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"Grandmother of the West" - truly the role
of Mary Ann Maranda, who had wedded Joseph Brul� in Oregon.
Generations later, descendents were recalling tales of the large
cavalcade, freight wagons and the months on the trail to reach
British Territory.
Living on the east bank of Sooke River with the large family group,
Mary Ann continued bearing babies, so that her children with Brul�
numbered six. The family homesite was of log buildings, and situated
approximately at the riverbank end of what was later named Calvert
Road. In 1858 her husband Joseph died (51)
In 1860 she married Jean Baptiste Vautrin, (52) and later, moved
about the southern Vancouver Island area, as work took him to Mill
Bay, Victoria and other sites. One of the men who had traveled north
from Ft. Vancouver to Ft. Langley, Joseph Poirier, had come to Sooke
to fall timber for Captain Grant, and settled on land by the river
(53)
As Mary Ann's first family reached adolescence, and while she was
bearing additional children by Vautrin, her daughter Ellen caught
the eye of Joseph Poirier. Married to Poirier, Ellen too raised a
large family, living on the cabin on the river flats. Poirier was to
sell that site to Edward Milne in the 1880's.
Conditions were difficult in the times, and frequently parents had
to endure the sorrow of losing children at birth or through illness.
Joseph and Ellen Poirier were no exceptions, but their children who
grew to maturity, were to number twelve. Ellen Poirier is pictured
here (seated) with her daughter Cecile, and Cecile's children Claude
and Margaret.
First was Joseph Jr. who grew up to marry Mary White; then Mary Ann
who married Joseph Enos; Adolphus who remained a bachelor; Louise
who married Alfred Fletcher; Ellen who married Thomas Jefferson
Robinson; Isobel who married Andrew Davidson; James who married
Alice White; Victoria who married a Mr. McLeod and widowed, married
Harry Dilly; Pete who married Kit Hammond; Sarah who married George
Throup and later Mandus Michelsen; Adelia who married Harry O'Meara
and later Robert Lidgate; and the youngest Cecile who married
William Johnson and then later, Harry Dilley.
Most of these families remained on Vancouver Island, and readers can
readily imagine the numbers of youngsters who have grown up from
these origins in the generations since Mary Ann met Joseph,
Generations of Poiriers have been renowned as woodsmen, hunters and
fisherman.
The story does not end there, for Mary Ann produced nine more
children with Jean Baptiste Vautrin.
Though many of these offspring were to return to Oregon with their
parents (54) where Mary Ann was once again a widow, the Vautrin name
did remain in the Victoria area, with many additional descendants.
The photograph on the right shows Mary Ann Maranda Brul� Vautrin in
Oregon in 1918, while she rested on the porch of her granddaughter's
house in Grande Ronde.
Her daughter Cecile Brul� had married a Mr. Fullem, and the
Fullem's daughter Mildred and her husband Abe Holmes are pictured
here too, part of a large American contingent of the family.
From Mary Ann's marriage to Jean Baptiste Vautrin, perhaps the best
known in Sooke of their nine children, was Mary Ann, who was to grow
up to marry John Goudie. Also Descended from a fur-trade family.
(see page 87) John Goudie was living west of Sooke and listed as a
"chopper" in the 1881 federal census.
Their first child, Dora Jane, was to marry James George French; next
was Margarite who married a Mr. Stewart; James who married Lily
Michelsen; Rosalie was unlucky in marriage; George who married Lizzy
Poirier; John who remained unmarried; Peter who wed Mary Newbold;
Isaac, a bachelor, Josephine who married James Golden; Albert and
Frank, also bachelors; Pearl who married Herbert Stephens and then
Daniel Boon; and the youngest, Kate, who married Frank Hughes. Many
members of the Goudie family also remained in the Sooke and Otter
Point area, while several moved to connect with other relations
throughout the northwestern U.S.A."
p. 65-67 "The Sooke Story - The History and the Heartbeat"
ISBN 0-9694942-2-X
Limited First Edition
Copyright 1999
Sooke Region Museum
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