Bejot Family
Extensive records of the descendants of Charles Bejot (c.1575 - c.1620), gr-gr-gr-gr-great-grandfather of Eugene Bejot, has been created by Harlan Edward Jones.
A French genealogical site for the same family has been created by Thierry Straub.
Eugene Victor Bejot was born August
23, 1816 to Antoine Theodore, farmer, and Victorine Theophile Lefèvre at La
Ferte, Milon, Aisne, France. On September 6, 1852 he set sail from France for
the United States. His parents had both died prior to his departure.
Two years after his arrival in
America, Eugene married Catherine Broihier, daughter of François Broihier and
Marie Jeanne Monnier. She was born on November 25, 1828 in Grandvillars, Haut-Rhine,
France. It seems probable that she came to America with her parents. Had
the couple met on the same ship from France or through the community of French
immigrants in the Chicago area?
Eileen Kunz Hood, great-grandaughter
of Eugene and her two nieces, Terry Kunz Marinkovitch and Laura Kunz Cameron
(Eugene's great-great-granddaughters) “visited Germany in 1998. In getting their
directions they asked how you would get to Grandvillars. The response to their
request was 'WHY would you want to get to Grandvillars?!’ They found a very
small and dilapidated town.”1
While Catherine and Eugene lived in
the Chicago area, Eugene working as a farm labourer, they had three children:
Victorine, Josephine and Joseph. Their eldest child, Victorine, died in
1865 at the young at of ten years old. Sometime after Victorine's death
but before the 1870 census, the family moved to Elvaston, IL, where Eugene
continued to farm.
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Eugene V. Bejot 1816 + 1873 |
Eugene Bejot died in Elvaston,
IL on August 6, 1873 and was buried in the Oak Grove (Currey) Cemetery out of
Hamilton, IL. His wife Catherine was pregnant at the time of his death and their
daughter Catherine Emile was born three months later, on November 23, 1873. The Bejot family remained in the Elvaston area for some years after the father’s
death. In 1884, the widow Catherine Bejot joined her son Joseph and his
wife Mary Emma Sinele as they homesteaded in Nebraska. A
first-person account of this is told
by Mary Emma.
The total children of Eugene and Catherine Bejot are:
Victorine Josephine, born 22 January 1855 in Chicago, IL; died 30 August 1865
Josephine Eugenie, born 18 February 1857 in Chicago, IL
Joseph Cincinnatus, born 6 January 1859 in Chicago, IL
Catherine Emile, born 23 November 1873 in Elvaston, IL
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Josephine Bejot Kunz |
Josephine Bejot married Michael Kunz, the son of a local farmer, and gave birth to eight children before her untimely death in 1890. The Bejots kept contact with the Kunz family even after the death of Josephine, even travelling out west to visit Michael's second wife, Amelia, after Michael's death.
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Catherine Broihier Bejot |
Joseph Bejot married Mary Emma Senile in Hancock County, IL. He and his wife farmed for a while in the Elvaston area but eventually moved to Longpine, NB around 1884. Joseph’s widowed mother, Catherine, went with them to Nebraska and eventually died there. It must have been hard for her to leave the area where her husband was buried.
The youngest daughter, Catherine Emile, married Harry Morgan Cuerden on September 17,
1895 in Quincy, IL. From the Wilbur Register of December 12, 1924 we learn
that "Catherine and Harry Curadan (sic.) of Hamilton, Illinois visited Amelia Kunz
in Sherman. Mr Cuerden [was] a banker in Illinois."
Return to the story of
Michael and Josephine
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1 Personal communications with Evelyn Kunz Gaffney, recorded in her "Kunz Simons Story."
