My Gélinas (Bellemare) Ancestral history
Captain John Myles Wilson
Merchant Mariner (The Keila)
groom/husband, Scotland-born (my Grandad)
and
Hortense Bellemare (Ancestry: Gélinas Bellemare)
bride, Canada-born
Marie Cecile Hortense Wilson was
John Myles Wilson’s wife (and my Nana)
Photo taken in
Trois Rivières, Québec
1941
Hortense’s ‘maiden’ name is (her father’s family name) Bellemare
Hortense’s father was Joseph Onésime Bellemare (see archive below in Quebec Act). He signed off as “Joseph Bellemare” if you look at the end but in the text he is referred to by his full name.
Hortense’s father, Joseph’s, mother’s name, was : Lamy (Likely also Jewish). See it also written below in the Quebec Act. Scroll further down the page here for more information.
My own mother recalls,
“Lamy was another surname that I heard of in my childhood. Grandmère Bellemare and Auntie Fernande went to Bordeaux in search of ancestors around 1949 when Auntie Fernande lived in England with Nana & Grandad. She married Uncle Jimmy Dron (also) a Scotsman. Grandmère (Bellemare) came to visit Nana in Dovercourt, England”.
Scroll list for: my family name(s), Bellemare, Gélinas and Lamy
used to connect to a website called www .serviceamitie.org/fr/information-assignation-1 but the Original sources, now defunct: www .amitiesquebec-israel.org/GelinasR/centre-gelinas/Juive-en-NF/Allocution-Anglais.htm
but you may contact the source here:
Current source click this photo
Full name reads: Marie Cecile Hortense Bellemare. Granddad called her Hortense and Hortense is written on marriage license. Full name appears in Quebec Act archives.
With gratitude and thanks to @hervegeneologie on Twitter
Here is a comprehensive document http://joachimleblanc.com/Descendances/Bellemare.htm
Some oral family history:
Hello Diane. According to the genealogy that I have of the Bellemare’s we are descendants of Jean-Baptiste who would seem to be the son of Jean Juillineau who took on the name of Bellemare and settled in Yamachiche. Tante Rhea told me they came from Saintes in France as your information states. My story was that the 3 brothers came from Saintes and took on the names of Gelinas (sic: Gélinas) Bellemare and I didn’t know the third name and settled in Yamachiche. I wasn’t aware that their grandfather and his son their father had come earlier and first settled in Cap de la Madeleine. I don’t have any info on Joseph Gelinas but I believe some of our ancestors went to Massachusettes. Many did in Quebec around the beginning of the 20th century. Hope things are well with you” — family member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamachiche,_Quebec
“If you scroll down, on the wiki page, the three Gelinas brothers are mentioned here in this wiki link on Yamachiche. They were the first three colonists. Gelinas’ changed name to become Bellemare as indicated on other document sent. Like you say, Jean-Baptiste Bellemare is the common ancestor. So any records would be great”.
http://batmarn2.free.fr/joseph_gelinas.htm
More notes here:
First Inhabitants of Yamacheche (also seen spelled as Yamachiche) — “Etienne, Jean-Baptiste and Pierre Gelinas, sons of Jean were, with the Seigneurs Charles and Julien Lesieur, the first inhabitants and the first land owners at Yamacheche, an parents of the first children born in this parish. The descendants of Etienne kept the name of Gelinas, those of Jean-Baptiste became Bellemare and those of Pierre are Lacourse.
In his history of Yamacheche, Raphael Bellemare reports that the Gelinas brothers must have received, at the end of the seventeenth century, their concession from Lambert Boucher de Grandpre, son of the governor, who had married Marguerite de Vauvril, grand-daughter of Pierre Lepele dit Lahaie. Etienne, son of Etienne Gelinas and of Marguerite Benoit, was born on 8 October 1704 and was baptized by the Recollet priest Simeon Dupont.
The second child born at Yamachiche was the cousin of the first, Jean-Baptiste, son of Jean-Baptiste Gelinas dit Bellemare and of Jeanne Boisonneau dit Saintonge, also baptized at Yamachiche, at the paternal home, by the same missionary on 3 March 1705. These two baptismal acts notes Bellemare,
“sufficiently prove the occupation of these place before the first concessions granted by the seigneurs of the two division of Grosbois.”
For an uninterrupted two and three-quarters centuries, from 1703 to the present, the Gelinas and the Bellemare families worked the ancestral lands at Yamachiche. Lands occupied by the same family for nearly three centuries have become more and more rare in our time. These lands at Yamachiche bear witness to the vitality of the Gelinas and the Bellemare families and of their very great desire to maintain tradition. For them, it was a matter of filial love and deep respect for their ancestors” — source unclear
Crypto-Jews explanation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-Judaism
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1387078
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-715350
Fun fact: My own mother was asked to be an honorary member of a business group of Jewish Women, in Montreal affiliated with Jewish League of Women, in the mid to late 1980’s.
I was also told this information once as a teenager but I never forgot it. In part it was the inspiration for delving deeper into our ancestral past and finding these archives with the help of dozens of people most of whom were researchers themselves of their own histories.
https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/women_judaism/v01n01/v1n1form.htm
An INDY JOURNALIST’S BLOG 