I was told that Marie Zénaí¯de Zite Patenaude had four older siblings, the eldest of whom was named Marie Fébronie Patenaude. Fébronie’s birth and baptismal record was recorded as number B.37 in the 1863 folios from St. Valentin.
The Birth and Baptismal Record of Marie Fébronie Patenaude – 1863
SOURCE: Ancestry.com. Québec Vital Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 [database on-line]. Original data: Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Québec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin. Birth and Baptismal Record of Marie Febronie Patenaude, St. Valentin, Lower Canada, 1863. Front of Folio 204, B.37.
Click on the link for a PDF copy of the Birth and Baptismal Record of Marie Fébronie Patenaude – 1863. Translated from the French, the record states:
B.37 [baptism #37]
Marie Fébronie
PatenaudeOn the twenty-seventh day of March, one thousand eight hundred sixty-three, by us, the undersigned priest, Marie Fébronie was baptized, born this day of the legitimate marriage of Charles Patenaude, laborer, and Osithe Gamache, of this parish. The Godfather was Franí§ois Patenaude, and the Godmother was Marguerite Bluteau, who declared they, as well as the father, did not know how to sign.
[signed] GT Lesage, Priest
Since Marie Fébronie Patenaude’s birth and baptismal record was recorded in St. Valentin, the online Drouin collection on Ancestry.com includes two copies of the record – a civil copy and a church copy. The civil copy is found as image 11 of 62, record B.37 on the front of folio 11 for the year 1863 in St. Valentin. The church copy is found as image 45 of 62, record B.37 on the front of folio 204 for the year 1863 in St. Valentin. Note that both the civil copy and the church copy are available under the same link for St. Valentin – 1863 on Ancestry.com. Both copies have the same record number (B.37), although the folio numbers for the two records are different.
Frequently, one of the most difficult parts of these records to decipher is the name of the priest, who signed his name as he normally would, sometimes in an almost unreadable script. The signature on this record is far from the worst I’ve seen, but I still had a hard time with it. I found the surname Lesage on the French-Canadian surnames list on the website of the American-French Genealogical Society.
