An Oral History










My internet cousins, Vic and Olive Dawson have provided an audio tape of an interview of my great aunt Marie-Angeline (Minnie) Mombourquette conducted by Vic in about 1980 in D'Escousse. I have transcribed this tape so that it could be shared with a wider audience on the internet. She describes life in the area of Isle Madame in the late 1800s and at various times since then, with many stories about people and places and what life was like in this fishing and farming area of Nova Scotia. Click here or on the postcard above to review this interesting oral history.

 

I began doing genealogical research on my family a few years ago. Because there was so much information to browse on the internet, I focused on doing on-line research. During this time I have also visited the Family History Center (FHC) Library of the Mormon Church in Mesa, Arizona. This valuable collection of resources is open to the public and offers any individual access to books, microfilm and CD-based indexes. I have also visited the American-French Genealogical Society Library in Woonsocket, RI. Much of what I have obtained, however, has been from internet sources.

A six-generation photographic timeline of the family is HERE.

MrPiv’s Genealogy Blog is HERE.

A fully indexed PIVIN family tree is HERE.

Our family heritage, while in recent years is from New England, has lines which go back through French Canada and Portugal. On my side, my father's family lived for many generations in Quebec, Canada, while my mother's family came from Nova Scotia, Canada. My wife's father was born in the Azores, which are part of Portugal and her mother's family came from Quebec. We have traced the Canadian lines back into France to well before the colonial days. Most of this done with the help of friends and cousins on the Internet and various CD-ROM files.

Favorite Genealogy Links


The list of WWW resources on genealogy is very large. A few starting points to get you going on your own search:


  1. • Acadian and French Canadian Ancestral Home - a massive site, rich in history and links to important resources, created by Lucie LeBlanc Consentino.

  2. • Yvon Cyr's Acadian Genealogy Home Page - another great Acadian site.

  3. • Cyndi's List of hundreds of thousands of links, categorized & cross-referenced, in over 180+ categories.


Our Current Research

  1. • FAMILY NAMES - From=>To

  2. • PIVIN, LAUZON - QC=>RI

  3. • GUEVREMONT - QC=>RI

  4. • BEAUCHAINE - QC=>RI

  5. • KAVANAGH - NS=> CAVANAUGH - RI,

  6. • GEOFFROI/JEFFREY, MOMBOURQUETTE - NS=>RI

  7. • CORDEAU, JOSSE, POIRIER, MARTEL, BONIN, MARCHAND - NS





The Program That Makes All This Possible

I use Reunion for the Macintosh to store all my data. Programs like this can create an output format which allows the exchange of files among people with different programs and computers. It will keep track of all your data and notes, even old family photos if you have them scanned. The latest version shares a database among iPhones and iPads and was used to produce my Family Tree on this site.

Last Update 08/13/15

This site given the Ancestral Home Award for 2000

Visit the Acadian and French Canadian Ancestral Home site for many excellent genealogical resources

Joseph

FERREIRA

Joseph

PIVIN

Lovina

FERREIRA

Lovina

GUEVREMONT

Marie

JEFFREY

David

PIVIN

Nova Scotia Research

Nova Scotia genealogical research has been organized in a site called Nova Scotia GenWeb with links to researcher's sites and many other resources for all the counties. It is part of the Canada GenWeb project which seeks volunteers to add to the wealth of knowledge about each county. My interest lies in the Cape Breton counties and many of my cousins have their pages linked there. And finally, be sure to visit George Rose's great collection of resources on his Nova Scotia French Acadian and Scottish genealogy site.

I have found much information about my mother's line doing research on the village of D'Escousse on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Other cousins, like Ed Galvin and Jeanne Joyce-Stone have focused on this community for their researches and have extensive family history information on their pages.

Isle Madame

My contribution to the effort of research is a detailed map of the area surrounding D'Escousse known as Isle Madame, located off the southern coast of Cape Breton. My map was derived from fisheries charts which were published on the net by the Canadian government.

Made on a Mac

In 1999, I visited the island to meet some of my cousins and to search for the house my mother was standing in front of in an old picture she gave me. The story of its discovery is here.