An Invitation to Read, Question and Remember

 An Invitation to Read, Question and Remember

A September Family History Series

Throughout September, approximately every two days, I will be publishing another post about my ancestry and the historical research I have been doing.

This is partly a family story.

But it is also a proposal to educators, historians, professors, students, writers, researchers and anyone interested in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

I am asking you to read these stories.

Not necessarily to agree with every conclusion.

Read them. Think about them. Question them. Check the sources.

And perhaps look at the place where you live a little differently afterward.

If you live in Vancouver, Nanaimo, Victoria or somewhere else in British Columbia, what do you know about the people who were here before the borders and political systems we recognize today?

If you are a newcomer who moved here from Ontario, Alberta, another province, another country—or arrived only recently—what history did you learn about this place before you came?

If your family has been here for three generations, what stories were passed down?

And if your ancestors have been here since time immemorial, what stories are already known within your family and community that never made it into the history books?

My own family story crosses borders

As I have worked through my genealogy, I have found ancestors and relatives connected to Iroquois, Kalapuya and T’Sou-ke/Sooke communities, as well as French-Canadian fur-trade families and the Catholic missions of the Oregon Country.

My family story crosses what we now call Canada and the United States.

It includes the Willamette Valley, French Prairie, Fort Vancouver, Cowlitz and Vancouver Island.

It includes people who lived before the international boundary at the 49th parallel divided the region into the political geography we know today.

And it includes families whose identities don't fit neatly into the categories we often use today.

That is precisely why I am writing about it.

I am not a professional historian

I am an artist and a descendant trying to understand my own family.

I have found historical records, baptismal registers, marriage records, testimony and published historical research.

I have spent enormous amounts of time trying to match names, dates, places and relationships.

And honestly?

It has been frustrating and overwhelming.

Old records use different spellings.

People appear under different names.

French and English names change.

Surnames change through marriage, adoption and family circumstances.

The same person can appear differently in different records.

And sometimes the information that finally makes sense of one branch of the family is buried hundreds of pages away in a historical book.

So I have used AI to help me organize, compare and untangle the information.

I want to be completely transparent about that.

AI has helped me read through complicated material, identify relationships, organize timelines and turn my notes into something understandable.

But AI is not my source.

The historical records and published research are the sources.

Where possible, I will identify them.

And where something remains uncertain, I will say so.

A note about evidence

Throughout this series I will try to distinguish between:

Primary historical records
such as baptism and marriage registers created at the time;

First-person testimony
such as later testimony given by my ancestor Mary Ann;

Published historical research
written by historians who have studied these communities and records;

and my own genealogical interpretation
as I try to connect those pieces to my family tree.

I will not pretend that every question has been answered.

Some things are documented.

Some are strongly supported by multiple records.

Some are historical interpretations.

And some things I simply don't know yet.

I would rather say “I don't know” than invent an answer.

Why am I doing this?

There is a personal reason.

I have shared some of this research with my family, and honestly, it saddens me that there doesn't seem to be much interest.

But I can't shake the feeling that these people are asking me to remember them.

Not literally, of course.

But when I find the name of an ancestor written in a document from 1839, or read the words of a woman who lived through an entirely different world, something happens inside me.

I feel the weight of those lives.

I think about the mothers.

The fathers.

The children who died young.

The children who survived.

The people who travelled thousands of kilometres.

The women whose names sometimes disappeared from official records.

The Indigenous families who had to navigate colonial systems that increasingly tried to define who they were.

And I keep thinking:

Someone should remember them.

So I will.

This isn't just about me

That is why I am inviting teachers, professors, students, historians and writers to follow this series.

Perhaps something in these stories will raise a question.

Perhaps a record will lead to another record.

Perhaps someone will recognize a name.

Perhaps a student will discover a research project.

Perhaps a teacher will use one of these stories to ask students:

What did this place look like before the borders?

Who was already here?

How did people move through this region?

How did Indigenous communities interact with the fur-trade world?

What happened when governments began imposing new definitions of land, citizenship and identity?

And perhaps the most important question:

Whose stories made it into the history books—and whose didn't?

My September invitation

Every couple of days throughout September, another piece of this family story will appear.

I invite you to follow along.

Read critically.

Check the sources.

Tell me when I get something wrong.

Point me toward records I haven't found.

And most importantly—

think about the place where you live.

Whether you arrived yesterday, your grandparents arrived three generations ago, your family has lived here for centuries, or your ancestors have been connected to these lands since time immemorial—

you are living somewhere with a history.

The borders are relatively young.

The families are older.

And sometimes the stories we need most are the ones we have to work hardest to find.

Sources

The research presented in this series draws from historical records and published research, including:

• Catholic mission baptism and marriage registers from the Oregon Country, including records associated with Father F. N. Blanchet.
• The 1839 baptism register, including the entry recording Marie Anne as the daughter of Louis Iroquois dit le Frisé and Louise, identified as Kalapoya/Kalapouya.
• The 1848 St. Paul marriage record of Joseph Brulé and Marie Ann Maranda dit la Frise, identifying Joseph as the son of Jacques Iroquois and Marguerite Brulé and Jean Baptiste Brulé as his foster- and step-father.
• Mary Ann Brulé Voutrin's later testimony, in which she described her father as Louis Marchelle, an Iroquois man known as Frizzee, and her mother as a Marysville Indian woman, and described her childhood, marriage and movements.
• M. Leona Nichols, The Mantle of Elias: The Story of Fathers Blanchet and Demers in Early Oregon, which preserves and discusses material from the early Catholic mission communities.
• Jean Barman, Iroquois in the West, for historical research concerning Iroquois people, fur-trade communities and Indigenous families in the Pacific Northwest.
• Additional genealogical and historical records that will be identified as they become relevant to individual posts.

A disclaimer

This is personal family-history research, not an academic history thesis.

I am not claiming that every interpretation I make is definitive.

Historical records can contain errors, inconsistent spellings, omissions and colonial terminology that does not reflect how people understood themselves.

Some of the material I am working with is transcribed through digital tools and may contain transcription errors. Where possible, I want to return to the original document or image.

I have also used AI to help me organize and interpret the large amount of material I have collected. AI-assisted writing or research organization should never be mistaken for independent historical evidence. The underlying records and published historical sources are what matter.

If you are a historian, genealogist, Indigenous scholar, educator or researcher and you see something that needs correction, clarification or stronger sourcing, I welcome that.

This series is not an attempt to rewrite history by myself.

It is an attempt to find my family's place within history—and preserve the stories of the people who came before me.

They lived.

They loved.

They lost people.

They travelled.

They adapted.

They survived.

And now, almost two hundred years later,

I am trying to remember their names.

#FamilyHistory #Genealogy #IndigenousHistory #PacificNorthwestHistory #IroquoisHistory #Kalapuya #TSouke #OregonCountry #FurTradeHistory #VancouverIslandHistory