In addition to providing as many details as possible about my ancestor, the posts will also include anecdotes about experiences encountered in my search for Jeanne’s story. As Jeanne’s 8th great granddaughter, writing almost 300 years after her death, I am in the process of weaving together many historical bits and pieces of her life with archival research, live interviews and conversations in France, Quebec and the United States. And of course, I’m having to use some creative hypothesizing and my intuition to fill in any gaps in information. Jeanne’s is a story full of both facts and mysteries. It’s a story of endings and new beginnings. And it’s a story of much courage, stamina, will, and many choices. Please read Suggested Table of Contents for some tips on how to read the posts.
Coming Soon! Jeanne’s Gift: Finding Home
Dear Subscriber.
The past two years have been most challenging – physically and mentally — for all of us. Hopefully spring brings a renewal of hope and promise for better things to come (and for lasting peace in Ukraine as well) !
Despite the perturbations brought by the pandemic and by life in general, I have been able to continue working on the sequel to my book on my ancestor Jeanne Chevalier. I was certainly helped along the way with thoughts of how Jeanne and the other Filles du Roi and their families had to endure an even harder, more challenging life in 17th century Quebec!
And now, I am happy to announce that the book is just about ready to be published. What started out as an attempt to [⇒]
Request to subscribers to my blog
Dear subscriber.
Thank you so much for being on my mailing list. I definitely appreciate your support of my efforts to tell the story of the life of my ancestor Jeanne Chevalier (and perhaps your ancestor as well). My work continues on the next book describing the adventures I’ve had as a result of my research. However, before that book will be published, I need your help resolving a hopefully-easy-technological challenge (I’ve been told, it should take you a minute of your time!).
Google has decided to change their support for mailing lists through their “Feedburner” application which I had used for several years. Because of that decision, I have had to switch mailing list services to a new one called “MailerLite.” What does that mean for you?
It depends! If you received this message from “<lynne@lynnelevesque.com>, you don’t need to do anything! You are already on my new mailing list! Thank you! You can ignore the rest of this message.
However, if this message came from noreply+feedproxy@google.com, that means you are on the old list. If you want to continue receiving announcements from my blog, which I certainly hope you do, there are a couple of steps you need to complete in order to join the new mailing list.
First, subscribe to the new mailing list:
Find the “Subscribe to Blog” box in the sidebar of my blog page at (https://www.lynnelevesque.com/) or on any page on my website. Enter your email address and click on the “Subscribe” button. Follow the instructions in the confirmation email you will receive to complete your new subscription. You will then be all set and can proceed to the next step.
Second, cancel your subscription to the old mailing list to avoid receiving duplicate mailings.
It’s not clear how long the Feedburner list will remain active so you might want to unsubscribe from that list to avoid duplicate mailings. To do so, just click on the “unsubscribe now” link located at the very bottom of this message, on the left in between my name and Google’s address in California.
Clicking on that link will take you to a Feedburner web page where you will need to click on the “Yes, unsubscribe me now” button to cancel your email subscription to the old list. Don’t worry: you will continue to be subscribed to the new mailing list!
Please note, if you decide to subscribe to the new mailing list, please do so as soon as possible since I am not sure how long Google’s support of Feedburner mailings will continue.
I apologize for the extra work this is causing you, but hopefully you will find continuing as a subscriber to my list worth the effort!
And of course, feel free to email me at lynnelevesque@gmail.com if you have any problems or questions!
The Eight Creative Talents and Carl Jung
The blog post that follows has been written in preparation for the publication of my second book on the history of my ancestor Jeanne Chevalier. This post provides some background material to my journey to find Jeanne’s story, linking the new book to my past research on Carl Jung and creativity as well as on Jeanne’s life. The book, tentatively entitled “Jeanne’s Gift: Finding Home,” should be available by the end of February, 2022. Stay tuned for more news. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading about creativity! [⇒]
What did you learn from your family history research?
In an interview not long ago, I was asked several thought-provoking questions:
- “What is the value of knowing our family history?”
- “What is there to gain from understanding our past?” “
- “What did you learn about yourself by learning about your ancestry?”
- “Did knowing about your 8th great grandmother’s life change anything in your life?”
My Experiences in the Archives
I am continuing to write the sequel to my book on Jeanne – this one to include the stories of the remarkable people I met and extraordinary experiences I had during my search for Jeanne’s story. It is taking a lot longer to write for several reasons, not the least of which are [⇒]
My research on Jeanne Chevalier continues
At the end of the book about the life of Jeanne that I published in November, 2016, I made two promises. The first was to continue my research on her life and that of her three husbands in order to fill in the holes of information and to resolve the remaining mysteries. The second, to tell the stories of the numerous extraordinary adventures [⇒]
Lieutenant Jean-Jacques Lévesque and “Operation Jubilee”
Over the past three years, whenever I have given a presentation about Jeanne Chevalier and her family, I have usually provided a listing of her descendants who are famous enough to be known in the USA, Quebec and France: Rene Lévesque, Celine Dion, and Jack Kerouac. Only recently have I started to include the name of Lieutenant Jean-Jacques Lévesque. [⇒]
Women in History
The 2018 Fête de la Nouvelle France was another wonderful celebration of the history of Quebec. Despite the heat and the oppressive humidity, costumed women commemorated the role of the Filles du Roi in founding [⇒]
Another Jeanne — Jeanne Savonnet
While I have spent the last several years researching the history of Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier, my eighth great grandmother, there is at least one other Jeanne whose story should be included in this blog. That’s Jeanne Savonnet. The life of this second Jeanne is more well-known than the life of Jeanne Marguerite, but there are several parallels between the two. [⇒]
The plaque in honor of Jeanne Chevalier
I am sure that Jeanne’s spirit surrounded us that day, the 15th of September, 2017. We were not a large group but we filled the Canadian chapel of St. Jacques church in Dieppe, France, one of the parishes where Jeanne had lived.
