Dave & Pam's USA Treks: Day 87 - USA Tour

Overnight: Cut Bank, MT
Ancestor Research Day

Last night, both of us had great WiFi. However, this morning Dave cannot access the Internet. His old laptop (mine, now) works fine. The guy at the office said that they do have problems with Vista accessing, while XP seems to work more often than not. So, there ya go. I’m on. He’s not.

We had breakfast burritos this morning, direct from freezer to microwave. Then, we were off to the visitor's center in Shelby. Before we left the RV park, we spotted this marmot. So, of course, we have to share it with you.

The staff at the visitor's center was helpful in giving us a phone book with names of Migneault residents, helping us find the courthouse, and the cemetery location. I found a "fly trap" of brochures and busied myself loading up on reading materials for future adventures.

We drove to the courthouse first and found the death certificates for Dave's great-grandmother. The surprise was that her name appears as Mary D. Migneault. This is the first time we have heard of her being called Mary. We also obtained all death certificates for any Migneaults in Shelby that are related. We found a death certificate for an Albert Holmes, to whom Marie Migneault was married. We weren't sure if Dave's great-grandmother had married Albert, of if her daughter was going by the name of Marie and she married Albert. Even though his great-grandmother's name was Mary on the certificate, we knew it was the right person because the death certificate showed she was born in St. Basil, New Brunswick. The daughter was born here in the United States. Also, the certificate gave her parents' names as Arthur Gagnon and Zoe Coltier (Gagnon). This is the first time we have seen the name of her mother. With this information, Dave is now able to trace his ancestors back to 1777!

After that event, we called Helen Migneault, who lives in Shelby. Mabel Migneault in Missoula told us that Helen knew more about the family than she did. However, Helen didn't provide much new information. She is residing in a nursing home in Shelby. But, she did give us the name of her daughter that lives in Augusta, MT. She seems to have the pictures and knows more about the family.

We were told to call the funeral home in the area to get the location of her grave. When I did, the curator told me that we needed to go to the cemetery on the hill to find the caretaker as he had the records of the graves in both cemeteries. We drove to the hill, but only found a Rolodex of the graves at that particular cemetery. No caretaker. We wrote the information down and decided the caretaker was probably at lunch. So, we decided to do the same, and come back after eating.

Sure 'nough when we returned, he was there. He was in his truck and heading out of the cemetery when we stopped him. He was on his way to a town south of Shelby, but said he would take us to her grave site. He knew exactly where she was buried. It is a cemetery that is at the end of town and not the one on the hill above the town.

He took us directly to her grave. Dave was beside himself with emotions as this has been a long, hard search. He carefully groomed her marker and we were able to take pictures. The sad thing is that she did not die until 1960, and he never knew she even existed. We are not sure why his father had not kept in contact with his own grandmother. It's one of those questions for which we will never get an answer, I'm sure.

Mary was buried in the Holmes family plot along side Albert Holmes. This added another bit of mystery to unravel. I was still pretty sure that it was the daughter that had married Albert, and not Dave's great-grandmother. But, we had not evidence either way, at this point.

We drove back to Shelby and decided to stop at the Catholic Church to see if they had any records. The priest led us across the street to the Catholic school where he dug up some records. He was a bit hesitant to give us information, but nevertheless, he did. We obtained a certified copy of the marriage between Marie and Albert. The Marie that married Albert listed her parents as Joseph Migneault and Mary Gagnon (Migneault); therefore, we know it was the daughter.

We had heard that after Mary died, Marie moved to California to live with her daughter. Also, we found out that it was Marie (daughter) that ran the hotel in Shelby and not Dave's great-grandmother.

We decided to go back to the courthouse to see if we could find the location of the hotel. The hotel and family home had burned down. However, a long-time resident said she knew the location of the hotel and she shared that with us. Then she stated that she went to school with a Michele Migneault who was now Michele Miller and was a city councilwoman. So, she gave us Michele's phone number. She thought that she was one of Helen's daughters. We found records of land purchases by several of the Migneault family members, and obtained copies of the records. Now we were off to find the general location of the hotel property.

But first, I called Michele Miller's home and had to leave a message. Shortly thereafter, her husband returned my call and said that Michele was visiting her mother, Helen, and gave me Helen's number. When I called, I couldn't get Helen to let me talk with Michele. She's kind of a feisty lady. So, I had to accept a dead-end call.

We drove to the location of the hotel, and as we were driving, I received a call back from Michele. It seems that because Helen would not give her the phone, she wasn't sure if we wanted to speak with her or not. We assured her that we did. We must have talked with her for over an hour. She gave Dave a few family stories. She had been told by Ray that he was in prison for burglary. She told us that Ray and Roy Migneault kind of had the Robin Hood mentality. If you had too much, you should share with others regardless of how you were parted with your goods. But, I guess Ray was a really nice guy to everyone, and yes, he was a barber in town. She confirmed that her sister, Lorraine, in Augusta was the one with the pictures. However, Lorraine is in Alaska this week. So, we'll have to contact her at a later time.

Two of the original cabins have been connected to create a new home. The building on the left side of the picture is two original cabins connected with another portion of house. The buildings have a blue roof.

After finding the location of the hotel, which also included a few camping cabins, we decided to return to the cemetery on the hill and take pictures of the headstones of family members.

It was a long day; but, needless to say, Dave’s on cloud 9 with all the information we obtained. We decided we had gathered all we needed from Shelby. We kind of laughed because it used to take us 4 days to find this kind of information. We now can do it in one day!

On the way home, we found a great resolution for our future living quarters dilemma. We found this great home design with very low utilities for heating and cooling, and it has essentially no building costs. And, catch that beautiful rock front. We are really jazzed and hope we can glean ideas from this great model! LOL

We stopped at a Western store in Cut Bank. While I was waiting in the car for Dave to emerge from his spending spree, I saw this interesting group of ladies. They all spoke Norwegian (at least I thought it was something like that or French). On the way back to the RV park, we passed a Sons of Norway building, so guess that answered what language they were speaking. Their attire was quite unusual, so I just had to take a picture.