Monday, October 13, 2008
Family History
Memo found below was sent to Gov Chris Gregoire and sent to me from Mary Gregoire seeing if it was part of our family tree. It was my Great,great,great,great grandfather was the Gregoire De Blois referred to in the letter. He had come over to Canada in 1657. The family had settled on the Isle D'Orleans on the river opposite Quebec City,Canada.
As far as we can tell the Gregoire de Blois family was part of the royal family in France but my great great great great grandfather was not the first born (historically the first born son gets all the family fortune) so he set out on his own to the new world as outlined below by Yvonne.
It was fun speaking to you yesterday at the Kitsap County Democrats; I don’t know about you, but my family does not seem as enthusiastic about my interest in our French-Canadian ancestry as I am; maybe one or more of them will want to do something later in life. In any case, I’m a retired librarian and love to look things up.
The series of books I told you about is titled: Our French-Canadian Ancestors, and the compiler is Thomas J. Laforest—on the cover of volume one, anyway. The author is identified as Father Gerard Lebel. This volume contains twenty-four biographies (of maybe 10 pages each). The address of the Press is simply Palm Harbor , Florida . I went in and googled Lisi Press—you might try this, but the Gregoire de Blois family is covered in Volume 1, and I don’t know if you want more…in any case, the author says that the ISBN number for the first volume is 0-914163-01-9.
The first year I can see in the record came out in 1977 and I know there are many volumes—I have about ten myself.
The author says that Gregoire de Blois indentured himself on March 3, 1657 at La Rochelle . Apparently he wanted to go to Canada; in return for giving three years work as a prison guard, he was promised free passage and a salary of 70 livres for each year. The ship had to be repaired several times before they started the voyage, and finally docked at Quebec on August 20th. In later years, Gregoire acquired land; the census of 1667 said he had 8 arpents of cleared land.
There is much more on the life of this man, the book reports on his children, death, and descendants. (either named Gregoire or Deblois) in some length.
I don’t know how much you want of this. I also don’t know if you can still order the series for yourself, but I could copy the pages of this book which deal with our man and send those to you. Let me know and I’ll be happy to do it.
Give my best wishes to your wife and be assured that we Democrats are supporting her most enthusiastically.
Yvonne Saddler
As far as we can tell the Gregoire de Blois family was part of the royal family in France but my great great great great grandfather was not the first born (historically the first born son gets all the family fortune) so he set out on his own to the new world as outlined below by Yvonne.
It was fun speaking to you yesterday at the Kitsap County Democrats; I don’t know about you, but my family does not seem as enthusiastic about my interest in our French-Canadian ancestry as I am; maybe one or more of them will want to do something later in life. In any case, I’m a retired librarian and love to look things up.
The series of books I told you about is titled: Our French-Canadian Ancestors, and the compiler is Thomas J. Laforest—on the cover of volume one, anyway. The author is identified as Father Gerard Lebel. This volume contains twenty-four biographies (of maybe 10 pages each). The address of the Press is simply Palm Harbor , Florida . I went in and googled Lisi Press—you might try this, but the Gregoire de Blois family is covered in Volume 1, and I don’t know if you want more…in any case, the author says that the ISBN number for the first volume is 0-914163-01-9.
The first year I can see in the record came out in 1977 and I know there are many volumes—I have about ten myself.
The author says that Gregoire de Blois indentured himself on March 3, 1657 at La Rochelle . Apparently he wanted to go to Canada; in return for giving three years work as a prison guard, he was promised free passage and a salary of 70 livres for each year. The ship had to be repaired several times before they started the voyage, and finally docked at Quebec on August 20th. In later years, Gregoire acquired land; the census of 1667 said he had 8 arpents of cleared land.
There is much more on the life of this man, the book reports on his children, death, and descendants. (either named Gregoire or Deblois) in some length.
I don’t know how much you want of this. I also don’t know if you can still order the series for yourself, but I could copy the pages of this book which deal with our man and send those to you. Let me know and I’ll be happy to do it.
Give my best wishes to your wife and be assured that we Democrats are supporting her most enthusiastically.
Yvonne Saddler
# posted by Ray and Tina Gregoire @ 12:07 AM 
