Time for another Drummond Island story……….. It is the women in A. C. Osborne’s “The Migration of Voyageurs….” that are intriguing and mysterious. Many of these women are the result of a relationship between a French voyageur and a First Nations woman, others have Aboriginal ancestry many ancestors back in their lineage and others are..... interesting..... among other things. Archange Desmaisons was a woman with a dubious reputation and a number of large question marks about her past. Osborne states “Desmaisons, Archange, the daughter of Francois Desmaisons, became the wife of Henry Modest Lemire.” She first appears in the St. Ann’s Church baptismal register in 1839 as the mother of Marie Archange. No poppa is listed. Twenty one years later, when Marie Archange is married, the daughter tells the priest her father is Amable Girard. Mere Archange must have tried the patience of the poor Fathers at St. Ann’s. From 1841 to 1857 she gave birth to six more children and not a pere mentioned in any record. The priests showed their displeasure by labeling the children illegitimate or bastards in the register entries. The lady wouldn’t repent and change her ways, so the priests made sure posterity would know exactly what she had done. The children knew something that Archange was not about to reveal to the priests – the names of their fathers. Presumably, she told her children who fathered them because at least two of them used other names during their lifetimes. As Marie Archange had done at her marriage, Narcisse named his father - Louis Chevalier. This must have really impressed Louis’ new wife – the birth of his son to another woman just two months after his marriage. In the 1861 census, Archange Desmaisons, living with her children, claims to have been married the year before the birth of her first child Marie Archange in 1839. She states she was born in 1816 on Mackinac and was married in 1838, supposedly after she arrived from Drummond Island. Is Desmaisons her married name or her maiden name? Could she have married a Desmaisons fellow who headed for the hills immediately after the marriage and stayed there all through the years? Why is there no record of any marriage to anyone for Archange in the Penetanguishene church registers? Who was Henry Modest Lemire? Where was he while all this conceiving and birthing was going on? He received his land patent in 1834 and is heard from no more. In 1881 when Archange died, the priest used the name Desmaisons when he wrote out her burial record. It was a common practice of French speaking priests of the time to use the woman’s maiden name all through her life; a custom imported from Quebec to Ontario. The lady took her secrets to her grave and has created a bit of a problem for her descendants by doing so. Because there is nothing known about her prior to her supposed arrival here in 1828 and very little is known about her between then and her death in 1881 (except the names of seven little kids), none of her descendants will be accepted for membership, based on her parentage, in the Metis Nation of Ontario. Francois Desmaisons, said by Osborne to be her father and the person who supposedly owned the land where the first St. Ann’s Church was built. Later historians claim Pierre Giroux was the donor of the propery and they may well be correct. No patents were issued to Francois Desmaisons for property on Roberts Street, where the church was built, but Pierre’s next door neighbour was Henry Modeste Lemire! Another puzzle created by Osborne. There is no record to prove Francois’ relationship to Archange. A few other Desmaisons appear in the early records, but who they are and how they fit into the bigger puzzle is unknown. Especially interesting is the Pierre Desmaisons who was born in 1773 in an unknown place and died in Penetanguishene in 1857. Who was he in relation to Archange? What a mysterious woman! And now we come back to the real questions. Just when did she arrive in Penetanguishene and where did she come from? Pam Tessier Research Co-ordinator Genealogy & History Research Centre Penetanguishene Centennial Museum & Archives