A Prolific Canadian Family Creates Identification Problems by Harman W. Nichols
Source: uknown - this article was given to me by my great-aunt, Louise Tremblay Meltaus, years ago - author unknown, year of publication unknown
ARVIDA, QUE. MAY 6 (UP) - This section of Quebec is home of the fabulous Tremblay tribe.
There are more Tremblays hereabouts than there are Roosevelts in N.Y., Smith in Illinois, or fish in a well-stocked pond.
The Tremblay clan can trace it's family tree to the gentleman named Pierre Tremblay who came here with high hopes and an innate knack for keeping his name going. Pierre came from the province of Perche, France. Although he and his wife Anne had 6 sons and 6 daughters, and according to the records I found, that started something.
ONE HISTORIAN PUTS IT THIS WAY:
"Pierre had 10 acres of farm and drove 10 head (of cattle). The years went by. The boys and girls got married. The boys had a large number of children, whereas the girls had not many."
To their credit the Tremblays are a a respected and honored folk in this area.
Guillaume Tremblay is head of the school system in this city of 11,000, which was built by the Aluminum Company of Canada, Ltd. He has half a dozen of little Tremblays of his own running around the school system and so many others by the same name that he has never found time to count them.
The Aluminum Company has between 600 and 700 Tremblays on the payroll, according to how business is going. And there is no official count of how many other Tremblays in the area can trace their ancestry to father Pierre. Nobody will dispute the fact that the count of this moment is up in the many thousands.
So far as The Aluminum Company is concerned, the separation of the Tremblays on the payroll is not difficult. The workers pick up their pay by number.
But at the window of several banks in the town, it is a little different.
That's because there are 65 Tremblays named Joe. You can get a mental image of 65 guys named Joe (Jos is the proper first name although it is pronounced "Joe") standing in one line ready to cash their checks. So what happens?
The company has simplified the matters. A sort of footnote on the check identifies each of the "Joe" persons. One is listed as "Dirty Jos" because his work turns him up messy at the end of an eight-hour day. Another is identified as "Small-pox Jos Tremblay" because on of his family once had small pox. Yet another is listed as "Blacksmith" used to crawl under a horse and nail a shoe.
There are others tabbed as "Cloudy", "Defrosted", "Rusted", "Grain of Wheat", and "Thunder".
I took a little trip to Cute a' La Sauvane. On the way back, my host, one Allen Burgess, said "Let's stop and see this family." It was a beautiful farm. The lady of the house wanted to know if I would like to meet her family. She called the old man out of the barn and the youngsters from all around, 21 kids, all well dressed and cute.
"Like to have you meet my sister and her family next door," she said.
Her sister paraded her youngsters, 19 in all. The whole bunch have lifelines going back to Pierre Tremblay.
I looked in the phone book and found only one Smith. A man with a first name of John. No kin or kith of the Tremblays.
