"The Girl Missing"

I stumbled across an article entitled “The Girl Missing” and it states that Andrew McMahon and his wife were looking for their 16-year-old daughter, Mary who ran away with her boyfriend ‘Alexander Coteau’ who had a marriage license and that they tried to get married but failed.  It was printed in the Worcester Daily Spy on November 3, 1893.^⁠1  Alexander Coteau was really Amable Coutu.  That last name might sound the same to an Irish ear.  More about him in a minute.

Mary Ann McMahon was born in Blackstone, Massachusetts in 1877 to Irish parents.  In 1880 Mary Ann lived with her parents, Andrew McMahon and Hannah McGahey McMahon and brother, Andrew Jr. in Blackstone, MA.^⁠2  Her parents and brother worked in a cotton mill.  Blackstone, MA and Woonsocket, Rhode Island border each other and there were a number of textile mills along the Blackstone River that immigrants worked at.  The French-Canadians came down in droves to work in the mills.  The Irish found work there too.  

Amable Coutu was born in January 1873 in Saint Jean de Matha, Quebec, Canada.  There are a few different arrival dates in the late 1800s of his immigration but he set out for Woonsocket, RI to work in the cotton mills.  This is likely where Mary Ann and Amable met.  The article says that he was 18 when in fact, he was 20 years old when Mary Ann was 16.  Yikes!  

An Irish girl marrying a French-Canadian boy during this time period was frowned upon by both cultures.   It’s likely that Andrew and Hannah refused to let her marry him.  So she ran away.  She might not have even told her parents his real age if they thought he was 18.  For the longest time I couldn’t find a marriage certificate on them and then after finding this article in the paper, I found the record in the Quebec church records called the Drouin Collection.^⁠3  They ran away to Sainte-Mélanie, Quebec which was 15 miles from where Amable was born!  He took her to his home to get married.  This is a translation of the marriage record:

“The 30th of November 1893 saw the exemption of the three banns of marriage between Amable Coutu, traveler, adult son of Desire Coutu traveler, and Celine Coutu of Blackstone Massachusetts.(Amable formerly of Blackstone) and Mary Mcmahon, underage daughter of Andrew McMahon and Ann McGahey of Blackstone. (Mary formerly of Blackstone); no impediment to the marriage was found and to the consent of the parents of the underage girl. We the undersigned priest, were authorized by monsignor, Thomas Daniel Beaven, Bishop of Springfield, and having received their mutual consent of marriage, we gave them the nuptial blessing in the presence of Onesime Coutu, uncle of the husband and since the husband disclosed that he could not sign his name, his brother in-law Damase Nadeau signed for the husband. Signed, Mary A McMahon and A. Coutu

 L.F. Bonin, P.L Pastor”

So it looks like they tried to get married in Springfield, MA and then headed up to the Quebec area after being turned down.   There were three banns of marriage performed in Canada which meant that they had to announce the intent to marry for three weekends during a Catholic mass.  Her parents didn’t know where she was and wouldn’t have been able to protest when the marriage banns were announced.   Hearing no objections, they were allowed to get married in Quebec on the 30th of November, thirty-one days after she ran away from home on Tuesday, October 31, 1893.  

Blackstone, MA to Saint Jean de Matha, Quebec is just over 400 miles.  That would be a seven-hour car ride today.  But in 1893 people traveled by horse and carriage or by train, making the journey much longer and required some planning and saving money to make such a trip.  Clearly, these two were in love and wanted to be together despite the odds.  Family lore says that Mary Ann was disowned briefly by her parents. Amable and Mary Ann moved back to Blackstone and on the 6^th October 1894, they welcomed their first child, a daughter named Gertrude.^⁠4  They had six children total, five who lived to adulthood. They stayed close to Mary Ann’s family. Her father, Andrew, even moved in with them after the death of his wife, Hannah.  Amable and Mary Ann were married for 54 years until her death in 1947.^⁠5  

Amable Coutu & Mary Ann McMahon Coutu

I’m so glad these two fell in love and ran away to get married.  Their daughter, Gertrude is my great-grandmother (her photo is the header of the main page of this blog).  Amable and Mary Ann are my great-great grandparents which makes Andrew and Hannah McMahon my 3^rd great-grandparents.  This is a perfect story for a Valentine’s Day blog.  

#KeeperOfThePastGenealogy

#Valentine’sDayBlog

#BlackstoneMA

#WoonsocketRI
#French-Canadian

¹ “The Girl Missing”, Worcester Daily Spy, 3 November 1893, p. 3, col. 5; digital images, Genealogy Bank (https://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 8 Feb 2018).

² 1880 U.S. census,  Worcester County, Massachusetts, population schedule Blackstone, ED840, p. 266C (stamped),  dwelling 220, family 448, Andrew McMahon; NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 1454.

³ "Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968." Sainte-Mélanie Parish 1893, Amable Coutu and Mary McMahon, p. 16. Digital images. Ancestry. Ancestry.com : 2018.

⁴ Massachusetts Birth Records 1840-1915, Gertrude Coutu, 1894; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://ancestry.com : accessed 8 Feb 2018).

⁵ Find A Grave (www.findagrave.com : accessed 8 Feb 2018), memorial no. 93665134 Mary Ann McMahon Coutu (1877-1947), created by “Bearded Graver”.