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Finding Shirley [1]

['Just Saying', 'View Profile', 'Back Of Bourke']

Date: 2026-04-19  

That’s my mother, Shirley. She died a couple of weeks before my 5th birthday. Back in the early aughts, I spent a lot of time researching her family. As she had died so young, she was an only child, and her parents had died before I even graduated high school, I knew very little about her family. I wanted to know if I had any living relatives from her side.

The answer was, Yes, but very few. I met her first cousin, but that was about it. I knew of some other more distant relatives, but I was unable to locate them, and didn’t have much to say to them, anyway.

I was astounded to learn, though, that her family was from Quebec, Canada. Her grandfather (my great-grandfather) had changed his last name when he moved to the States. His birth name was William (or Guillaume) Audette. I found that out by happenstance. Because census records showed my ggf’s birthplace as Canada and his first language as French. From that surprising discovery, I realized his birth name probably was Audette — my middle name, the one I never understood.

That led me to find that my ggf had a brother, Nelson, who kept his birth name. I believe he and Nelson immigrated together, but Nelson stayed in New York, while William travelled across the country to Ogden, Utah. (I like to think he hitched a covered wagon ride with a caravan of Mormons.) Still, William and his brother stayed in touch, and I have pictures of Nelson and his children and grandchildren that had been sent to William and that were in my grandfather’s estate.

At the time, I wanted to dig deeper, to see if I could locate William and Nelson’s birth records, and to see if they had more brothers and sisters, whether still in Canada or in other parts of the U.S. However, I just didn’t have the time to devote to cross-border genealogy, so I set everything aside.

Until recently, when I read that I might be eligible for Canadian citizenship if I can prove lineage to a Canadian ancestor. w00t, w00t!! But, of course, the name change is going to make it difficult. Also, I never got a birth certificate for my grand-father, and I’m not sure there is one.

I decided the best way to find William’s Canadian birth records will be to research backwards from Nelson, then hope I can find William’s records once I have confirmation of the names and locations of their parents. For my grandfather, I will see if I can locate his birth record (i.e., contact the county/state office); otherwise, I have census records, obituaries, social security application, and pictures that show his relationship to William, his Canadian father. Nelson’s death certificate (which I have from my early research) states the names of his parents and his birth place neighborhood in Canada.

I spent today pulling relevant documents from my 20+ year old files. There are two places here that might be able to point me in the right direction for getting Nelson’s birth records: (1) the LDS family research center, and (2) a family research room I saw in my local library’s main branch. The LDS center doesn’t open until Tuesday, but I had planned to go to the downtown library tomorrow, anyway, so I can add a visit to the family research room. I’m hoping they have a genealogist on staff there who might have experience with Canadian birth records. My work today gives me something to show, in case they need documentation of my relationship to Nelson.

I did find out that the NY Public Library has digitized Brooklyn’s city directories from 1856-1967, and the records are searchable! Amazing! It’s a long-shot, but I’d like to see if my ggf shows up with Nelson at any time before he left for Utah.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/19/800023618/community/finding-shirley/

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