Dear Cousin Jenn

My heartiest congratulations on your recent graduation. I must say, that mortarboard looks especially fetching with that russet hair of yours peeking out from under it. I think that weird guy who interviewed you for the paper might have a few words to say about that. He might also notice that the gown hides your slender waist. But I won't go there.

Have you noticed that a lot of people seem to be confused about us going around calling each other "cousin" all the time? Maybe we should explain to them how it all came about.

I am flattering myself a bit to call myself your cousin. More appropriately would maybe be "aunt," since I'm old enough to be your...well, aunt. But of course, the age difference would not preclude us from being cousins. We could even be second cousins twice removed and still be cousins. Right? Hey, you're the one with the recently acquired degree. You tell me. And besides, I've already got a fictitious aunt/niece relationship with Lauren. I have given her aunterly advice once or twice, and she's gone ahead and started calling me Auntie Norma.

But about you and me, Cousin: I was thinking that we should tell them about the time when I read your blog entry about the newspaper article, and I hardly read the article, because I couldn't get past the fact that you have the same last name as I. Well, it's my middle name now, because I put it there when I got married. (and all the time, people insist on thinking my middle name is Jean, for the old Norma Jean thing. I get a big kick out that. I do wish I looked like the Norma Jean, but who wants all the troubles that come with such great beauty?)  *sigh*

Anyway, it's not all that common a last name, especially beyond my immediate geographic area here, near the border of Quebec. When I mentioned it to you, you said, in fact, that you didn't know anyone else with that last name and you didn't know much about that side of your family, either.

But you really do physically look as if you could be a member of my family, so I adopted you as my Cuz.

There isn't a whole lot known about our genealogy. I'm quite positive that my ancestors were poor and largely illiterate, or at the very least English-illiterate. Segments of the family splintered off and went away, never to be heard from again - most likely to try to make a living somewhere to feed their families. I ran into a man I sometimes now work with in Burlington. I mentioned to him that his name is my maiden name, and the next thing I know, we realize that indeed we ARE cousins. His grandfather (who we think was maybe my grandfather's brother) left the island to move to the Burlington area probably in the 1940s, and those parts of the family hardly even know each other anymore, although on more than one occasion, "Cousin" and I have seen each other at funerals. To this cousin, it was only a vaguely-told story about a connection with "the island."  But we definitely could come up with names of people we knew of in common and put the pieces of the puzzle together. (And now we flit by each other in the Fed. Bildng when I'm there, shouting out, "Hi, Cousin!" all the time.)

We don't know if it was a family rift or just hunger that split them up. Could be a combination of both. The ones who went closer to civilization apparently did okay, but never looked back and never talked much about the ones left back on the island. I am sure that back in the day, the thought of going back, except perhaps in the summer, was completely abhorent to those who left in complete and utter frustration in order to find civilization and a way to make a living. The string of islands are now connected by bridges, but in those days it was driving cars or teams of horses over the ice in the winter when it was frozen enough, or taking ramshackle ferries across. 

But backwards from there, very little is known. I sometimes wonder what it was that my ancestors were running from in order to bring them to this place. Beautiful, yes, in the summer. Isolated and desolate in the winter. The historians and archeologists believe that this island was the place the Native American tribes converged for "summer camp" or "summer pow-wow," and it would be a lovely, lovely place for that, indeed, but even they didn't stick around for the winter. It is also the home of a now-defunct quarry from which a very specific, unique, and desirable black marble was extracted and sent all over the world. And it's the home of the world's oldest reef, supposedly (I've never quite understood that claim, but I have to take the word of the Preservation Trust), AND the place where Samuel de Champlain landed in 1609 (and we all know what happened after THAT). The island has another claim to fame:  Teddy Roosevelt, the great environmentalist president, was vacationing here when he learned that he had just become President of the U.S. upon the assassination of William McKinley. You can take a little virtual tour of the area here.

There were no family writings left, as far as I am aware. My father died when I was only five. I had three younger siblings and a mother who had all she could do to keep us fed and clothed. That complicates things even further in terms of being able to find papers and such. Our family owned a bit of farmland and were doing all right as farmers until the demise of family farms in Vermont in the last couple of decades. The farm has been sold off and many people have moved away or died. I have a few aunts, uncles and cousins left on the island, no longer farming.

The town history was written, and even though there are really only probably a half dozen surnames on that island (please note the 2000 census shows a whopping population of 488), there is extremely little recorded about our family. It could be that my ancestors were just plain too ornery to answer questions to some nosy fly-by-night who came along asking questions to write in a book about the town history. Or it could be that they were just too busy in the fields and the barn. Who knows. A town historian wrote that he could only find one mention of someone, in I think the 1910s or 20s, referred to by the note-taker at a town meeting by the name of "Jarvy," saying something at the meeting. It went something like this, "Jarvy stood up and said..." and that was it. We can only assume, as did the town historian, that that was some ancestor of the Jarvises.

The town historian could not figure out when the "Jarvy's" first appeared on the island. It appears that they were French - the name is very French-sounding, and I think the present name that begins with J is an Anglicization of a French name that begins with G. There are some folks with that name that begins with G who live not too far from here, in a different part of northern Vermont, but we've never acknowledged that we know of each other's existence, as far as I know. <grin>

So, Little Nipper, do you think that if we tell all this to our readers, that will clear things up or make things more cloudy? I look forward to hearing what you know about your branch of the family tree, and I look forward to seeing you at Rhinebeck.

Best regards,

Cousin Norma

Comments

[cari]

Well, that clears everything up.

Norma, now that Jenn is moving back home, I think you need to make another trip to our fair city.

[claudia]

One of my favorite pictures that I ever took was of Lake Champlain from N. Hero Island. No kidding that summer (and fall) are lovely there.

[Lauren]

Hm, I wonder if Jenn's on the side with me or the other side. People do still think you're my aunt.

[Bonnita]

Aunterly? What the fuck? A Normaism I guess.

[sandy]

Please, just don't turn into kissing cousins.

[Judy]

This is very interesting and I'll have to ask my husband about his childhood on the islands and I think it was on Isle La Motte.
They had quite a few friends and I'm sure some of them were named Jarvis. It's a small world.

[Em]

You know, for some reason Jarvis doesn't strike me as an unusual last name, but I'm damned if I know why. Possibly because I've seen it in print now more than I have my own.

Genealogy rocks. We discovered a whole branch of my grandmother's family when one of them came into the library where my mom worked and she recognized the last name.

[JoVE]

It could well be hunger that separated families. My knowledge of French Canadian history is not extensive but there was a lot of migration from Quebec and the Maritimes to the US to find work. In fact, one of the things that a former premier of New Brunswick (Robichaud) is known for is improving the economic situation for francophones in the province so they didn't have to leave.

Names also often get changed in both spelling and pronunciation. I once met a woman who had married an american named Gonyea -- his family history was French Canadian but Gagnè had been changed to reflect it's spelling.

So, Norma, do you pronounce your maiden name like the famous Norma Jean or like the newly appointed governer general of Canada?

[sara]

great story. And the "jarvy" is an easy tranliteration of how "Jarvis" would be said in French ;) So you have a choice about how to say your middle name - imagine! Sara