Tetonia (Idaho, USA) | Escape Rooms - 25 Mar, 2023

 

Old town Idaho Falls leaves a lot to be desired. Unlike many cities in the Intermountain West, Idaho Falls does not appear to invest many resources to re-energize the old town. Although there are few key businesses in the old town, most new investments are being made elsewhere in Idaho Falls. Nevertheless, the architecture is typical of many old towns in the intermountain west. As a result, It lacks character and charm.

Visiting and spending time with my sister's family has been fantastic. I was fortunate and timed my visit perfectly. My nephews were on Spring Break and had the week off. Consequently, we spent most of the week playing tabletop and video games. Each time I visit, I am blown away by how quickly the time passes. We have a great time! 

We also visited Idaho Escape Rooms. Escape rooms have grown in popularity recently, and many cities in this part of the country have them. They are puzzle or riddle rooms where players must accomplish tasks, often involving solving puzzles or riddles, to accomplish a goal within a set time limit. The rooms usually require 4-8 players.

Earlier this week, we made reservations for the Amazon Adventure Room. We book a room with moderate difficulty level for the 6 of us. "Your task is to solve the puzzles of the Amazon to find the idol of Man-i-wanna-get-out," says the young host. He then gives a bit more of the backstory before he leads us into a room and locks the door behind us.

As we begin to get our bearings in the strange room, Dylan looks up at the top of the wall and says, "I know this code! That's the letter U." Sure enough, as we work around the top of the room, the letters of the alphabet are written in pigpen cipher. Dylan learned pigpen cipher in Cub Scouts and uses it frequently to write to his friends. Occasionally, he also turned in his spelling homework in pigpen cipher, a feat that neither his teacher nor mom found very amusing. 😂 Thanks to Dylan's super code-cracking ability, we crack the last puzzle. Dylan unlocks the idol with 15 minutes to spare. From left to right below, my brother-in-law Aaron, nephews Daniel, Dylan, Aidan, me, and my little sister Dana.

The weather has been the pits in Tetonia since I arrived a couple days ago. It has snowed every day. I don't tolerate the cold well these days. Not only am I not dressed for it, but I am no longer acclimatized to the cold. Nevertheless, this has allowed me to explore my genealogy with my mom.

I am particularly interested in uncovering the Grenier lineage. Which part of France did my ancestors originate from? My mom has spent considerable time working with Ancestery.com and has recently dabbled with Familysearch.org. "I like Ancestry but the site is fairly expensive. They use DNA to get you started and provide a 3-month membership for $199 USD," she tells me. "A better option might be family search, but I am less familiar with it," she continues. 

I decide to create a free family search account to begin my research. "Here is the information about your father's side of the family, the Greniers, that your aunt shared with me," says my mom. We begin entering the information one person at a time. Name, important dates (e.g., birth, death, etc.), parents, spouses, and kids. Already I notice that the information is already sparse by the time we get to four generations (i.e., circa the 1850s). Fortunately, I am late to the game, and other people have already linked information from my ancestors. Birth records, marriage certificates, etc., start popping up almost immediately. I spend the next while verifying documents, and soon my tree grows exponentially. 

Together we spend many hours on the sites. Mom is sharing what she has uncovered in Ancestry for her lineage. "It looks like most of our ancestors that left France in the 1600s to colonize New France (i.e., Québéc, Canada) originated from northwestern France," I say. Normandy, Brittany, and Nantes come up frequently when exploring the Bouthilliers.

I am amazed at how much information I now have. Combined with the information my mother collected for the Bouthilliers, I have a fantastic story to explore. I still need to add my mom's lineage to my account, but I am already intrigued. 

A couple of notable things I have already uncovered from the Greniers. My lineage is not tied to the Greniers from France, as I once thought. Before 1634, the surname Garnier was used. Grenier first appeared in 1671 when the surname Garnier Grenier was first used in Québéc. Two generations later, near 1734, Jean-Baptiste Grenier is the child to use the sole surname of Grenier. I say this wasn't what I expected to my mom.

With some cursory poking around, I find that my Greneir lineage may also originate from northwest France. I need to investigate this more and have some ideas to help me understand where my ancestors originated in France. I plan to create a map of sorts which I can then use for a future trip to France.

One of my ancestors, Barb d'Orange, immigrated from Lucé, France. Now a small town of 16,000 people southwest of Paris. Barb was a "Filles du Roi (King's Daughters)." Filles du Roi were notable, as they were single or widowed women that immigrated to New France under the protection and expense of King Louis XIV. Most women were under 25 years of age. They received passage to New France to help draw French men to the new territory. The goal was to boost the population of French people in New France by establishing families through marriage. Between 1663 and 1673, approximately 727 women were part of the Filles du Roi program, though the actual number is unknown. Women that remained single are lost from the records, but the exact number is hypothesized to be near 1,000. 

Barb was married in Québéc in 1669, which tells me she immigrated to New France between 1663 and 1669. She would have been 18-24 years old when she immigrated. Barb represents the matriline ancestor, great-grandmother, who gave birth to two generations of daughters, eventually leading to the first Grenier, Jean Baptiste Grenier, in my lineage in Québéc. 

There is considerable work for me to learn which of my ancestors immigrated and link them to places in France. However, I am very pleased with the information I now can access. Nearly all the records around the 1600s are complete. Now I simply need to extract the information I need.