Turgeon Family Line Back to 1590

Today I got a disc in the mail from some distant relatives who did a lot of Turgeon genealogy.  Using their research, here is the Turgeon family line back to 1590 in France!

Jean Turgeon was born about 1590 in St-Jean-de-Mortagne, Perche (Orne), France.  Sebastienne Liger was born in 1602 in St-Jean-de-Mortagne, Perche (Orne), France .  They got married to each other in 1621.  Jean died in 1697, and Sebastienne died in 1702 (can they really have both lived to 100+???).  They had six children.

Their second child was Charles.  Charles Turgeon was born in 1627 in St-Jean-de-Mortagne, Perche (Orne), France.  Pasquiere Perrin Lefebvre was also born in 1627 in Hotel-de-Ville, De Mortagne, Orne, France.  They got married to each other in about 1649.  In 1662, they took their children with them and moved to New France.  He died in 1704 in Beauport, Quebec, Canada, and she died in that same place in 1695.  Separate conflicting reports say that they got nostalgia and moved back to France in 1693.  They had ten children.

Their third child was Jacques.  Jacques Turgeon was born in 1653 in St-Jean-de-Mortagne, Orne, France.  Marie Denis D'Jean Viens was born in 1669 in Quebec, Canada.  They got married to each other in 1701. He died in 1728 and she died in 1741/1742 (both died in Beaumont, Levis, Quebec).  They had four children.

Their second child also happened to be named Jaques, like his father.  Jacques Turgeon [Junior] was born in 1707/1708 in Beaumont, Levis, Quebec.  Marie Jeanne Marguerite Fournier (daughter of Jacques Lefebvre and Louise St. Marc) was born in 1718 in Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  They got married in 1742.  He died in 1783 and she died in 1808 (both died in Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec).  They had thirteen children!!

Antoine Turgeon was the sixth child of Jacques Jr. and Marie.  Antoine Turgeon I (he later had a son genealogists called Antoine Turgeon II) was born in 1748 in St. Etienne, Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  Marie-Madeleine Audet-Lapointe was born in 1752 in St. Laurent, Ile D'Orleans, Montmorency Ii, Quebec.  They married each other in 1773.  He died in 1839 in St. Etienne, Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec. She died in 1838, in Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  Antoine I and Marie-Madeleine had seven children.

Their second child was Antoine Turgeon II.  He was born in 1788 in Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  Adelaide Miot-Girard was born in 1796, also in Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  They got married in 1816.  He died in 1829, and this set of records does not give Adelaide's death date.  They both died in Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  They had twelve children.

And then there is another Jacques!  Jacques Turgeon was the eighth child of Antoine II and Adelaide.  He was born in 1823 in (guess where) Beaumont, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  Ursule Bilodeau (daughter of Antoine Bilodeau and Marie Gonthier-Bernard) was born in 1825 in Saint Charles, Bellechaisse, Quebec.  Jacques and Ursule married each other in 1844.  He died in 1891 in Saint Roch d'Oxford, Quebec, and was supposedly buried in a pauper's grave (uh oh) with no headstone.  She died in 1902 in Rock Forest, Sherbrooke, Quebec (in 1901 she was living with her daughter Ernestine).  Jacques and Ursule had fifteen children.  It looks like two of their boys moved to BC, and changed their names to Sturgeon!  I smell skeletons in the closet...

Pierre Joseph Turgeon was their sixth child, and he was my great-grandfather.  Pierre Turgeon was born in 1846 in Rock Forest, Sherbrooke, Quebec.  His baptismal papers show that his parents were then living in St. Evariste de Forsyth, Beauceville, Quebec.  Marie Lucie Zenoide Bergeron (she was called 'Lucie')  (daughter of Joseph Bergeron and Marceline Desharnais) was born in 1850 in St. Flavien de Lotbiniere, Quebec.  Pierre and Lucie got married in 1871.   There is a record of a Peter Turgeon (Pierre?) working as a truckman in Rumford Falls in 1896 (Rumford Historical Society).  He died in 1926 in Rumford, Exford (Oxford?), Maine.  Lucie died in a tragedy in about 1901 (I really think this date is wrong).  Our family oral history was always that a brick fell from a scaffold and hit her, killing her instantly, but  the genealogical papers I am reading today say that she died of drowning with a child in a lake.  Here is a picture of Lucie. They had thirteen children.  I always thought that the girls stayed east, and the boys went west.  From the genealogical records, it looks like in old age lots of their girls died in Maine, and lots of the boys died in Saskatchewan or BC.

In 1954, my Grandparents, Kate and Alfred Turgeon, went to Maine to visit his sister, Adeline Merrit.  I assume this is her in the photo.  There are lots of photos from that trip with no names on them.

Their seventh child was our grandfather, Alfred (Fred) Joseph Turgeon.  He was born in 1879 in St. Michel, Sherbrooke, Quebec.  He was married twice.  His first wife, Aldea Houle was born in 1882 in Bellevue, Saskatchewan.  They got married in 1906, and had ten children.  Aldea died in 1931.  My grandmother Katrina/Kathryn/Kate Kaminski, a Polish immigrant, went to work as Alfred's housekeeper and nanny in 1931/1932, and they got married in 1932.  They had three children:  Suzanne, Cecile, and Roger.

Fred Turgeon and Kate Kaminski wedding day, 1932.  They were married in Prince Albert, SK.

Cecile Turgeon, who married Joseph Schmidt, is my mother.  Joe and Cecile had two children, Gwen and Celine.

Gwen and Celine, 1974.

Gwen had one child.  Guess who.

Peter Schmidt (1870ish-?) and Anna-Maria Kambeitz (1872-1939)

Peter and Anna-Maria Schmidt were my great-grandparents, the parents of my father's father.

I got this photo from my Aunt this weekend (their grand-daughter).  Both Peter Schmidt and Anna-Maria Kambeitz were born in Kandel, Kuts., Russia, and I know that they came to Canada but I don't know when.  All of their children came to Canada, or were born in Canada.  Their children were Paul, George, John, Mary Eva, Regina, Tony, Peter, Joe, Sebastian, and Andreas.  Paul was my grandfather.

Anna-Maria was the daughter of George Kambeitz and Marie-Anna Bertram. Peter Schmidt was the son of Johann Schmidt.

Cecile Turgeon and Joseph M. Schmidt (1960s)

My parents - Cecile Turgeon and Joseph M. Schmidt - met in the early 1960s at the University of Saskatchewan, in St. Thomas More College.  Both had had previous careers (she was a secretary first and then went for nurse's training, and he was a school teacher first and then went to law school), and so they were both mature students.  

In this photo, they are in the bridal party for some friends, Ruth and Larry (1961).  According to the back of the photo, they got engaged to be married themselves the very next day.

Each of them came from a family with a long history of farming, and went on to take professional training in a non-agricultural sector.  They had strong ties to their heritage their whole lives though:  she loved nothing more than a trip down the back roads in the car to go berry-picking, and made the biggest bonfires you ever saw.  He bought farmland as soon as he could, as an adult, even though he never farmed it himself, and got excited every Spring about planting a giant vegetable garden.  We were always watching the skies for rain or hail, and driving out to check on the crops.

Look at them prairie folks in their fancy dress clothes.

Stolen Steering Wheel!

Just in case you think this blog is going to be all serious business, here is some levity.

I never heard this story directly from my parents, but clearly in 1963, my father's car was vandalized.  His steering wheel must have been a beauty.  This is the news article from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.  This clipping was found in my grandmother's bible (my father's mother), among her other family mementos.

George Kambeitz, 1834-1914, and Marie-Anna Kambeitz (nee Bertram), 1838-1930, Kandel, Kuts., Russia

On my father's side, we have this very old photograph of my great-great-grandfather (he was my father's father's mother's father).

George is the one standing next to the plinth, in the back.  The imprint at the bottom says that the photo was taken in 1862, and then it says (in Russian) "Kishinev" and "Kharlampievsk".  "Kishinev" is another way of saying "Chisinau", which is the capitol of Moldova.  "Kharlampievsk" is the name of a church in Kishinev, and might also be the name of a saint. (Thanks Sarah, for the Russian research!)  I am not sure yet which army these men were in, and what they were fighting for.

I know that most of my German ancestors were Black Sea Catholic Germans from Bessarabia, somewhere near Odessa.  I haven't put all the geographical pieces together yet, but in terms of who is related to whom, George B. Kambeitz from Alberta has done all the Kambeitz family history research and has put it on the web!!  According to this research, George Kambeitz in this photo might also have been named "Johann George Kambeitz".

George Kambeitz from this photo was born and died in Kandel, Kuts., Russia.  His father before him, Franz-Joseph Kambeitz, was born in Durmersheim, Rastatt, BA (the Gazeteer currently puts Durmersheim in South Baden, Germany), but moved during his lifetime to Kandel.

George from the photo married Marie-Anna Bertram.  Here is a nice photo of George and Marie-Anna in their later years.  Marie-Anna is my father's father's mother's mother.  She was born in Selz, Kuts., Russia, and died in Kandel, Kuts., Russia.

George and Marie-Anna had nine children, one of whom was Anna-Maria Kambeitz, my great-grandmother.  She was born in Kandel, Kuts., Russia, in 1872 and died in 1939 in Kandel, Kuts., Russia. Anna-Maria Kambeitz married Peter Schmidt, the son of Johann Schmidt.  Anna-Maria and most of her siblings stayed in Russia, but at least two others came to Canada (Anton Kambeitz, 1870-1957, and Maria-Anna Kambeitz, 1883-1959).  Her son Paul Schmidt was born in Kandel, and then came to Canada.  He homesteaded south of Liebenthal with his wife Anne-Marie (nee Gross), on the farm that my father grew up on.

I am not sure who this woman is, but there are many copies of this picture in my treasure trove.  She was obviously important.  I wonder if this is Anna-Maria Kambeitz (1872-1939), daughter of George and Marie-Anna, and mother of Paul Schmidt, my grandfather?  She looks to me a tiny bit like both George and Marie-Anna from the photographs above.  Or perhaps I am doing some wishful thinking.

Lucille Bergeron, from Sherbrooke, Quebec

Lucille Bergeron was my great-grandmother on my mother's side (she was my mother's father's mother).  This is a precious tin-type photograph that we have of her.

Lucille Bergeron was married to Pierre Turgeon.  At the age of 41, she was walking under a ladder on a construction site in Sherbrooke, PQ, and a brick fell and hit her on the head, killing her.  Pierre never remarried.  After she died, her daughters stayed in the East, and all her sons went west.  They might also have gone to the U.S. for a while before moving to Saskatchewan.

I don't yet know the names of all of her daughters (there were four or five of them), but she was the mother of sons Alfred, Albert, Philip, Johnny, and Ed Turgeon.  Her son Alfred Turgeon was my grandfather (we called him Alfred Sr., or 'Fred').  He spent most of his life in Crystal Springs, SK., first on the farm and then in a house he built in town.