Over the last two years, the Internet has allowed several of us who had previously been working independently on the genealogy of Jean Baril, (c.1646-49), to become aware of each other's work and to share our findings.
While this group includes career people like Therese Rocheleau-Baril who has devoted over 40 years to full time research, and trained palaeographers and notaries like Julien MacKay in Montreal and Alain Moreau in La Rochelle who have launched a comprehensive program to computerise the entire documentary history of New France, the fact remains that the bulk of the "Baril" work is being done by the "rest of us" obsessive genealogical hobbyists who simply love this stuff and continually crave one more piece of reliable data.
The purpose of this text is to suggest that we are much closer to pulling the whole thing together than was the case two years ago and it may be time to combine our individual lines of research into the big picture. For several years I have felt somewhat envious of families like the "Vigneaults", for example, who plan a mass gathering of the clans every five years and who had over 4,000 people at the last gathering in 1995.
While many people travel to such meetings for the sheer social joy of the occasion and to see relatives they've missed since childhood, just as many arrive for the first time hoping they can find out who they are and where their roots begin.
I suspect the "Barils" have not been ready for such demands until now, but the time may be coming when we will be able to put it all together. If the sheer volume of material Therese has collected by way of land purchase contracts, inventories of belongings prior to marriage contracts, wills and testaments etc. was ever combined with Ron's immense gedcom file on all the branches of the family tree, we would probably have the makings of a reliable skeleton onto which the rest of us could graft our little local contributions.
Given a concerted effort to find the hundreds of closet family historians who have been jotting down notes for years without knowing what to do with them, we could likely flesh out, fill in and bullet proof the overall "Baril" tree within the next five years or so.
Suzanne Baril has offered to manage a central location to store the material if that would be helpful, and perhaps even to develop a customised database that could concatenate all our data without duplicating entries.
I would certainly be happy to act as a go-between from French to English and back since I know most of the little "Baril" towns pretty well, both here and in France. There is also another "cousin" who is a translator at the House of Commons in Ottawa who is keen to help write it all up in both languages when we're ready.
Sometime in 1992, I tried to chunk the remaining gaps in the overall "Baril" tree into geographic areas that seemed to share the same branches of the family. As I mentioned in an e-mail message to some of you, they broke down into:
I have tried my best in each area, (except the States), but always with that frustrating feeling of assembling several huge chunks of a jigsaw puzzle, but remaining unable to find the intermediate links to tie them all together.
Now suddenly, as our Baril "virtual community" emerges on the Internet, it's beginning to look as if:
Picture all those materials coming together and you will at least discover a base to work from.
What remains is to develop a strategy for drawing out all those tiny private pockets of genealogical enthusiasm buried in individual families. I may have subconsciously anticipated a moment like this was at hand in 1994 when I printed out the entire Minitel catalogue of phone numbers and addresses for all the Barils alive in France and did the same with the CD-ROM phone listings for North America. Also, the Departement d'Onomastique in the National Archives in Paris helped assemble a list of Baril place names in France and to trace modern day locations for communities that have disappeared since 1665.
Another ever-urgent task is to record the memories of people like 92 year old Alcyde Fleury, official historian of Arthabaska who still walks to Mass every single morning and who tramped through the reeds with me to locate the remnants of Antoine and Eustache's saw mill; or 91 year old Antoinette Paradis-Baril whose husband Albert and his father, also Albert, both served as Mayor of Warwick; or 92 year old Mme Eglantine Baril of Saumur in France who treated me to so much of the history of her husband Robert Baril's family in Correze.
While I've spent as much time as possible recording these extraordinary elders, how many others are disappearing each year because we can't bring ourselves to knock on their door?
Finally, we need to engage in a healthy debate about how much we can reasonably accomplish and in what time frame. Do we persist in trying to maintain a "complete descendancy" listing as most of us have been doing until now, or do we start concentrating only on the "Barils" per se, meaning only the offspring of male branches.
These are some of the questions I can't or won't answer alone. Time is precious, of course, but we're also closer to being able to answer them than we've ever been before.
I look forward to your comments, your criticisms and, most of all, your suggestions on where to go from here.
Regards,
Peter Baril
On July 6th, 1996 an event took place that will forever change how the Baril family is seen on planet earth. We have begun the process of piecing together groups of information about the lineage of the family that was until today scattered from Lansing, Michigan, USA to Baffin Island near Greenland, to Victoria, BC, Canada
It all started with the following e-mail letter received by Suzanne Baril of Victoria BC on Friday the 5th of July 1996 at 22:46:03:
Let me first of all introduce myself. I am a descendent of Jean Baril & Marie Guillet who were wed in the 1600s in the Province of Quebec. I have traced over 2500+ descendants of this couple (he was actually married 3 times) and I'm wondering if you could assist me in telling me what you may know on your Father's side. I don't know how far back you can go as far as Grand Father, Great Grand Father, etc., but if you could send me what you know, it's very possible that I could link your data up with what I already have on the computer. Suzanne, I do not charge for my work as I've yet to receive my first penny for my work and I've accumulate over 38,500 names on over 142 surnames. I share my data with cousins all over the world.
I hope to hear from you on this subject and I promise that you'll hear from me with any request you may have.
Thanks,
Ronald Joseph Baril, Sr.
Suzanne,
A number of subsequent e-mail messages back and forth resulted in Suzanne receiving the following letter the next day:
Hope you don't feel pestered. I'm the scamp that spotted your id registered with NIC, (I'm founder and resident tech support for our local ISP, nunanet.com), and passed it along to Ron Baril. He had contacted me a week or so earlier asking for leads on our family history.
I understand your Dad has done some work on the subject. Would he mind your giving me his e-mail address so that I may contact him directly? I spend a fair amount of time in the traditional Baril parishes of Quebec each year and would be happy to follow up on leads for him. Having lived near Victoria many years ago, I would imagine it feels rather far from the original source materials.
Please understand, this 'solicitation' is definitely NOT part of any commercial project. It's an entirely personal labour of love.
Regards,
Pierre (Peter) Baril
Suzanne enthusiastically responded to both letters with attached copies of her current gedcon file:
I do not feel pestered at all. I had a feeling that having my name at internic would be noticed by other Barils. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many when I did a search for "baril" myself.
My husband and I (& 2 other people) own and run OctoNet, an ISP in Victoria. I'm webmaster and part-time tech support. It's lots of fun when I have time to play. I have been thinking about a couple personal projects, one being a family tree. My dad would be thrilled.
His name is Jacques J. Baril and his email is xxxxxxxxxx.
Dad did a lot of research in Quebec a few years back when he was on holidays. He has put together a very comprehensive family tree. One of my sisters did some research for him in France many years ago, but I don't know what came of that.
I have attached a gencon file. Dad told me that there were some errors in it. He has the file on paper and has marked up all the errors. He has not sent that back to me yet.
If I can get a data file from you that is more accurate than mine, I'd love to host the site for the family tree. Heck we could even register the Domain "BARIL.CA". Am I getting carried away? Since this would be a "labor of love" for me as it is for you, it would take a bit of time to get to it because I'm quite busy these days. But then again, fun stuff can always take precedence over work. It would be a great gift to our families. We could encourage personal pages and have links to them. This could turn out to be a huge project since Ron says he has over 2500 names and that probably doesn't include my 11 siblings and roughly 40 nieces and nephews.
Enough for now. Am I pestering you yet?
Cheers
Suzanne
Pierre,
The following is the reaction received by Ron and Pierre:
Gads, this has got me so excited after all these years pounding away alone on this stuff!
Good lord! Sounds like we've stumbled on each other at a propitious time then, 'cause I went to La Rochelle myself in Sept-Oct of 1994 and have retraced the Baril migration from Batiscan to the Bois-Francs region over a
dozen times. I keep knocking on the doors of every 90 year old Baril I can find and offering to make tea or coffee in return for some anecdotal material to flesh out the sometimes stark minutiae of the charts.
I'm just about to tear into it as soon as this reply is done. I'm just this weekend beginning to enter my several years worth of notes into a software package called Arbre Genealogique. Will keep you posted and share
everything of course.
>I'd love to host the site for the family tree......
GIRL!!! you sure know how to make an old man's heart sing; after years of protesting that places like Batiscan, Gentilly, St.-Pierre-les-Becquets, Arthabaska and Edmonton for that matter, have done so little to commemorate Baril history with place names and road signs etc., it tickles me no end to think we could do it on the Net!
>Heck we could even register the Domain "BARIL.CA". Am I getting carried away?.....
I got lazy here and let the Territorial registrar do the app for nunanet.com's C-Class for me, so I've not actually done one myself. If you have, go for it! Keep a block of 10 or so IP's for me and I'll set up a mirror site etc... How about doing through internic though and calling it '@baril.net'? Not only does it fit the purpose, but I can guarantee that we will quickly have a slew of folks from the US and France involved.
12 kids?! Boy, you ARE in the family tradition! 8^)
>Enough for now. Am I pestering you yet?
Never! BTW, where did you and your Dad actually grow up? Do either of you
still speak French?
Great to meet you. take care.
Pierre
Suzanne!
I had expected to let Ron carry the ball on this one, but I'm coming unglued here!
After all these years of gently 'resenting' the mountains of work that had already been done on the other branches of the family, (the original Jean's 2nd and 3rd wife and the other kids from his first), I had nearly despaired of finding anyone to share the work with me on his first son Louis.
Then Ron, (Dad, this is another Baril aficionado living in Lansing, Michigan), happened along a week or so ago and thrilled me with the work he'd done, discovering that not only was he out of Jean's son Louis I, but also
out of the next generation's Louis II. However, Ron's tree then splits from ours at that point and goes on its separate way.
B U T !
Are you sitting down?
This almost warrants calling your Dad tonight and telling him to do a wee jig in his living room.
Not only are we out of the second Louis, but then out of Francois, and then out of Antoine I, AND then out of the twins!!! You come out of Eustache and we come out of Antoine II.
Your Eustache trekked from St.-Pierre-les-Becquets to Pointes Bulstrodes where he bought Valere Lavigne's flour mill in 1839 and built a saw mill in 1843. Our Antoine II simultaneously trekked from St. Pierre-les-Becquets to only a few miles away (present day Arthabaska) where he also started a lumber mill. By 1848, the twins were so lonesome for each other's company, your Eustache sold his saw mill and moved the flour mill to Arthabaska right next to Antoine. They are BOTH buried in the graveyard in Arthabaska. The foundations of the mill are still there! I'm looking at a small piece of its stonework right now on my desk. I've bawled my eyes out at both their graves. I've reverently caressed and smelled the pages of original entries for their marriages and burial in the St. Christophe parish registers and I've located the house that Antoine built around 1842. It was only moved to a new site a few years ago when the government decided they needed to broaden the approaches to the Pont Baril (Baril Bridge).
Yet through all these years, I had never been able to properly piece together your Eustache's offspring! I kept running into all these damn Clovises, and Ovides, and Felixes, and Cinas all over the neighboring towns, especially places like Warwick, and it drove me nuts because all my gang (from Antoine) were Thomases, and Mathurin's and Wilfrids and still more Antoines. I just couldn't put it all together.
Now, your Dad's '.ged' file lands on my hard drive and exactly 93 seconds later I'm howling at the top of my lungs and scaring hell out of my whole family! I so badly want to call Dad, but he's probably at the lake for the
weekend and has no phone.
... Whew !
I'm suddenly utterly drained from the adrenaline rush. What a feeling.
Please, give my love and regards to your father and tell him not to worry about the inaccuracies. Once combined, our collective effort is going to plug a HUGE hole the Baril clan history! It will now be effortless to get all the names spelled correctly, to clear up the dates and, most of all, to correct one very common error among amateurs like us: he's tagged all the Baril wives with their husband's surname instead of retaining their maiden names. But not to worry. Now that I know it's Eustache, tell your dad I can take him right into the Arthabaska rectory, we can sit down at that huge dining room table, I know exactly which volumes of the registries to pull out of Father Couture's creaky old wall safe, and we can then both pretend we didn't really have to divert our eyes so's not to smudge the ink with our tears.
Lordy... what a day.
I can't thank you enough.
8^)
Pierre
Dear cousin Suzanne,
Yes we are 6th cousins by way of Louis Baril II. I just downloaded your gedcom file a few minutes ago and I did a direct descent from Jean Baril & Marie Guillet to you to find that out. Now I can get back and copy the rest. Must say that you through me with the listing of Baril sibling women with their married names. Figured that out rather quickly. Give me a half a day and I'll have most of your data entered into my already 38,600 name database. By the way, I already found some mistakes, but I think you warned me about that. I'll get back with you soon and by the way, I accessed your Father's webpage to find his photo.
Is he building that page as we write? Let you go for now, we just got back from a baseball game and it's kind of late for this ol man.
Ron
>Peter
Suzanne,
I am absolutely numb.
Your Dad's right, of course, much of the narrative in Paul's earlier 'Baril' chapters is fantasy, but... he also provides a couple of pieces of info I've been aching for, for years. It also hits directly on the solid
idea that the best way to get people interested in World history is to weave their personal roots all through it! Paul's certainly on the right track in that regard.
But you can't imagine the other synapses going off in my head. The significance of this day is HUGE. In the space of six short hours, we may have closed the gap on the whole dang thing!
In 1992, I chuncked the whole project into only a few clusters:
I have laboured a bit in each sector, (except the States), and always with that frustrating result of assembling several huge chuncks of a jigsaw puzzle, only to be stumped by a few missing links to tie them all together.
Now, in one afternoon:
For 20 years, people traveling from Yellowknife to Iqaluit have been asking me if I was related to the Edmonton Baril's. I came up here as the Area Manager for CBC and people always used to ask me about an Armand Baril at CBC in Edmonton, if he was a relative.
I gave the usual reply, "oh almost certainly; somehow, but I don't know him."
And it was all so close!
You know, I had begun to think that a monster gathering of the massed Baril clans wouldn't be worth doing in my lifetime because we wouldn't have enough homework done to be able to satisfy people's hunger for connections. But, boy-oh-boy, today's events might suggest otherwise. At this rate, maybe we should be thinking of such an event by 2005 or 2010.
Peter.
Suzanne,
One last note before I crawl in for the night... it's about 1:15 AM
I'm sitting here with my cup of reading the entry in the Arthabaska parish registry for the interment of your Clovis Baril... I made a copy of it a few years ago during one of my stretches of practically living in Father
Couture's dining room and I just stumbled on it again.
"Le treize Septembre, mil neuf cent ??? (six?), nous prêtre sousigné, avons inhumé dans le cimetiêre de cette paroisse, le corp de Clovis Baril, geôlier de la prison du district d'Arthabaska, époux de (blank space), de cette paroisse; décédé le onze de ce mois, à l'âge de soixante et deux ans. Furent présent à l'inhumation Adélard et Jean-Baptiste Baril, fils du défunt, Felix Baril, son frêre, Albert Beauchesne, Albert Houle, des gendres lesquels ont signé avec nous. Lecture porté."
... the signatures are all there.
Looks like the priest was S.A. Coté
Pierre
Suzanne
>
>I will attach an few
>chapters from a book that my father-in-law, Paul Reimer self-published about
>the Reimer-Raine-Baril-Bourbeau lineage. It is copyright so if you want to
>use parts of it his e-mail address is paulr@octonet.com. Although my father
>objects to some of Paul's interpretation of the Baril story, it is quite
>interesting and I'm sure quite incorrect in some places. We call it "editorial
>freedom".
>
>Suzanne
-----
On Sunday July 7th, 1996, Pierre, Ron and Suzanne are at work updating their files, creating web pages, cross referencing data and all in all having fun. The following pages will include the compilation of all that data. It will be updated as new information becomes available.
If you have any information about the Baril family that you wish to share, please forward it to
Ronald J. Baril Sr. - rbarilsr@msn.com or
Pierre Baril - pbaril@baril.org or
Suzanne Baril - sbaril@baril.org