Gonneau Name Study

I should point out as well that the Goneau families along the Ontario side of the St Lawrence speak French as well as English. You may not be aware of that. I talked to a distant cousin in Bathurst, New Brunswick years ago. She had heard a rumour that Hilarion Gonneau (or, possibly Goneau since that's the spelling his children and grandchildren used) had come from the Montreal area and had been disowned by his family because he had married an Anglophone and a Protestant. More evidence that the Goneau whose name we use is from the Montreal . She developed early dementia so I don't know what she has found out since. She was a bit younger than I was and knew the youngest sister of my Grandfather because she lived with her daughter who was this O'Neil's Grandmother. They were Roman Catholic because her great-grandmother had died young and the Anglican minister never visited so the family became Roman Catholic which the father was.

Gonneau was the family name of my Francophone anscester apparently. Hilarion Gonneau married my Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Pentland in a Roman Catholic church, Holy Family in Bathurst, New Brunswick in the 1850s. That was the spelling of the family name in the church record. My Grandfather, his siblings and my Great-Grandmother and, as far as I know, my Grandmother, however, were Anglicans. The children of Hilarion (otherwise known as "Larry" or, possibly, Harry) , did not speak French and Hilarion is not recorded in the census records after 1881. He is not buried with his wife who died in the 1920's. Where he came from and where he ended up is a family mystery. I don't think the name changed after the family on Howe Island no longer spoke French. There are a lot of Goneau familes along the Ottawa River going up to Ottawa. I have looked to see if these families sometimes spell their names as GonNeau though. In New Brunswick, Goneau is always spelled Goneau by family members, but it is pronounced "Gagné" by them as well. I'm in Ontario and my family's name is always pronounced as if "eau" is pronounced "o" which, indeed, it is in French words (gateau, eau, pruneau, etc.) In the last census, the family name in Bathurst New Brunswick is written as "Gagnier". Maybe, a Francophone enumerator changed the spelling to the way the family members pronounce it. I have descendants of Goneau aunts in the U.S., but, of course, they use their fathers' family name. By the way, my family moved to Kingston in 1962 and my mother lived here from 1962 to 2009 and I have lived here since 1963 to the present time with a hiatus from May, 1970 to Oct. 1979. My mother once got a letter asking her if she was related to an Alexander Goneau on Howe Island. Note the spelling. She replied (snail mail in those days) that we weren't. However, my Grandfather Freeman Goneau's older brother born in 1862 was named Alexander, too late to be this Alexander Goneau of Howe Island however. However, could these 2 Alexander's be related.

I've always suspected that our family line ended up with the Gonneau name as someone's correction. I'm interested in corresponding with any researchers who are following Gonneau specific descendants migrating to Canada from France.

To this point, it has been difficult to prove the origins of the surname for our particular line, in part because they moved from a French speaking (Quebec) to English speaking (Ontario) community at a time when surnames were still in flux generally. The most likely family origin however, is tied to church records back to 1714 (they were Catholic, so most early ones were in French) which primarily use Gagnon and or Gagnon dit Bellisle.

Once they came into Ontario, however, the name morphed through 20-30 different variants, as did many of their French-origin related lines. Garneau, Gauneaux, Gaignault are just a few examples of English speakers trying to record what they heard.

I am researching a number of lines from our main branch, which moved out of Quebec c1803. The branch which ended up in the US mostly used the surname Gonyou, pronounced Gone-you. A second branch uses Gonu, a third Gonyea, and ours Gonneau - all of us in different regions of Ontario.

if you are tracking any Gonneaus coming to Canada prior to 1800, please post a memory/story here.

Gonneau surname for this family line may have originated with the relocation of the ancestors of Francis Gonneau (1796-c1867) and his wife Marie Angelique Ouellette (c1808-1849) to Howe Island and the Kingston region of Ontario. Their descendants are now scattered throughout Canada and the United States.