Curious Kiwi

A couple of weekends ago, we all went to the International Balloon Fiesta here in Masterton. Everyone really enjoyed it. I took about 200 photos (lucky they are digital) and the best ones I uploaded to my Flickr account into my 2005 Balloons set.

Only one more week before we’ll be jetting off this island on the way to the US. Unfortunately, we’re going a very round-about way. Friday night, we stay at a hotel in Wellington because our flight leaves Wellington airport at 6:15am on Saturday! From Wellington, we fly first to Melbourne (Australia), 2 hour stopover there, then to Sydney, 1 1/2 hour stopover then, then to Los Angeles. We should arrive in Los Angeles at 9:30am, which works out to just about 24 hours after we leave our Wellington hotel.

Luckily, we have a night at the Marriott Hotel at LAX, so we’ll be able to get a good nights’ sleep before resuming our journey with our flight to Boston. That leaves on Sunday morning at 8:15am and gets us into Boston at 4:40pm.

Lots to do between now & then. I’m hoping to “pack light!” this trip, as we always seem to take far too much stuff. Seeing how we’ll only really have the hands of one person to carry all the luggage (the other person being occupied with carrying Eric & his carseat!), it is a necessity.

It was about Day 2 or 3 of my European bus tour, when my 35mm camera just wouldn’t snap. We had just arrived in Innsbruck, Austria, and I took the only person on our tour who spoke German with me to the local camera shop (just around the corner from Innsbruck’s famous Golden Roof). She translated my problem to the camera guy, he went back into the darkroom, and came out again with a frown on his face. He handed it back and said “Das ist kaput!” I didn’t need a translation for that! So I spent the rest of my European trip using disposable cameras. After a couple of weeks, I bought a ‘cheap’ fixed-focus camera from a shop in Zeist, Netherlands, which I used for the rest of my trip.
But…
I met Gary on that tour, so now I can still enjoy all the photos that he took!

Edouard and Marie-Anne were married on 26 September, 1864, at the parish church in St-Georges-de-Windsor, Richmond, Québec. They went on to raise a family of 12 children. Edouard was the son of Edouard Roy & Geneviève Izoir-Provençal. Marie Anne was the daughter of Noël-Pierre Rouillard & Angëlique Gosselin.

Both Edouard & Marie Anne’s families can be traced back to some of the earliest pioneers to New France (now Quebec). One of their daughters, Marie Anna Roy, married Nathaniel Tardif in 1895. They made their home in Lewiston, Maine, where Nathaniel worked as a loomfixer in the cotton mill.

Edouard Roy & Marie Anne Reparade Rouillard are the children’s 3rd-great-grandparents.

Pierre Thibaudeau was born about 1630, in France. 

Here’s a story about him that appeared in the newspaper:

“The ancestor of this family in Acadia, Pierre Thibodeau, is believed to have been born in 1630 in Marans, a village near La Rochelle, France. He followed Emmanuel LeBorgne de Belle-Isle to Acadia as a young man during the middle of the 1650s. Shortly after his arrival he married a young Acadian girl, Jeanne Theriault, who gave birth to 17 children.
“Pierre Thibodeau settled approximately 17 kilometres from the mouth of the Port-Royal river in a lovely spot called Pree-Ronde. There he built his house, his farm and his flour and grist mill. Pierre was undoubtedly prosperous but he had larger ambitions. On June 20, 1695, Governor de Frontenac granted him on the Kennebec river (Maine), a seigniory two leagues deep and a league on each bank of the Kennebec river along with the islands.
“At the age of 67, the enterprising Pierre Thibodeau decided to found a new community on the northern part of Baie Francaise (Fundy) called Chipoudie, now Hopewell Cape. He associated his sons and a few neighbors for this new foundation and had the necessary machinery for a flour and grist mill brought over from Boston.
“In addition to his occupations as a farmer and a miller, Pierre Thibodeau was also a merchant. He traded furs with the Indians. Pierre Thibodeau died at Pree-Ronde and was buried at Port-Royal on December 27, 1704. His children settled at Port-Royal, Grand-Pre and Chipoudie.”
From: Telegraph-Journal, Wednesday, August 10, 1994; p. A8

Pierre Thibaudeau is the children’s 9th-great-grandfather.