Smets and Smiths

Blanche Smith, my grandmother

Back in 1988 I became curious about my mother’s maternal family.  I had never met my grandmother, Blanche, since she died before I was born.   By researching microfilmed newspapers I was able to locate her obituary, which gave me enough information to trace her birth to Napierville, Quebec, Canada, the daughter of Gilbert and Elise (Morin) Smith. 

 According to the obituary, dated November 21, 1955, she immigrated to Lowell, Massachusetts, “45 years ago” which would put her at 14 years old in 1910.   By this time Gilbert had died in Canada and Elise had remarried Delphis Lussier.

But my curiosity at the time was not about Blanche and her family in 1910.  I was more interested in finding out about Gilbert Smith and his family.  My mother didn’t have much information about the Smith family, just some stories of cousins in Lowell.  Whenever she spoke of the Smith’s she would always use the French pronunciation of the name, Smets. 

Since the internet was just a thought in Al Gore’s mind at the time, (ha, ha) my next step was to write to Canada.  I wrote to the City Library of Montreal, specifically asking about Gilbert Smith.  To my surprise, they were able to trace the Smith family back four generations to J.B. Smith, who was married in L’Acadie in 1798.  His parents were Jean and Anastasie (Hebert) Smith, but they could not locate a marriage record for them. 

They probably would have married around 1778, according to the librarian.  I thought that was interesting giving the time period. 

Where were they married?  Where were they from?  These questions were not answered until many years later, when my son was assigned a family history project in middle school. 

What do you think?  Any ideas about how this mystery played out?   I would love to hear what you think, but only if you truly do not know the outcome of this search.