Fabulous Friday's Forever Family Featuring...

Mary Raymond Constantineau Finch!! Actually born Marie Clotilde Raimond to Damase Raimond/Raymond and Clotilde Plantier on the 26th of March 1846 in St Jeans, Quebec, Canada, Mary is my great grandmother. Her birth record was my great genealogical find this year! Thanks, to Rachel who found the mircofilm for the parish in Quebec where her family lived!! I can't tell you the delight I had finding this record. Such joy!!

Mary Raymond used to be a mystery to me and now I know so much about her. She married Nelson Constantineau, in Lowell Massachusetts and they had nine children. She was widowed after only 20 years of marriage when her youngest child was only 3 years old. She remarried three years later to a man named Thomas Finch. He had at least two children and she considered them her own.


A few years ago I made a query on a mailing list looking for Mary Finch's obituary. A wonderful women I have never meet before, lovingly went to the Lowell Historical Society and found her funeral notice and obituary for me. Tears of joy fell as I read about this grandma I love that I never meet. I know it might seem strange, but her death notice made her life much more real for me!

"The funeral of the late Mrs. Mary Finch took place yesterday at 8:30 o'clock from her home in Ripley street, North Chelmsford and was largely attended by sorrowing relatives and friends including a delegation from the Ladies' Auxiliary of St. John's Temperance society of which the deceased was an esteemed member. At St. John's church at 9 o'clock a funeral mass was celebrated by Rev. Edmund Schofield. The choir, under the direction of Miss Josephine McCabe sang the Gregorian mass, the solos being sustained by Miss McCabe and by Andrew McCarthy of St. Patrick's church this city. There was a profusion of beautiful floral tributes, including a large pilow and cross inscribed' Wife and Mother." the family; pillow inscribed "Farewell Grandma" the Crowley children of Abington, cross on base...."

The funeral notice went on to tell about several more flower arrangement which I thought was so touching. I could recognize names of people who are relatives. And, I totally loved the part about the Temperance Society. It sounds so much like Relief Society to me, and I picture this wonderful grandma pleased that I'm involved in such an organization. From her obituary I learned that she was an invalid for the last 12 years of her life. Oh, my what trials that woman must have gone through! I long to meet her again and can't wait for that grandmotherly hug from her!!