Week 5, Breakthrough: Found My Laberges

I’ve been slacking on the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. It’s Week 5, and this is my first post of the year. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. I challenged myself to complete one family history book on Storied in 2026, so I’ve been focused on one I’ve told before—the story of my great-great-grandparents, John Laberge and Mary Melanise Marcoux.

In 1900, Melanise took John to court for failure to support her and their children. The newspaper published a harrowing account: the children walking barefoot through the snow to beg for food and coal; neighbors testifying that John was seen stealing his children’s bed from the home. Ten years later, John died from alcoholism while in lock-up at the Pawtucket Police Department.

This is a story of generational trauma. Their children repeated some of the same patterns—pre-marital pregnancies, fractured families, prison, alcoholism.

Finding census records for the Laberge family has been difficult. They don’t appear on the 1900 U.S. census. I did find Melanise and the children on the 1905 Rhode Island census, minus John, whom I believe was estranged and living apart. Sometime between 1905 and 1906, the family fell apart. A third cousin shared that many of the siblings were sent to live with other families.

Until last week, I could only find two of the seven children on the 1910 census: Annie, listed as the “adopted daughter” of close family friends, the Gendrons, and the youngest child, Antoinette, living as “Antoinette Lizotte” with the Lizotte family.

Then I had a breakthrough. “Breakthrough” is the Week 5 prompt—so let me tell you about mine.

For years, Ancestry kept offering me a 1910 census hint for the eldest Laberge daughter, Delia. It was one of those records that almost fit—but not quite. I dismissed it every time. While writing Delia’s story and building her timeline last week, I finally revisited it.

The record showed Delia living on Pleasant Street in Pawtucket with the John family:

• Eugene John, head, 45, married 26 years, born French Canada, naturalized, carpenter, cannot read or write

• Mary John, wife, 40, married 26 years, born French Canada, speaks French, cannot read or write

• Blanche John, daughter, 6

• David John, son, 16, works in a cotton mill

• Eugene John, son, 17, blind

• Delia Laberge, stepdaughter, 21, works in a cotton mill

  
  

My first theory was the one I’d always assumed: that Mary Melanise, still married to John Laberge, was living with Eugene John, and that Blanche and David were her children mistakenly assigned the John surname. But too much didn’t line up. Eugene and Mary reported being married 26 years—their first marriage. My Mary had given birth to ten children, seven of whom were living in 1910. Blanche’s age was wrong. And if this was my family, why were Blanche and David listed as children, but Delia as a stepchild?

To rule it out, I searched backward and forward for Eugene John. No other records existed.

Then I tried a different theory. John Laberge was frequently in trouble with the law. Maybe he used an alias—switching his given name and surname. John Laberge and Eugene John were both 45, both naturalized, both married 26 years. Maybe Delia refused to use the surname John, which is why she was listed as a stepdaughter.

This theory fit better—but not completely. As far as I knew, John Laberge could read and write, and he was a factory worker and barber, not a carpenter. There was also the problem of Eugene John Jr.: none of the Laberge children fit his age, and none were blind.

Then it clicked. The name John ran through my mind again—but this time with a French accent. Jean.

Mary Melanise’s sister, Mary Rose, married Ludger Jean.

Could Eugene be a census taker’s mangling of Ludger or was Eugene an alias he adopted? I found directory listings for Ludger Jean in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where many of the Laberge children were born and previously lived. He was a carpenter. I also found one listing for Eugene Jean, also a carpenter. It was the only record I could find under that name, but it was enough to start connecting the dots.

Ludger and Mary Rose had been married 26 years. Ludger was naturalized. Although he signed his naturalization paperwork, his signature was extremely shaky, suggesting illiteracy. They had one child—Ludger Jr., who was 17 in 1910. Ludger Jean died in 1913, which explained why he appeared on no later census records. His death certificate listed his occupation as a carpenter.

Everything pointed to Eugene and Mary John actually being Ludger and Mary Rose Jean—but I still needed proof.

That proof came from a newspaper article and the 1920 census.

On July 31, 1915, The Fall River Daily ran an article titled “Mean Thief Steals from Blind Man.” It reported that Ludger Jean had money stolen from his jacket while working in a shop for the blind. The 1920 census placed Rose Jean and her son Ludger in Fall River, Massachusetts, with Ludger working as a broom maker in a factory for the blind.

The inconsistencies on the 1910 census now made sense. Like her sister, Mary Rose likely used her names interchangeably. She didn’t speak English and didn’t work outside the home. She probably gave the census taker the information herself. When asked how many children she had, she answered “four”—the number of children living in the household at the time. Blanche and David had likely been with her for several years and were counted as her own.

Delia, recently released from prison on an adultery charge just a month before the census, may have been harder to explain. And Blanche’s age? If Rose said the French dix (ten), it’s easy to imagine the census taker hearing six instead.

This wasn’t a flashy breakthrough. There was no single document that shouted the answer. It came from sitting with a record I had dismissed for years, listening more closely, and letting language, culture, and family dynamics join together.

Finding Delia in 1910 didn’t just place one missing person on a census—it revealed a hidden safety net of extended family, quietly absorbing children when everything else fell apart. It reminded me that breakthroughs in genealogy often come not from certainty, but from patience—and from being willing to look again at the records that don’t quite fit.