Julie Marcoux, these flowers are for you.
- Rebecca Drew
- 14 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Today, we honor Julie Marcoux, a lady from Québec who eventually moved to the United States. She is being honored with irises, a long-standing emblem of France.
Who was Julie Marcoux?
Julie Marcoux shares roots with many whose family trees include Québec and Acadia. Ironically, we know less about her than we know about her ancestors from the 1600's and 1700's. Genealogists focusing on early New France are familiar with their names. For example, there is Zacharie Cloutier, who was featured in the early days of this journal. Then there is Robert Drouin, another pioneer who had a massive effect on the population numbers in Québec. Many French-Canadian genealogists are familiar with the early records left by her ancestor Paul Vachon, the French-born royal notary and attorney responsible for recording contracts in the new colony in North America.
Then there's the book Susan McNelley wrote about one of Marcoux's ancestors titled Hélène's World, Hélène Desportes of Seventeenth-Century Québec. It is about the lady who was the first recorded birth in the colony of New France. Others can be found on the lists of those brave women known as the Filles à Marier and the Filles du Roi. Meanwhile, her Acadian ancestors endured tremendous odds to reach Québec after Le Grande Dérangement. Like the numerous colors of irises in this bouquet, there are numerous stories of French ancestors leading to Julie Marcoux.
Sympathies with the United States
We know Julie Marcoux was born in the Beauce region of Québec around 1822 and later accompanied her husband to Maine. It is not surprising that she would eventually head to the United States where she gave birth to my ancestor, Elizabeth Lambert dit Champagne. During the Revolutionary War, Julie's grandfather, Antoine Marcoux, was noted as one of the accomplices assisting spies who were escaping after being warned of their impending arrest. He was further cited as a disloyal subject for "having always spoken seditiously." Further, Antoine Marcoux's village, known as Nouvelle-Beauce - Sainte Marie Parish, provided supplies to Benedict Arnold's struggling troops, among numerous other acts of assisting the so-called enemy. The British government demanded loyalty from the French Canadians, but not all of them complied, particularly in that part of the Beauce region.
Acadian Connections
The quest for liberty had strong roots in Julie Marcoux's family tree. Another ancestor, Alexandre Bourg dit Bellehumeur, was Royal Notary, King's Attorney, and Judge at Grand-Pré, Acadia in the early 1700's. Like Marcoux, he was accused by the British of helping the other side. In this case, they said he was not following-up on the British property seizures of his fellow Acadians, but he was eventually reinstated. He was also accused of working with French troops who invaded Nova Scotia. When Acadians were wrongfully deported by the British in 1755, he managed to escape to Richibucto, a former town in New Brunswick.
Earlier than that, the roots of questioning authority were apparent. When the first census of Acadia occurred in 1671, a few of Julie Marcoux's ancestors were a bit reluctant. One of them was Pierre Melanson, son of a French Huguenot. He refused to give his age, the number of his cattle or his amount of land. His wife, Marguerite Mius d'Entremont, supported her husband, basically telling the census taker he was crazy to go running around the streets asking those same questions. That's my interpretation of the encounter, but here are the direct words (in an older form of French) written by Laurent Molins, the Franciscan friar who conducted the 1671 Census:
Pierre Melanson - a refusé de donner son aage et Le nombre de ses bestiaux et terres et sa femme ma respondu si jestois si fous de courir les Rues pour des choses de mesme.
Upon further reflection, this bouquet represents not just Julie Marcoux, but all of her predecessors who sided with the pursuit of independence. Just like this bouquet of simple yet lovely irises, they represent the goodness that results from thriving in an environment of sunshine and freedom.
