This is NOT Louis Brouillard

Another image on ancestry.com purporting to be a Brouillard, this one supposedly of Louis Brouillard (b. c. 1644):

Its not.  Its actually Henry McKenzie, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn. The original hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

This is ALSO not Jean Baptiste Brouillard

Another image kicking around ancestry.com purporting to be Jean Baptiste Brouillard:

This one is also tiny on ancestry.com.  But its also an easier one to debunk.  Its not Jean Baptiste Brouillard, its David Lyon.  The full image is here:

taken from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza web site.

This is NOT Jean Baptiste Brouillard

What is it with the Brouillard's on ancestry.com.  I'm reviewing photo hints as my month of membership is coming up to expiring.  Here's one suggested for Jean Baptiste Brouillard (b. 1721 d. 1808):

This image is a tiny one, but the Google recognizes it and offers this larger version:

This appears on a web site called Wikipaintings and attributes it to an artist named Joshua Reynolds.  The date of the painting would fit Jean Baptiste Brouillard -- begun 1777 and completed 1778, but it is titled "The Dilettanti Society" (the Wikipedia entry for which I've linked there).  According to wikipedia, it was a "society of nobelmen and scholars which sponsors the study of ancient Greek and Roman art, and the creation of new work in the style."  It was a London-based group, founded in 1732.  

The wikipedia entry notes some "notable" members, none of whom were identified as Jean Baptiste Brouillard and none of whom even appear to be French or French Canadian. An entry at the National Portrait Gallery seems to suggest a list of people who are the subject of the painting, none of whom are Jean Baptiste Brouillard.

Numerous other entries for the Google image search of this image have similar results.

Time to purge those ancestry.com databases and stop suggesting that this image is of or related in any way to Jean Baptiste Brouillard.

This is NOT Helene Desportes

Today's "this is not" photo installment finally drifts outside of the Brouillard family to this image, supposedly of Helene Desportes:

According to many folks on Ancestry.com (over 200 users, by my estimation) this is Helene Deportes (b. 1620 d. 1675).  According to the Google and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is "Portrait of a Woman" by an Italian (Florentine) painter dating to the mid-16th Century.

Helene Deportes wasn't alive in the "mid-16th Century," as she was not born until the early/middle 17th Century.  It also seems unlikely that, if the dating were wrong, that this Florentine painter would choose as his subject, a woman born in Quebec / "New France."

Folks on ancestry.com ought to delete / de-link this image.  It is NOT Helene Desportes, and its not a portrait by "V.  Lavaoies" as noted in the title/description on ancestry.com.

This is NOT Magdeleine St Laurent (Brouillard)

Further update to this post, the false photo for Magdeleine St Laurent:

appears to be a photo of "Mrs. Falls" according to the Diomedia web site of "stock photos."  At least in this Google Cache, this is what the description is.  I've clipped a screen shot as the cache is sure to get cleared out and the photo link returns a 404 error:

I <ctrl + > my browser page to increase the size of the image, so you are likely to get diferent oriention of photos of you visit that link.

Take her out of your trees.  This IS NOT Magdeleine or Madeleine St Laurent married to Jean Baptiste Brouillard.

This is NOT Charles Brouillard

It must run in the family -- the false photos, that is.  We looked here, at the various issues with the "photo" of Jean Baptiste Brouillard and his wife, Magdeleine St Laurent.  Well, THIS IS NOT Charles Brouillard (b. 1668, d. 1692), as more than 60 ancestry.com members (who feature it on their public trees) seem to think:

The Google for the image shows a "stock image" web site, called "Diomedia."  Its not easy to find, but loading the "cached" page rather than the search result makes it easier to find that its "Gilbert  Wakefield," not Charles Brouillard.  Wakefield was English not French and appears to have lived about a hundred years after Brouillard.

Sadly, the Google image search for "Charles Brouillard" returns this image above as its second result -- a thumbnail from ancestry.com.

Take this photo out of your trees, folks.  Its NOT Charles Brouillard.

Debunking Photo Myths / Mistakes on Ancestry.com

As a variation on a prior post, I'm going to include each of these type of corrections when I come across them.  By way of background, I'm on one of my one-month Ancestry.com membership spurts. So, I'm filling in gaps and gathering a lot of info that I'll sort out later.  I know its not an ideal scenario and not very scholarly, but its what I've got right now.

But when I do these things, I'm "relying" on a lot of crap and unsubstantiated work. Its less of a risk for my Quebecois relatives because between Drouin and Tanguay, there is massive coverage and most of the now-province of Quebec is catalogued for the 15th through 18th centuries. Nevertheless, I see the same types of errors repeated over and over:  massive numbers of duplicate children; children assigned to the wrong parents (usually attributed to a first wife after she died); and so on.  One of the more easy to spot is the inclusion of a photograph or painting that purports to be a very old person.  In fact, I've not only copied a ton of these to my tree (see this prior post, which is a fraud, more or less, which I'm guilty of perpetrating / perpetuating), but I'm being more careful to spot them and I'm going to do my best to religiously post the errors on this blog.

First up, that error/fraud that I helped perpetuate.  The people in question (in my tree) are Jean Baptiste Brodeur (b 1690, d. 1768).  Here is the photo that is flying around ancestry.com that purports to be him:

Suffice it to say that this isn't Jean Baptiste Brodeur. Its John Bligh, the 4th Earl of Darnley.  How do I know?  The Google.  Their image search is awesome for this task.  Drag and drop the photo from Ancestry.com and voila.

 Among the links that are produced this this one.  So, out of the tree he goes.  And, apologies for the earlier post that claimed it was him, thereby reinforcing the false internet information and contributing to a Google search result that returns this blog as a result for this falsity.  Apologies.

Incidentally, the person who submitted this photo on Ancestry. has three identical Jean Baptiste Brodeur's in their tree, no doubt due to intermarriage. But they've not bothered to merge them as is quite easy to do.  Also a "hint" photo that is supposed to be his family is this photo:

The person on ancestry.com captions it: 

• Daughters of Jean Baptiste & Marie Brouillard

• about mid 1700's , St. Francis Du Lac, Richelieu, Quebec

Guess what?  Not even close.  The Google includes results that say it is "Fred and George Niedoba" and also "Emma, Nancy, Annie House."  You decide, eh?  A web site called GG Art (here) has a page called "enjoy old photos" and captions this one "Eva Jane Pifer . .  etc."

Finally, Jean Baptiste Broduer's wife Marie Madelein Brouillard (b. 1700, d. 1736) was supposed to be this woman:

Also not true.  I perpetuated this falisty here.  There are a bunch more that I'll be pointing out over the course of "filling in" my tree.  Some I've added and will remove.  Others, I'll point out when I encounter them.

3GRGR Owned Land

Recently, I've discovered the property records for Clinton County, New York on the LDS site.  I had started to spot check certain volumes looking for records of Julius in the rough time frame that I understand he arrived in the United States / New York.  Nothing turned up immediately.

Recently, I used my brain (I hadn't before) and scrolled ALL THE WAY through the offerings for those records and noticed the "Grantor - Grantee" indices.  For non-real estate lawyers/professionals, what these are are indices of actually-recorded deeds that list who sold (grantor) and who bought (grantee) certain land.  A LOT easier to search than the deed books themselves.  These indices are the pre-computer method of creating a relational database of many records and information.  In "modern" times, these computerize databases will be searchable and sortable by grantor, grantee, property identification, etc.  But I digress.

The first record that I came upon was an 1844 transfer from Francis Hart to Julius La Porte. While Julius wasn't the first "La Porte" noted in the land transfer book (Francis Nelson or John / Jean Baptiste have earlier entries), Julius did appear before Julian. In fact, the first entry that I saw for Julian indicates that he bought from Julius, his younger brother. This transaction, I think, is further circumstantial evidence (although of very low relevance) that Julius and Julian were brothers.  It would otherwise seem oddly coincidental that the among all of the other land owners in Mooers, New York, two men named La Porte would be transacting in land with one another.  Possible, but it seems more than a coincidence.

I digress again.  Below is the image of the recorded deed from Hart to La Porte. The penmanship is pretty good and its in English (though it undoubtedly had to be translated for Julius to understand), so I'm not going to transcribe it for now (later, I'll both transcribe and "translate" it from legalese to "real person English.")

In sum, Julius bought two acres land from Francis Hart which were originally part of a much, much, larger "refugee tract" (Lot 67 of 420) -- a giant tract of land that was legislatively given to certain refugees of Canada (from Quebec and Nova Scotia). I'm trying to track down exactly where it was in Mooers. It mentions a road from "Sheddeus Village to Plattsburgh" as one boundary line, but I cannot figure out where that is.

Here is the page of the deed recording - I think that Google will upload the entire image (which you can download to see in larger form) but if not, ping me and I'll send anyone interested a larger copy.

Died in a Carriage Accident

Joseph Rock died in a carriage accident.  He was another of my 3GRGRs -- my paternal grandmother (Jennie Rock La Porte)'s Great Grandfather (if you trace through her father, Henry "Clayton" Rock, but  2nd Great Grandfather if you trace through her mother, Isabel Rock -- as they were first cousins once removed).

In any case, I had been monitoring the ancestry.com "Clinton County" boards and noticed some activity regarding my 4th GRGR, Paul Larocque and Marie Duseault. There is some confusion as to who their children were.  One post mentioned Joseph being killed in a carriage accident, which I'd never heard about, so I got to investigating.  Best source for this is the Northern New York Library newspaper archives.  I quickly found the "errata" that was published a week after the initial article:

so, I needed to dig further.  In the papers a week earlier was this:

Not that there are "good" ways to go in an absolute sense, but there must be "better" ways relatively speaking and this one seems like a "not good" way to go.  I cannot help but get an image of this all happening as part of the opening sequence of an episode of Six Feet Under.