Tag: Sophia Bagg

Lucie Bagg’s Mother, Ruth Langworthy

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Researching the story of Lucie Bagg, the daughter of my four-times great-grandfather Phineas Bagg, was complicated, but writing about Lucie’s mother has been even more challenging. I was even confused about her mother’s name: I knew that her last name was Langworthy, but was her first name Ruth or Lucy?

I eventually concluded that it was Ruth for reasons I’ll explain later. Meanwhile, I am pretty sure that Ruth grew up in Pittsfield, MA, and that she moved with Phineas from Pittsfield to La Prairie, Lower Canada, around 1795. 

Phineas’ first wife, Pamela Stanley, had probably died between 1792 and 1794, years when there was so much sickness and death in Pittsfield that the minister gave up recording the names of the deceased.1 Phineas was left to bring up four children between the ages of about two and 13.

He soon got into debt and lost his farm to repay his creditors. With nothing left, he must have decided to leave Pittsfield with his children and Ruth, traveling up the Hudson River toward Lake Champlain and Canada.

Houses in the old part of La Prairie

They settled in La Prairie, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, where Phineas became an innkeeper. There, Ruth’s name appears in the baptismal records of their two children. These records are the only times her name appears in any official documents, but they are also the source of the confusion about her first name.

When baby Lucie Bagg was baptized on 12 January, 1798, the priest wrote the mother’s name as Luce Langworthy. When son Louis Bagg was baptized on 17 March, 1800, and when he was buried several days later, his mother’s name appeared as Ruth Langworthy.2

Here’s my theory: both children were baptized at Notre-Dame-de-La Prairie-de-la-Madeleine church in La Prairie, a Catholic church in a town where most of the population, including the priest, spoke French. The “th” sound is not used in French. Perhaps when the priest asked the mother’s name, he misunderstood the reply and wrote Luce instead of Ruth. That is one reason why I have concluded that her name was Ruth.

There is evidence for the existence of a Ruth Langworthy around that time and place,3  with several references to Ruth Langworthy of Pittsfield, MA in the genealogies section of www.familysearch.org. These genealogies, submitted by users, identify her parents as Andrew Langworthy and Ruth Brown. One submission says she was born in 1771. Several others say she was born in 1768 and married James Rathbone (or Rathbun) in 1787. One says she died in 1788. 

The Langworthy Family; some descendants of Andrew and Rachel (Hubbard) Langworthy who were married at Newport, Rhode Island, November 3, 1658, compiled byWilliam Franklin Langworthy and found in the New England Historic Genealogical Society library in Boston, notes that Andrew Langworthy was in Pittsfield in the 1790s. It says Andrew was born in 1741 in Stonington, CT and died 1808 in Pittsfield, MA and his wife, Ruth Brown, was born in 1743 in Plainfield, CT and died in 1825, Utica, NY. The book says the family must have been in Pittsfield by 1790 because Andrew, a Baptist, refused to pay a tax levied on all inhabitants to build a Congregational church there. It lists 11 children, including Ruth and another child named Ruey (could this be Lucy?), with no birth dates for either of them.4

I explored the possibility that the mother’s name could have been Lucy for two reasons: because her daughter was named Lucie (with the French spelling), and because a well-sourced family tree calls her Lucy. The Adams Family Tree, a public member tree on Ancestry.ca,5 has several sources for Lucie Bagg, including her baptism record, but I suspect the compiler did not see the baptism and death records of Lucie’s little brother. 

Phineas Bagg

There is one thing I am sure of. Phineas Bagg and Ruth Langworthy were not married. In her 1856 will,6 Phineas’ daughter Sophia Bagg, widow of Gabriel Roy, left a bequest to Lucie Bagg, identifying her as “fille naturelle du feu M. Phinehas Bagg, mon père,” (natural daughter of gentleman Phinehas Bagg, my father). The term “natural” invariably referred to an illegitimate child.7

Perhaps Phineas and Ruth did not have time to arrange a wedding. Or maybe their relationship was more about convenience than love. Phineas must have needed a partner to help establish the family in a new place, and perhaps Ruth was keen to start a new life.  The other possibility – and this is pure speculation since I do not know the death dates of Pamela Stanley or of James Rathbone — is that either Ruth or Phineas was still married. I have been unable to discover the time and place of Ruth’s death.

See also: 

Janice Hamilton, “An Economic Emigrant,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct. 16, 2013, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2013/10/an-economic-emigrant.html

Janice Hamilton, “Lucie Bagg: Her Story,” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 30, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/03/lucie-bagg-her-story.html

Janice Hamilton, “Who Was Phineas Bagg?” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct. 11, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/10/who-was-phineas-bagg.html

Photo credit: Janice Hamilton

portrait of Phineas Bagg, artist and date unknown; Bagg family collection

Notes and Footnotes: 

  1. Rollin Hillyer Cooke, “Records of the First Church, Pittsfield, Mass” Rollin H. Cooke Collection, Berkshire County, MA, [microfilm, reel 2, vols 26 and 27], Salt Lake City, Utah: Genealogical Society, 1961. I went through this manuscript at the archives of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. For many years, the minister of the First Church, Pittsfield carefully recorded the deaths in the community, noting the cause of death for many individuals. But in 1792, he simply wrote, “lost about 30 persons.” Similarly, 26 persons died in 1793 with no names or details recorded, and in 1794, he wrote, “lost 36 persons, 14 being grown up.”
  2. “Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968” [database on-line].  Ancestry.com, www.ancestry.ca (accessed 8 April, 2016), Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin.  La Prairie did not have a Protestant church at the time, so the children were baptized at the local Catholic church.
  3. I searched for both Ruth Langworthy and Lucy Langworthy on www.ancestry.ca, www.findmypast.com, wwwamericanancestors.org (the website of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society) and www.familysearch.org. I found no results for Lucy at all, and all results for Ruth were in user-submitted collections.
  4. William Franklin Langworthy, compiler. The Langworthy Family; some descendants of Andrew and Rachel (Hubbard) Langworthy who were married at Newport, Rhode Island, November 3, 1658. Hamilton, N.Y.: W.F. and O.S. Langworthy, publishers, 1940. p. 249-250.
  5. “Public Member Trees,” [database] www.Ancestry.ca,Adams Family Tree, Stuart Lauters compiler http://person.ancestry.ca/tree/16093254/person/1077026843/facts (accessed 28 Feb. 2016).
  6. Labadie, Joseph-Augustin, # 14278, 18 Mai 1856. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
  7. Two articles that explain the use of the term “natural” child are: Judy G. Russell, “The Natural Son,” The Legal Genealogist(blog), March 28, 2012, http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/03/28/the-natural-son/ (accessed April 12, 2016) and Donna Przecha, “Illegitimate Children and Missing Fathers. Working Around Illegitimacy,” Genealogy.com (blog), http://www.genealogy.com/articles/research/52_donna.html (accessed April 12, 2916).

Marguerite Virginie Globensky

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The Seigneurie of Milles-Îles, part two

With the sudden deaths of both her parents in 1841, Marguerite Virginie Lambert Dumont was a three-year old orphan who stood to inherit a vast tract of land, the seigneury of Milles-Îles. 

Her father, Louis Charles Lambert Dumont, co-seigneur of Milles-Îles, had named Virginie’s adoptive grandfather, Gabriel Roy, as the child’s legal guardian in case something happened to him. Roy was a wealthy landowner in Saint-Laurent, on the island of Montreal and an appointed member of the Legislative Council for Canada East. He and his wife, Sophia Bagg, had raised Virginie’s mother, Mary Sophia Roy Bush. 

Virginie was sent to live with the Roy family in Saint-Laurent, but Roy, now 71 years old, realized he was unable to raise the child. She returned to Saint-Eustache where notary Frédéric-Eugène Globensky became her new guardian. He and his wife, who had no children of their own, brought her up, and she attended school at the convent in the village. 

Everyone expected that when Virginie became an adult, she would marry her cousin Charles Auguste Maximilien Globensky (1830-1906), known as C.A.M. But in 1854, the government announced that the seigneurial system was to be abolished. Virginie’s marriage to C.A.M. was fast-tracked, with special permission from the church, and on July 21, 1854 she married C.A.M. She was just 15 years old.

Virginie and C.A.M. are portrayed in the painting to the right of the altar.
detail; C.A.M. and Virginie are at the bottom right

C.A.M. was a tall and imposing man, not always liked in the community, but respected for his honesty and known for his intellect and his many interests, especially agriculture and railways. He is still remembered for the book he wrote about the causes of the Rebellion of 1837 in Saint-Eustache. His father, Maximilien Globensky, a lieutenant-colonel in the British Army, had led a company of volunteer militia at the Battle of Saint-Eustache. In the book, C.A.M. explained his father’s actions.   

The bitter fallout from the rebellion hung over Saint-Eustache for many years. But the aftermath of the battle was not the only shadow over Virginie’s life. There were disputes over the shared inheritance of the seigneury and its deep debts. Virginie was in court several times, fighting family members over various property disputes.


Virginie’s plaque is on the right-hand side of the columbarium in Saint-Eustache cemetery.

Although the seigneurial system had been abolished, it took decades to dismantle. A committee evaluated property values and the habitants had the right to buy their farms from the seigneurs or continue to pay rent. As co-seigneurs of Milles-Îles, a territory so vast that it included the sites of the city of Saint-Jerome and the town of Saint-Sauveur, Virginie and C.A.M. were very wealthy. 

C.A.M. built a new seigneurial manor house in Saint-Eustache and the family moved into it in 1865. And every Sunday, Virginie and her growing family sat in the front pew of the church, a privilege reserved for seigneurs. 

 Virginie and C.A.M. had eight children, and many of their descendants are still living today. When Virginie’s health declined, she made out her will, leaving C.A.M. as her sole beneficiary. She died August 19, 1874, age 36. 

That same year, C.A.M. visited Rome and brought home a painting of the Adoration of Saint Anne in which Virginie, C.A.M. and the village priest were portrayed sitting at the saint’s feet. This huge painting hangs behind the altar of the parish church in Saint-Eustache to this day.

See also: Janice Hamilton, “The Doomed Marriage of Mary Sophia Roy Bush and Louis Charles Lambert Dumont,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Jan. 27, 2015, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2015/01/sophia-mary-roy-bush-and-louis-charles.html

post edited April 24, 2018 to add photo. all photos by Janice Hamilton

Notes :

Saint-Eustache is primarily a bedroom suburb of Montreal, about 40 minutes from the city, but the old section of the town is well worth a visit. The parish church is still pock-marked by the cannon fired at it during the 1837 Battle of Saint-Eustache. Flour is still made in the old mill, built by Virginie’s grandfather and modernized by her husband, and there are many mementoes of the Rebellion of 1837 in the town museum, located in the mansion that C.A.M. built many years after Virginie’s death.

The two main sources for this article are in French: a book by Yvon Globensky, Histoire de la Famille Globensky, Montreal: Les Éditions du Fleuve, 1991; and an online article by André Giroux, Les héritiers d’Eustache-Nicolas, http://www.patriotes.cc/portal/fr/docs/revuedm/06/revuedm06_6.pdf

In Quebec, birth records used the mother’s maiden name, and death records for women were also under the maiden name. But that does not mean women had any more rights than women elsewhere. A married woman’s property belonged to her husband unless she had signed a marriage contract making her separate as to property. In Virginie’s case, the seigneury was the dowry she gave to C.A.M..