Talk:Zacharie Cloutier

Avril Lavigne
I have established connections for Avril Lavigne to Urbain Tessier & Marie Archambault and to Guillaume-Jean Langlois & Jeanne Millet, but am not finding any direct lines to Zacharie Cloutier & Xainte Dupont. Note the lack of the Cloutier name in her published Ahnentafel. Can anyone verify such a connection (and indicate the path)? Thank you. -- MichDiaspora (talk) 11:58, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres has been added to the list of notable descendants of Zacharie Cloutier, but the best I can determine is that this is based upon some erroneous reports on a number of entertainment blogs and news sites. What Ancestry.com announced in 2010 was that Ellen DeGeneres and Madonna were related through their common ancestor, Martin Aucoin, and this is reported by a number of sites, but some reported that the connection was via Zacharie Cloutier. I can find nothing on Ancestry reporting DeGeneres to be descended from Zacharie, and I believe WP would hold us to a higher standard than a few conflicting reports, both using Ancestry as their source.

Personally, as a descendant of M. Cloutier, I would love for it to be proven that Ms. DeGeneres is a distant cousin of mine, but I'm still unconvinced of it yet, and have removed her from the list until something more convincing is unearthed.

Comments?

-- Couillaud 03:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Hillary Clinton
I have been researching the notable descendants of Zacharie Cloutier for some time, and although I have seen Hillary Clinton listed among them in several puff pieces in the popular press, I have never seen a shred of evidence that this is the case. pnh (talk) 17:44, 22 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Mrs. Clinton IS definitely of French-Canadian descent, and IS related to Madonna and Angelina Jolie, though the only link I can find offhand is through their descent from Gaspard Boucher rather than Zacharie Cloutier. I have her Québecois line entered into my database at home (special project to build my list of famous cousins and my links to them) and will check it later this week.   --   Couillaud 19:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I have checked my notes as to Mrs. Clinton's French-Canadian descent, and she is indeed descended from Gaspard Boucher, but there is no definitive link between her and Zacharie Cloutier. Her inclusion on the list is probably a result of a misreading by many who see that she is related to Angelina Jolie, Madonna, et al., and assume that the connection is through Zacharie.  -- Couillaud 14:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Her ancestry is apparently well traced, and discussed here. I have not seen those Michigan journal articles. I did see a family tree for Hillary Clinton online and in full detail that did link her great grandmother Delia Martin to Cloutier, but I cannot find that on line now, perhaps because people published their work in the Michigan journal on the Canadian heritage of Michiganders, called "Michigan's Habitant Heritage, Journal of the French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan". If someone could read the articles cited in the link, perhaps we could feel confident on this topic one way or the other. I did not find the text on line, only an article that indicated that the pertinent issue is still available via a public library. --Prairieplant (talk) 02:33, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delia Martin was the daughter of Antoine Martin (a Cloutier descendant) and Mary Anne Fances McDougall (of Windsor, Ontario). Antoine's mother was Odile Richard, daughter of Pierre and Odile (Thébert) Richard. Pierre is the DNA-verified son of Jean-Baptiste and Angéline (Boucher) Richard. Jean's mother was Élisabeth-Isabelle Gamache (wife of another Pierre Richard, 1681-1756), daughter of Nicolas Gamache and Élisabeth-Ursule Cloutier. Élisabeth-Ursule is the daughter of Zacharie and Xainte (DuPont) Cloutier's son Charles. 73.18.142.34 (talk) 22:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * There are no Cloutiers in Hillary's Ahnentafel. Odile Richard's parents are not Pierre & Odile; they come from more recent French immigrants. Hillary's most significant Québecois ancestors are from the Aucoin and Campeau families. -- MichDiaspora (talk) 14:47, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

David Archambault
David Archambault, leader of the Standing Rock reservation at the time of the pipeline standoff, is a Lakota Native American, but also a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier. Zacharie and Xainte (DuPont) Cloutier's son Charles had a daughter Marie-Madeleine who married Paul Tessier dit Lavigne. Their daughter Marie married Paul Baudreau, and to this union was born a daughter Thérèse, wife of Louis Archambault. Louis and Thérèse were the 6g grandparents of the David Archambault in question. --73.18.142.34 (talk) 14:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Is interactive database a good ref?
Kcastle13 added Hubert Charbonneau; Jacques Légaré; Bertrand Desjardins. "Répertoire des Unions (Directory of Unions)". Programme de Recherche en Démographie Historique (PRDH) (Research Program in Historical Demography). Montreal: University of Montreal. Retrieved 29 October 2014. as a reference for Zacharie and his family, all their marriages in particular. If one follows the link, a page appears asking one to select French or English. I select English. It seems then I have to enter the names of the couples to see the dates of the marriages in that database. Is that a sufficient reference? Should Kcastle13 find a way to show the dates directly from the citation? Or explain in the citation that the reader must enter the names of the couple to see the date? Now it does not seem like much of a source, if I must figure out how to search through it for 9 distinct references. Opinions on this? --Prairieplant (talk) 04:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You have to pay to access the database thus you cannot link to the material directly. The link serves to direct the user to the database itself and it is up to them whether they wish to pay for it or not. I can send you a screenshot of the material I referenced in the database, if you like. It's no different than referencing a book that a user would have to buy in order to see the information. Since the database is created and maintained by the Demography Department of the University of Montreal, I would say it's a reliable source. I can add that it is a pay service in the reference. --Kcastle13 (talk) 13:51, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Notable descendants -- do we accept every French Canadian with an article on Wikipedia?
My corrections to the Zacharie Cloutier page were deleted and an the old version of the page was restored that includes broken links and unreliable sources. The explanation given was that "family trees done for famous people gather data from many public sources" except those trees that are linked that I deleted do not source any reliable public sources if at all and are not done by professional genealogists but amateur researchers who should not simply be trusted at their word. If they wanted to properly cite the information, then they should put those public sources in the footnotes and references section instead. I was simply trying to have a higher standard for source material. I apologize if I sound defensive, I simply run into this problem quite often.

For example:

Reliable sources:

Footnote #6: "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online" - article cites published work by the University of Toronto in collaboration with Laval University and cites reliable government sources and professional genealogists.

Footnote #10: "The Pioneers" - the PRDH is a database based on the research program in historical demography that was created by professors at the University of Montreal.

Unreliable sources:

Footnote #3: "Genealogie of Zacharie Cloutier" - there are two "sources" listed on the bottom of this page which include:

1) Brøderbund Family Archive #110, Vol. 1, Ed. 4, Social Security Death Index, U.S:

Neither Zacharie Cloutier, born about 1590, nor his immediate family ever lived in the U.S., by the site's own admission, as the U.S. wasn't even a country until about 100 years after Zacharie Cloutier's death in Quebec and the Death Index only includes those who have died since 1936.

2) Family Tree 42568:

A personal reference to a random family tree of no significance most likely generated by the software or system the user happened to be using at the time the information was uploaded to the site.

As for the "Mayrand Family Assocation*" that created the site, it works in collaboration with other visitors of the site and tells them that, "We need your help, add your family, translate a page or two, help us correct errors." Some of the individual profiles on this site may offer more reliable sources, but the one specifically cited for Zacharie Cloutier does not.

Footnote #13: "Bloodlines of Descent from Zacharie Cloutier" - list no sources whatsoever. Rootsweb is just a free website where any and all users can upload their own version of their family tree that is not fact-checked by the website and is based on a user's own research which may or may not be inaccurate or misleading.

I'm not saying these types of sites don't offer valid or accurate information, I'm just saying that they should be used as a general guideline or jumping off point to find the actual reliable sources only and not, in and of itself, and an actual source.

Footnote #5: "ZACHARIE CLOUTIER and SAINTE DUPONT" PDF - Redundant link. The Footnote #4 site already links to this PDF as well as others in addition to better explaining where it came from and who created it.

Footnote #11: "Hillary, Meet Your New Cousins: Angelina and Madonna: People.com" - doesn't mention Zacharie Cloutier whatsoever nor does the article this article cites in the Washington Post, though at least the Washington Post article has some more information on who collected the information and where you can find it, making it a better one to reference.

Footnote #14: "Genealogy Louis-Stephen St-Laurent" - this page gives no indication that this prime minister is related to Zacharie Cloutier.

Broken links in Footnotes Section:

2: "delmars".

Broken links in References Section:

Monument commémoratif de l'arrivée de Zacharie Cloutier en Nouvelle-France, University of Laval website, Retrieved on May 27, 2007

Maison Charest (House originally built and lived in by Cloutier), University of Laval website, Retrieved on May 27, 2007 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kcastle13 (talk • contribs) 13:45, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

If you have the Washington Post article link for the New France ancestry of those famous women, then please do insert that one, or add it.

It is perfectly fine to used the same source more than once in an article, if the source supports more than one point. It is recommended. If it is exactly the same source, then Wikipedia has a shorthand for that, using the ref name notation. If it is a book with pages and the pages are different, then the source needs to be copied with the correct page number for each point to be supported.

I do not know what you mean by broken links. If you mean a dead link, the Wikipedia term for url that goes nowhere, the simplest first step is to mark the link as a dead link between two sets of upper case curly brackets { twice dead link } twice. A bot will come around and add the date to the dead link. Then people watching the page can hunt for live references or see what went wrong with the link. If you mean something else, like a typo, then why not just fix it?

Your concern about the Mayrand site seems odd in the context of Wikipedia, which is asking for improvements constantly. The family data used, members of the Cloutier family that emigrated from France to New France seems correct, matches other sources, so why not? The mention of the US Social Security Death Index as a source in the tree looks like something that shows up on every page of a large tree, even if it was not used for the family shown. It is a new and reliable source for US deaths since Social Security began, and the family who made the tree and is descended from Zacharie Cloutier emigrated from Canada to the US in the early 20th century, I believe. One problem with English Wikipedia articles on New France settlers is that the best sources are in French, and it is good to have both the text and the sources of an article in English Wikipedia in the English language. As better sources arise, then those will be used. Some of the articles begin as translations from French Wikipedia (e.g. Olivier Charbonneau) and editors work on finding more English-language sources. It seems you are new to this, based on the list of contributions you have made since August 2014, and you do not have your own talk page set up yet.

Sorry you were offended that I reverted your changes, all but one. Removing references without giving those who did write the article (I did not write it, but I read it) a chance to correct what you cannot easily correct yourself is rushing ahead too quickly, especially when you do not have other references to put in place of what you remove in whole. I have added the authors and date written for a couple of the sources, as the initial editor did not take as much information from the source as possible. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:06, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

You undid the addition of soap opera actress Nicolette Goulet to Cloutier's descendants, citing that there was no evidence, yet her father, singer Robert Goulet, was already listed there and there is evidence of his descent. Obviously, if he is a descendant, so also is his daughter.73.18.142.34 (talk) 14:36, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I looked at the web page for each person you added (5 or 6 people), and none of them mentioned descent from the first settlers of New France, nor named any particular first settler of New France. Yes, if her father was descended from Cloutier, then so was she. There was a link as to her descent, but it went back only to her grandparents and then ended. I see that you reverted the whole change. If Robert Goulet is correct, then so is his daughter. But all the other names, where is the evidence? Are they in the Canadian biography book with some indication of their specific descent from Cloutier? Not every French Canadian will have all the first settlers in their tree, will they? It seems feasible to have many but not all. And if so, you would move every person on Wikipedia with a hint of French Canadian ancestry into this list, which seems unreliable. I am moving this discussion to the Talk page for Zacharie Cloutier, where it belongs now. --Prairieplant (talk) 01:56, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The names added, removed and then added again are these six, David Archambault, Nicolette Goulet, Amy Jo Johnson, Jojo Levesque, Michael Sarrazin, Alex Trebek. Each one has an article on English Wikipedia. None indicates descent from Zacharie Cloutier in the article, or the references, as far as I could find. --Prairieplant (talk) 02:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * David Archambault, leader of the Standing Rock reservation at the time of the pipeline standoff, is a Lakota Native American, but also a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier. Zacharie and Xainte (DuPont) Cloutier's son Charles had a daughter Marie-Madeleine who married Paul Tessier dit Lavigne. Their daughter Marie married Paul Baudreau, and to this union was born a daughter Thérèse, wife of Louis Archambault. Louis and Thérèse were the 6g grandparents of the David Archambault in question. This is all laid out in PRDH/nosorigines from Felix Archambault back to Zacharie Cloutier. Felix was Louis's great grandson.


 * Nicolette Goulet is clearly traced back to Zacharie Cloutier in PRDH/nosorigines beginning here: https://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/Genealogie_Canada_Children.aspx?genealogie=Nicolette&pid=78127.


 * Amy Jo Johnson's lineage is covered back to Elizabeth Laliberté on ethnicelebs, and then PRDH takes her line back to Zacharie Cloutier from there through son Jean Cloutier and Marie-Anne Martin.


 * Jojo Levesque is covered back to Wilhelmina D. Côté on ethnicelebs, then Drouin records traces from her back to Zacharie Cloutier through daughter Anne (Cloutier) Drouin.


 * Michael Sarrazin has long been recognized as a Cloutier descendant. Zacharie's daughter Geneviève had a granddaughter Marie-Madeleine Goulet who married a Sarrazin from the line which produced Michael. PRDH/nosorigines covers this all the way down to David. Very easy to check. Just because wikipedia doesn't know it doesn't mean it is wrong. https://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/GenealogieQuebec.aspx?genealogie=Sarrazin_Michael&pid=1521513


 * Alex Trebek's Cloutier lineage is likewise covered in its entirety at https://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/GenealogieQuebec.aspx?genealogie=Trebek_Alex&pid=1517109. Again, very easy to check and PRDH-documented.


 * 8-time US presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche also belongs on the list, again through Anne (Cloutier) Drouin, as documented in the Drouin records. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.18.142.34 (talk) 11:54, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Very fine if you have sources, and those sources belong in the article between ref tags. It does look like the list will be very long and soon become an article of its own. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The sources are now formatted, something I hope IP address 73.18.142.34 can learn to do. The source on this Talk page for Alex Trebec is one of those challenging ones, so many paths upward, which to choose? By chance I found my way back to the first Charbonneau, whose daughter married the first Labelle, but I did not have time to try every pathway to find Cloutier in Trebek's tree. I am not sure what to do with a source like that. Any ideas? Trebek's name has no inline citation, right now. Saying "very easy to check" is not helpful when the chart needs navigation upward without any hints on how to reach Zacharie Cloutier as his ancestor. Plus I hope that IP address 73.18.142.34 learns to sign posts, using the ~ key. The posts get signed by a bot. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:36, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I have written up the lineage from Zacharie and Xainte down to Alex Trebek, added it to Cloutier Cousins, and supplied the link to the article. I also added a few other names from our family site that were missing in the article and supplied those links as well, e.g. Chris Pratt, Madame Benoît, Julie Payette. Note also our article on Hillary Clinton (https://cloutiercousins.wordpress.com/zacharie-xainte/hillary-rodham-clinton/), as it demonstrates she does *not* descend from Zacharie and Xainte. Regards. -- MichDiaspora (talk) 20:57, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Descendants list
This whole section is based on unacceptable sourcing to provide non-noteworthy information. Famouskin is not reliable, Geneanet is not reliable, and Cloutier Cousins is not reliable. They are all self-published, and do not provide an indication that any of this is noteworthy. The reverter suggests that rather than deleting the entire list it be trimmed, but when absolutely none of it is either noteworthy nor based on a reliable source, there is no basis to distinguish which pieces of self-published genealogical trivia should remain and which should go - they all should go. Being ancestor of a person more than 10 generations later is just genealogical happenstance, a curiosity to descendants who wish to claim reflected glory off of their remote kin but providing nothing informative about the subject (or to put it another way, do we better understand some aspect of Zacharie Cloutier's identity by knowing that he is ancestor of Shania Twain than were he ancestor of, say, Cheryl Crow? - no, not in the least). It is just the type of genealogical trivia to which WP:NOTGENEALOGY applies. Agricolae (talk) 20:55, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with restoration of the list of blue links, and also that better sources should be cited if available. Please seek consensus on the talk page for deletion of the list before removing it again. Doremo (talk) 03:32, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * If I may add an opinion... a simple blue-linked descendants list can be interesting to include because it may give to the reader a wider sense of the man's place in our history. But, such lists should be limited to a reasonable number and each one must include a direct link to a reliable source. WP:ORIG, WP:SYNTH and non-academic genealogy sites don't make WP:RSs. RFT42 (talk) 03:21, 8 October 2020 (UTC)


 * This whole Talk page is about the descendants of Zacharie Cloutier, every section. I think a list is appropriate, including people who have a Wikipedia article and a clear descent from this first settler. There are legitimate family trees. It is significant that so many people can trace their roots to Cloutier, and the other first settlers, in my view. Trimming the list for significance of the descendants, along with the text on the descendants counted in a past year, seems like the best path. --Prairieplant (talk) 10:30, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That this whole page is about descendants is indicative of the problem of adding gratuitous genealogy. The fact is that colonial era people have descendants and some of them are going to be notable. That is just the nature of the beast. It is no reflection on the colonist. As I said, when you could substitute one modern notable person for another without changing your understanding of the subject, it is all just genealogy for its own sake: WP:NOTGENEALOGY. Agricolae (talk) 23:08, 16 October 2020 (UTC)