Page 55 - Fortier Family History

In one document, one can read that Jean-Baptiste would, with his group of trustees, have made a request for land to the British crown between the years 1830 and 1833 in favor of the church of Saint Roch to enlarge the surface of a cemetery. He was therefore very involved in the welfare of his parish. By browsing the website of the directory of heritage sites, we can discover that Jean-Baptiste is in the history of buying a house on Saint-Stanislas Street. It is a very big house and given his status in the trustee, we can consider that he was comfortable. The history of the building informs us that his widow will sell the property to their son, Jean-Olivier, who is not of our descent. Then sell it to his brother Felix. While searching the notary papers of Quebec, the children of Jean-Baptiste seem all to make liberal professions or seem to have relations with this kind of people. We have his daughter, Alphonsine who is married to a lawyer called Aurélien who is a merchant as well as Félix and Jean-Olivier and Régis who is a jeweler. Moreover, they all know how to read and write, which is a plus at this time. The next ancestor is the one who will begin the adventure of the descendants to Gaspésie. He is the famous Roch-Xavier (wrongly named Pierre on his Obiturary card). He was born in 1820 in Quebec City and married in Beauport in 1843 to Éléonore Séguin. It would be a few years later when he decided to settle in the Gaspé with his wife and son, Pierre, whom we will talk about later. The arrival of the family would be around 1850. The part of the 1851 census in Gaspésie did not survive over time, but we can see in an act of notary Lebel that the first mention of Roch Xavier is in an act of 1851. Roch-Xavier is presented as a tanner living in Carleton . He would have settled first in Carleton before coming to work at Caplan later. Tanner is the job where you work with animal skins and leather and then sell everything in the form of shoes, boots, harnesses etc ... It is necessary that the tannery is close to a watercourse for ensure the soaking and cleaning of the skins. The tanneries were also to be installed far from inhabited centers because of bad smells. I think that in my youth I have already been told that they used to call the Bigaouettes "the stinker" or something that refers to bad stinking. I think the elders of Saint-Siméon would still use this expression today to tease us. This has to be confirmed. The location of his first location in Carleton would be where the pharmacy is at the traffic lights right now to get to the wharf. I could not confirm if he really settled on the field, but the place seems strategic to do the job of tanner. If we notice well, there was a stream that passed by to pour into the bay. It is difficult to say exactly what year he would have made the transition to Caplan's Leblanc Creek. Curiously in the 1861 census, Roch-Xavier appears simultaneously in the city of Carleton and Caplan. In an act dating from 1858, it is written that Roch-Xavier lives in Caplan. So there is a time when Roch-Xavier still has a location in Carleton. The second tannery workshop would have been located below the bridge between Caplan and Saint-Simeon (commonly called La Cochonne!) FYI: it’s a slang term used to say “naughty girl” in French! But in this case, we called this place La Cochonne because of «Cochon» which is French for pig, so the pigs used to hang out near the creek under the said bridge. But it is difficult to know where exactly it was located. This land belonged formerly to Arsenault according to the act of the lease of the ground which dates back to 1860. An old mill has already been