Note: This is an expanded version of a short piece of genealogy that I first published in my March, 2024 newsletter.
My 6th great-grandfather, Antonei Farley, was born around 1689 in Galway, Ireland. His father, to the best of my knowledge was John Farely; his mother was Mary Ann Gorry. 
Legend has it that sometime before 1710 he immigrated to Quebec, Canada by way of Paris, where he worked as a valet to the Chevalier d’Ussy. Supposedly, he travelled to Quebec with d’Ussy, but when the Chevalier returned to France, Antoine, as he was called in French, stayed.
On February 17, 1710, Antoine married Marie Anne Bastien (b. 1 June 1693). The couple moved to Montreal where they had one child, Jacques-Philippe Farley. Antoine disappeared from the record and apparently from Marie Anne’s life around 1710. Marie Anne went on to marry twice more, but she and her third husband, Jean Favre, met a tragic end on 13 May 1752, when they were bludgeoned to death by neighbor intending to rob them.
Jacques-Philippe Farley (b. 9 Dec 1710) became a voyageur—a fur trader—and canoed regularly between Montreal and Fort Michilimackinac in what would become Michigan.
Jacques-Philippe and his wife, Josette Dumouchel had a half dozen or more children, one of whom, Albert, was born at Fort Michilimackinac.
Albert Farley married Josette Dezery Latour, and they had a slew of children including François who married Elizabeth Sicard.
The last of François and Elizabeth’s seventeen children was David, born in Berthierville, a tiny village in Quebec Province. (Are you seeing a French theme in my Irish Farley ancestry? They are the inspiration for my new work-in-progress, A Tangled Dawn. More on that in future newsletters.)
Well, David Farley ended up moving to Mackinac Island where he married Angelique Beaudoin, whose father was French-Canadian but whose mother was Ojibwe.
Among David and Angeliques’ children were a set of twins born on Mackinac Island in 1855–Joseph and Oliver. Oliver was my great-grandfather.
Oliver Farley married Rebecca Thomson, who brought British, Scottish, and Jewish DNA into the family mix. Their daughter Blanche, the third of their thirteen children, was my dad Walter Percy Joque’s mom.
So, from the bottom of my heart and the 10% of my DNA that is Iris
h,
I wish you a…
