Gervais Bazille

I have only brushed the surface of the DNA relationships I currently show on Ancestry, for mostly living people.  On my paternal side alone, as of October 21, 2025, there are 47,299 people to whom I am somehow related.  The problem with determining common ancestors, and from there how we are related, is that the majority of the DNA result owners are living.  It is easier to track a relationship to someone that has a paper trail, usually the result of having passed away and subsequently their information going public. I cannot see any information for a person in an Ancestry tree if that person is still alive.  Furthermore, alive or dead, unless a tree goes back several generations and is well constructed, the relationship(s) may not yet show.  The DNA may say that we are related, but how we are related requires family trees for comparison. 

It is my belief that given the name of a French-Canadian person that settled in the St. Paul area of Minnesota, along with enough genealogical information, most of the time it can be determined that they are related, no DNA necessary.  It’s just a matter of finding the common ancestors.  With my belief in hand, one such person I was interested in determining my relationship to was Bazille Gervais.

After a lot of work it turns out that Bazille Gervais is my 4^th cousin 3 times removed on the Peltier side of my family.  The relationship traces through his mother, Genevieve Laurence, who was married to Benjamin Gervais, founder of St. Paul and Little Canada and who Lake Gervais is named after. 

Our common direct ancestors are Bazille’s 4^th great-grandparents, my 6^th great-grandparents: Nicolas Han Chausse Jean and Marie Genevieve Laporte LaBonte.  Both Bazille and I have separate branches until you get back to these common ancestors.  Once I determined the common ancestors, I filled in his branch leading to them in order to determine our relationship. 

Why did I choose Bazille Gervais? 

First, I did not have him in my tree so I was unsure if we were related, but, even before I started, I had suspected that we were.  More importantly, I chose Bazille because he has the distinction of being the first white person born in St. Paul.  He was born in a “tamarack shack” on September 4, 1839, near what became known as the Seven Corners area of St. Paul.  There were only a handful of white settlers living in the area when he was born.  Because there was no Catholic church close by, his parents took a 15-day canoe trip down the river to Prairie du Chien to have Father Ravoux baptize Bazille the following spring.  Bazille would grow up, marry Marguerite Gobin, have children, and eventually pass away, all not that far from where he was born.

Thanks for visiting, come back soon,
Cynthia

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