time has been a well respected citizen.

Mrs. Robert has lived to a grand old age, and has kept up the family reputation of being long livers. Her father lived to be one hundred and eight years old, and her mother the remarkable age of one hundred and ten years.

The funeral will take place from the residence of her son, Peter Robert, 29 Third street, on Thursday, December 2nd, to the St. Joseph's Church at ten a.m. and from there for St. Anthony's Cemetery.

I could find no further trace of Phoebe/Euphrosine's father or mother in Chatham or Pain Court after her marriage in 1839 so I assume they either returned to Madawaska or else moved on.

Of the six living male children, three remained in Ontario and three moved to the United States.