Military Monday: Private William Doll

Source: New York, Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts.1

       William Doll was born on 15 January 1841, and baptized at St. Louis Church at 35 Edward Street in Buffalo, New York . His godparents were Joseph Fougeron ( his maternal Uncle ) and Mary Ann Fougeron. He was the first child of Michael Doll, a grocer from Baden, and his wife, Mary Francoise Fougeron .2  They lived in the Black Rock section of Buffalo by 1850 and then moved to Washington Street. His parents, and a little sister named Hattie Doll, were deceased by the cholera epidemic by 1857.2,4

      William worked as a butcher in Buffalo, most likely at his maternal Uncle's grocer on 127 Niagara Street, Buffalo. His physical description was described as black hair, black eyes, dark complexion and he was 5 feet, 8 3/4 inches in height when he enlisted.
Source:Town Clerks' Registers of Men Who Served in the Civil War

      William Doll enlisted on the 9 MAY 1861 in Elmira, Chemung, New York. He was with the B 21st Infantry 3.

      Private William Doll fought at Rappahannock Crossing, Cross Keys, Cedar Mountains, Fords of the Rappahannock, Sulphur Springs  and Groveton . At the age of 21 years old, he was killed in action at the  "Second Bull Run" on 30 August 1862. 3,

       His burial location is cited as being buried at the site of battle, according to this record here :



 Unless further research proves differently, he was buried at the Monument of Unknown Soldiers in Arlington, Virginia  :http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/visitorinformation/MonumentMemorials/CivilWar.aspx

UPDATE : In looking for him in the Soldiers and Sailors Database,  he is definitely in the index but under the wrong spelling for his surname.

1. .Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts of New York State Volunteers, United States Sharpshooters, and United States Colored Troops [ca. 1861-1900].(microfilm, 1185 rolls). Albany, New York: New York State Archives.
2. St. Louis Church Records (Church Rectory,1985 ).Baptisms.Buffalo,New York.
3. Town Clerks' Registers of Men Who Served in the Civil War,[ ca 1865–1867] (microfilm , 37 rolls). New York State Archives. Albany, New York.
4. 1850 United States Federal Census . Buffalo Ward 4, Erie, New York;(Images, Roll: M432_502); Page: 350A

French tables

I am not talking about furniture or a good table in a restaurant, although I would probably adore them. I am looking at the civil indexes of my Fougerons in the Etat Civil of France. These are the civil records for France. The civil records are different from the church records for my villages in the Belfort Territory of France. The ones I am looking at are bounded in books, in volumes, by years, for each village or town. But the thing that is so lovely about them is instead of squinting through each individual entry of marriage, birth or death, I flip over the pages to the end of each year and the registrant hand - drew a table and indexes all the entries within each year.

An example for the registration of Joseph Jules Fougeront, and for a death table for
Jean Joseph Clerc in 1871 (click to enlarge) :






You can read more about the fascinating history of French civil registration at this lovely website ( and Google will ask if you want to read it in English because it will instantly translate it for you ). It's here at : History of Civil Registration in French Government 1.

According to the author of this website , the "Code Louis" (Order of Saint-Germain-en-Laye April 1667) requires the keeping such records in duplicates, one (the "minute") remains in the parish and the other (the "big") is always transmitted to the court nearest you. But it is only from the new code of 9 April 1736  that the parish registers were held routinely in doubles for all the parishes in France. So many European countries are lucky that the law requested duplicate records. I have learned about the beauty of having duplicates sometimes in doing Hungarian records.

1) http://www.frontenac-ameriques.org/histoire-et-memoire/article/la-genealogie-en-france-et-en/

A Governess from France

My family of Fougerons immigrated on the 23rd of August in 1829 from France. Dabbling in Ellis Island passenger records one night to see if any of the descendants visited France, I came upon two siblings, respectively called Eugene and Eugenia Fougeron,  both born in France, specifically in Petitmagny in the Territoire de Belfort, France where my Fougerons hailed from 80 years earlier (See Fougeron Immigrants & The French Cousins? )

The Fougeron family that I study is very large and has many descendants that I collected from 1829 to early 1900's in the United States. They were the only Fougeron family in America for almost a century. There were a couple stray Fougerons in early Quebec, and in early Louisiana, but further research did not show them linked to my family.

So that's why I was surprised to spot Eugenia Fougeron, a 24 years old governess working in New York City for the Constantine Aillary  family at 75 McDougall Street in Manhattan and New Bedford, Massachusetts through the 1895 - 1905 time period. It made me wonder if she was connected to my Fougerons. She appeared a couple more times at Ellis Island, probably sojourneying home and back. Also appearing to travel back and fourth was a young, single man (chestnut hair, 5'4 in his physical descriptions) named Eugene Fougeron, from the same region of Petitmagny, Terrotoire de Belfort in France - and going to the same Aillary family of 244 North Fourth Street and later, 195 Collette Street of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Were Eugene and Eugenia brother and sister ?

Looking further at Eugene's passenger record concluded that they were siblings. Twenty four years old Eugene, who was listed as a baker, stated that he was headed to his sister, Eugenia Fougeron, at 224 North Fourth Street, as his American destination with $20 in his pocket.



In another passenger record, both Eugene and Eugenie reported an address of Collette Street. Seeing a street called COLLETTE made me wonder if there was a French neighborhood in New Bedford which is pretty much, in my mind, a Yankee New England whaling town. A quick glance at Wikipedia stated that "The French (chiefly French-Canadian) also secured a foothold in New Bedford at about the same time, and they built the Church of the Sacred Heart in 1877"(1).

So I hunted for their existence in New Bedford, Massachusetts but ended up in the archives of the Territory of Belfort to get the answer to my question!
(To be continued)

1.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bedford,_Massachusetts

Tombstone Tuesday: The Immigrants Fougerons

I visited the Old German & French Cemetery on Pine Ridge Road in Cheektowaga, New York with my father when I was a kid with a new camera around 1979. This is the resting place of our French immigrant ancestors, Joseph Simon Nicholas Fougeron, and his wife, Marianne Augustina Marchal. Details of the grave markers in LOT # 22, Section C :

1) at left :

JOSEPH SIMON FOUGERON                                                                                                                       

   Born Oct 27 1787
             Died April 12 1858

  " Undecipherable below, probably religious epitaph "          

2) at right :

MARIA ANNA AUGUSTINA,  WIFE OF SIMON FOUGERON              

        Born  MAY 1  1796         
              Died   DEC 14 1865

These stones are lost forever. When I finally got back there 20 years later, all I found was this one. The vandalism was rampant as well as the weather on the limestone grave markers but the many old trees have roots that grow bigger and topple them over which happened in this particular lot :

I almost lost these pictures when my cat decided she liked the flavor of Kodachrome color pictures ! You can see her TEETH MARK on the first one !

How I started on my French research

        The family that is responsible for my very first plunge into genealogy are from France. I was a teenager, bored shelving books in a library. No one knew where in France. The older relatives always claimed Alsace - Lorraine because Buffalo, New York had a large community of French-speaking Alsatians that settled there starting in the 1820's. They traveled up the Erie Canal from the New York port when the Niagara Frontier was the " gateway " to the West.

       I never had any evidence of their origins in my American research. I studied the cluster of Alsatian families that lived and attended church with the Fougerons. In studying collateral relatives and their Alsatian neighbors, even the spouses of their children,  I could not pinpoint the origins of my immigrant group. Finally, I got a tip from a few obituaries and an old newspaper article that was found taped in a local library scrapbook collection about the history of streets in Buffalo. It was a secondary source but the article reported that Fougeron Street was named after a family from Belfort. But Belfort was a city, and the Fougerons were farmers.

    I did a weekly trek to the Family History library to crank the " Registres de l'etat civil "  microfilms in the the ' ville de Belfort ' for any mention of the name Fougeron.  Belfort was a military post in the 1790's when my ancestor, Joseph Simon Fougeron, was born. I exhausted all American records for him, his wife and the children that immigrated with them. Census, civil, church records all simply said " France " so I kept cranking the films until I landed on his baptismal. I had his birth date from his tombstone so I knew this was him. I then spiraled on to matching his wife and children's birth dates so I knew I had my group.


    Twenty years later, I now know that they hail from a very tiny rural village in the Franche-Comté region. I also have collected the beautifully handwritten French and Latin records documenting my French immigrant family and all their ancestors .

    Now a new interest springs up in my Fougerons research back. In Ellis Island records, I discovered that there were Fougerons in Massachusetts but they were definitely not from my immigrant group. The name is unique enough here where I feel in my heart that they are related. So I will follow this Massachusetts group of Fougerons to see if there are any family connections.

Update : There were related to my Fougeron group through Joseph Simon Fougeron's Great-Uncle from Petitmagny .