Evelina Courtemanche

Name of Evalina appears as "Emelie Bâedard" in Dessy site on MyHeritage.com

US Censuses record her up until 1930 (with various spellings of her first name), so she died after that.

Wedding of Louis Bédard & Evelina Courtemanche on the april 18 1887 in St Edwidge de Clifton

Louis son of Amable Bédard & Scholastique Bazinet and Evelina Courtemanche minor daughter of Octave Courtemanche & Aurélie Jetté. (Minor was anyone under 21 years old at this period.) They both signed the marriage certificate, and the witnesses too. The witnesses were Marie, the sister of Eveline, and Oliver, brother of Louis.

(Wedding information found by Robert Blais, Blais-120 in the Drouin Collection.)

She had seven other children besides Evelyn (Bedard) Scrivens, including Delia and Marcy.

US Census information on the Bedard family

The first mention of Louis and Evalina Bedard in the US Census is in 1900, where, at age 32, he lives on a farm and rents a house in Pownal, Vt. with his wife, Evalina, and six children. He immigrated from Canada, where he and his wife were born in 1872, and were married around 1887. The children listed were Marcy L Bedard (Jan, 1889), Evaline Bedard (May, 1890--my grandmother), Louis Bedard, Jr (Sept 1891), Emma Bedard (Oct 1893), John Bedard (Aug 1896), Delia Bedard (Dec. 1899--5 mo. old). Only Marcy was born in Canada. He and his wife and children could read, write, and speak English. Their neighbors were the Fowlers and Thompsons, also farmers.

By the 1910 US Census, Louis, Evalina, and the family were living in North Adams, MA on 32 Miner St. Evalina was 44 at the time, and had three more children in the preceding decade: Louisa (b. 1892 in VT.), Grace (b. 1894 in North Adams), and Arthur (b. 1896 also in N. Adams). Her husband Louis worked as a weaver in a woolen mill and his oldest three children, now 20, 19, and 16, worked there, too.

For the 1920 US Census, the most significant change is the children still at home, which was now at 50 Cliff St. in North Adams, MA: Delia Bedard, Louise Bedard, Grace Bedard, Arthur Bedard, Louis Bedard, Jr. My grandmother Eveline had been married to her husband, Clarence Scrivens by that time. Marcy, Emma, and John are also gone. There were also two grandchildren living there, Pauline (7) and Louis (almost 3). Louis worked at the Corderoy Mill, and Louise at a shoe shop as a packer, Grace at a cotton mill, and Louis, Jr. as a baker. Their neighbors were the Peltiers and Desnoyers.

By the 1930 US Census, Louis and Evalina owned their own home at 50 Gallup St. (a street on which I lived briefly as a child). Louis was now 67 and Evalina 63. He still worked at the Woolen Mill. His daughter Grace also lived there with her husband Eli Denno (41 and 15 years older than Grace), and their children, Jeannette (4) an John (2). Their son John, now 34, lived next door at 48 Gallup St. with his wife, Alice (34), and three children: Valmore (5), Eleonora (2), and Jeanne (1/2). Grace worked as a silk winder at the cotton mill and her husband worked at Arnold Print Works as a back-tender (or lender?). Louis' neighbors were the Reads down the street and Sanders up the street.

Finally, for the 1940 US Census, Louis, now 77, and his wife, 73, live by themselves at 111 Gallup Street, North Adams, as renters, where it is noted they also lived in 1935. At the same address was the Lesage family, Charles and Mary, their 8 year old son, Paul, and four year old Marie Scrivens, who is classified as a boarder. (What that means for a child that age, I have no idea. The Lesages were in their 50's, so maybe Marie is a foster child they took in and raised with public support. Since both Lesage and Louis Bedard are listed as heads of household, this was probably a duplex house of some kind that had been subdivided but not given separate addresses yet. Evalina would die four years later, in 1944, and Louis himself would pass away in December of 1953.

Sources

FamilySearch.org

Dessy website on MyHeritage.com

Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967

MyHeritage.com (1900, 1910, and 1920 US Censuses)

1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 US Censuses.

Sources

FamilySearch.org
Dessy website on MyHeritage.com Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967