My Great Great Grandfather was known to me as Samuel Dow. I never met him, but I need his answers to so many questions. One of his daughters, Violet Dow, married John Thomas Cook and they resided in a few places in Minnesota and North Dakota, ending up in Saint Paul. Research was daunting as there were few records for Samuel Dow. I knew they had been in Superior, Douglas County, Wisconsin. Censuses, city directories, a brief obituary, that daughter’s marriage record, and other records clearly listed him as Sam or Samuel Dow. Some readers may have read or heard this story before. About 30 years ago, courtesy of a Dow cousin, I located a 1c3r (First cousin, three times removed) who was living in Southern California. She was a daughter of Sam Dow’s youngest sister. They had resided in Chicago. We had a lovely conversation, but the elderly woman did not provide many details. At the end of the conversation, she asked if I knew that wasn’t their real name. That was a stunner and it turned out the actual surname was French-Canadian and Sam, Violet, and others in the family were born in Canada! Censuses, city directories, church, and other records in the Province of Quebec in the area of Montreal provided a weaving timeline showing Sam was born as Anselme Daoust, was sometimes known as Arsene Daoust or Dow, and also as Sam or Samuel Dow. I generally search for all the name variations and am never surprised by others. On November 25th, I received an email from MyHeritage SuperSearch Alerts for Arsene Daoust.

Of course, the OCRd newspaper item was a bit garbled as many are, and I checked the actual image on MyHeritage. I knew it mentioned my own ancestor because from city directories I recognized the address on Centre Street and the company it mentioned for the other man was the same company that employed Sam/Arsene. GTR is the Grand Trunk Railway. Violet was not born until 1875 so this predates my own Nana Violet Dow Cook. 

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