Alexis Nadeau and Marie Ursule Gueret dit Dumont are Spencer Chamberlain’s grandparents. This is based on recently discovered DNA evidence which I will explain later in this post. This new DNA evidence connects two life stories, solves a 250-year-old mystery and shatters a cherished Chamberlain family tradition. My conclusions for this report are based on scientific evidence, historic facts and recorded family history.

On October 22, 1758, Alexis Nadeau married Marie Dumont. They lived in Kamouraska, a beautiful village in Québec, nestled on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River. The name “Kamouraska” is an Algonquin word which means “where rushes grow at the water’s edge.”¹

The Battle of Quebec

Less than one year after their marriage, there was an historic battle for the control of North America. Fifty British warships and 150 transports sailed up the Saint Lawrence past Kamouraska. They were heading toward Quebec City 100 miles further up the river. On July 12, 1759, three thousand British troops, under the command of General James Wolfe, scaled the cliffs to the Plains of Abraham. The British formed their battlelines in traditional European warfare manner. The French regulars and French Militia also formed their lines. The French’s allies, the Indians, picked off British troops in the flanks from cover in the nearby brush. The French charged but were mowed down by the British who held their fire until the enemy were only a few paces away.²

After the defeat at Quebec, the power of the French in North America was on the decline and the bond between the French and Indians began to weaken.

The Nadeau Family

Alexis Nadeau was 25-years-old and likely served in the French Militia at that time. The Nadeau family were French. The Catholic Church maintained excellent records, and all their family lines trace back to Mother France. They had 13 children, 7 boys and 6 girls. All had a baptism record. Their infant baptism date gives us an approximate date of their birth. All these children lived their entire lives close to their home in Quebec, Canada. That is, all except for one child, Marie Rose Nadeau.

Marie Rose Nadeau is their first child. She was born in 1761 and some believe she died sometime before 1775. Her parents definitely believed she died because in 1778 they gave their 11th child her name, Marie Rose. It was customary, at the time, to repeat a name of a deceased sibling.

What really happened to Marie Rose Nadeau?

Chamberlain legends and family history paint a picture of what happened to Marie Rose Nadeau. We don’t know the details, and can only imaging the grief of her parents when Marie Rose disappeared. One thing we do know, however, is that she was not dead. We know this because she is my 4th great-grandmother.

DNA results combined with our recorded family traditions give powerful evidence that Rose Marie Nadeau was captured by Indians when she was a baby or very young child. They gave her a new name by which she became known to the Chamberlain family as “Winona”.

I believe that Spencer Chamberlain’s mother, Winona, was a French girl raised by Indians. She probably believed she was an Indian. It is certain that her family believed that she was.

Spencer Chamberlain’s family believed Winona was and Indian

Spencer Chamberlain’s daughter, Jeanette Chamberlain Phillips, described her father in a poem she wrote in 1860. “Though fair in the face and soft was his hair, the blood of the red man still lingered there”.³

In 1927, Jeanette’s son, Alonzo Chamberlain Phillips, sent a package of information and photos to his “cousins in the west”. At the end of a two page, type written family history, he wrote by hand, “Spencer Chamberlain’s mother was a full blooded Iroquois.”⁴

Harry Alonzo Phillips’ 1929 poem about Runaway Pond indicates that he also believed Winona was 100% Indian. He wrote of Spencer, “Was born in seventeen-eighty-six, Half Red, half white, as blood did mix.”⁵

In 1815, Spencer Chamberlain’s Army discharge paper described him as “6 feet high, Light Complexion, Blue eyes and Black hair.”⁶  Since Spencer Chamberlain had blue eyes, I have always believed his mother Winona was part French. However, like everyone else in my family I believed she was an Indian. I now believe, based on new DNA evidence and our strong family traditions, that Winona was a French girl raised by Indians. Also, that she lived the way of the Indians, spoke their language and that she believed she was an Indian.

How John Chamberlain met Winona

This unpublished tradition about John Chamberlain is further evidence that Winona was raised by Indians. My uncle Robert Chamberlain revealed this information in a family interview. We met at the home of Robert and Louise Chamberlain on March 5, 2019. In attendance were: Robert Chamberlain and his wife Louise, my brother Lyle Brent Chamberlain, my sister Deanna Chamberlain Grant, my daughter Lara Chamberlain and myself Dennis Chamberlain.

Robert reported what he remembered from his father Harry Chamberlain. Harry lived with his grandfather Alonzo Chamberlain until he was 10 years old. Alonzo was the son of Spencer Chamberlain, the son of John and Winona.

“John Chamberlain, he was a frontiersman, dad said. He did not like people very well and if the frontier came within 50 miles, he would move. He just liked being by himself, well I can see why he married an Indian. But he was very, very respected because he was a super sharp shooter and John was also a super runner….  He dealt a lot with the Indians, dad said, and they more or less accepted him in the tribe.  But he was so fast that he would out run the braves, so John had to slow down a little to make sure the Indians would win sometimes. So I guess that carried on, on to Spencer.”

“Dad told me too that…. the villagers respected him so much because he would be able to communicate between the Indians and them. But apparently they feared John, the Indians feared John, so in him to their little community he was their life guard. He was such a sharp shooter and knew the Indian’s style….  That is about what he told me.” – Robert Chamberlain

My eight-year DNA search for Winona began in 2017

In 2017, my daughter, Lara, took the “23andMe” DNA test which showed she has a small amount of Indian ancestry. This encouraged me to send in my own DNA sample with the hope I could discover more about my 4th great grandmother’s Indian heritage. The report was very disappointing. It said I had zero indigenous American ancestry. It turned out that Lara inherited hers from her mother. My wife thought this was hilarious.

I was confident of my Indian ancestry. Therefore, I dismissed the 23andme report as some kind of sampling error. About 1% to 2% of my DNA comes from Winona, so I continued my search to find DNA matches who were descendants of Winona’s family.

The Descendants of Chief Madockawando

In July 2017, I published a hypothetical story about Winona based on family history in Maine which suggested that the Penobscots of Maine might be her family.

A French Barron, Jean-Vincent D’Abbadie-de-St-Castin, was adopted into the tribe and married two of Chief Madockawando’s daughters. They had a large progeny, all of whom likely carried the recessive blue-eyed allele, which, I speculated, may have been passed down to Spencer Chamberlain.

In 2019, Harold Myshrall invited me to join his new Facebook group  “The Descendants of Chief Madockawando.”. The members of the group were very kind. They were interested in my story and were willing to help me. Many listed their pedigree through various family lines back to Chief Madockawando.

I did not find a direct connection to any of these lines. However, many of my DNA matches had French names like the members of this Facebook group. When the French converted the Indians to the Catholic faith, they gave them Christian (French) names. Their recorded French names became permanently established. Since all of my other pedigree names are British or Swedish, this gave me an important lead.

Ancestry.com DNA Matches

I have 64,581 Ancestry.com DNA matches, 26,854 of these matches were from my father’ line. (Matches are persons who have at least one segment of DNA on their chromosomes that matches my DNA). This indicates we have an ancestor in common. About 3% of matches from my fathers line should be descendants of my 4th great-grandmother Winona’s family.

I selected matches from my father’s line who were distant relatives with very large, publicly available, family tree charts, (5000 names or more). When I found French names, I expanded the chart to the sixth or seventh generation. Any DNA segment or segments that we have in common will pass down the pedigree chart through at least one person in every generation.

I was looking for the generation of Winona’s parents. Since Spencer Chamberlain was born in 1786, my estimate for Winona’s birth year was between 1740 to 1770. Couples bearing children within this range were the generation of Winona’s parents.

Then I analyzed and printed out the pedigree charts of several different DNA matches. Names of some couples in these pedigree charts reoccurred several times on different people’s charts. One of these reoccurring couples, in the right generation, was likely Winona’s parents.

Ancestry.com ThruLines

Thru Lines is a program that uses Ancestry customer pedigree charts, linked with customer DNA results, to predict ancestry. Customers who have DNA segments which match yours can help predict your ancestry pedigree.

I found about 10 to 15 couples who possibly were Winona’s parents. I began to enter these in my pedigree chart as Winona’s parents one couple at a time. It takes Ancestry’s ThruLines computers about 24 hours to calculate and show the number of matches for each couple.

Winona’s parents are my fifth great-grand-parents. All of my matches through Winona’s parents are descendants of one of Winona’s siblings. Most of these matches are my sixth cousins. Closer cousins are not available because none of Winona’s direct ancestors know who her parents are. Therefore, they are not recorded in Ancestry.

Husband and wife are rated individually. Since both biological parents are related to their children, they generally have the same number of matches. On the other hand, uncles and aunts will show more matches for the DNA relative. Couples that show O or 1 match are distantly related or unrelated.

DNA will not tell us which child of the family is Winona. We can only guess this by determining which sibling best fits what we know about her.

Results

A different set of possible parents were entered each day into my Ancestry pedigree chart. The matches were observed 24 hours later in Ancestry “ThruLines”.

Most couples showed 0 to 1 matches. However, the following couples have 4 to 9 matches, showing they have a strong relationship to Winona.  All of the following couples have children born between 1740 to 1770 which is Winona’s likely birth range.

Names, birth years and number of matches:

1- Michel Gueret Dumont 1708  (9 matches), Marie Rose Levasseur 1711 (9 matches)

2- Jean Baptiste Gueret Dumont 1711 (7 Matches), Madeleine De La Bouitier 1730 (0 matches).

3- Alexis Nadeau 1701 (4 matches), Marie Ann Albert 1709 (4 matches).

Husband and wife #1 have equal number of matches, as does couple #3. Therefore, these couples are candidates as Winona’s possible parents. In couple #2, Jean Dumont has 7 matches and his wife has 0. This indicates he could be Winona’s uncle. As it turns out, Jean Dumont is Michel Dumont’s brother.

Couple #1 had three sons and five daughters. Two daughters died as infants and have death and burial records. The other three daughters were married and raised a family and died in Canada. Therefore, none of these are strong candidates to be Winona.

Couple #3 had five sons and six daughters. Five daughters raised families in Kamouraska, three of these women were too old to be Winona. One daughter died as a child and has a recorded death date. Likewise, none of these daughters are strong candidates to be Winona.

However, I was electrified to find that a daughter from couple #1 married a son of couple #3. This is a strong indication that couples #1 and #3 are Winona’s grandparents!!!

Winona’s family

Alexis Nadeau and Marie Ursule Gueret dit Dumont are the son and daughter of couple #3 and #1 respectively. I entered their name in my pedigree chart as Winona’s parents. Ancestry DNA ThruLines showed that I have 9 DNA matches for both of her parents! That means that I have 9 sixth cousins who are descendants from both her mother and her father through four different siblings. Also, I have a total of 13 sixth or seventh cousins who are descendants of their parents, Winona’s grandparents.

Next, I had to determine if they had a child who matches what we know about Winona. I had to find a daughter born between 1740 and 1770.

They had thirteen children. Twelve of the children have a record of their specific location and date they died. Ten of twelve were married and raised a family. Two boys died as children. All twelve lived and died in Quebec.

Six of their children were daughters, three are too young to be Winona. Five were married and raised a family. Only one of these daughters stand out a one who could be Winona.

Their oldest child was Marie Rose Nadeau. Her infant baptism date is July 21, 1761. However, that is the only record of her. There are no marriage, death or burial records for her. Somehow, she just disappeared.

They assume she died sometime before 1775. But, that is not correct. She gave birth to Spencer Chamberlain eleven years later when she was 25-years-old.

Conclusions:

The Nadeau family is well documented in Family Search. To my surprise, every line goes back all the way to France.

I was looking for an Indian girl who’s family had been given a French name. Ironically, I found a French girl who had been given and Indian name. The Chamberlain family knows her as “Winona”.

I am sorry this discovery may be quite a shock for some, as it was to me. Perhaps, like myself, you may even experience a minor identity crisis. I believed I was part Indian all my life. Nevertheless, new DNA evidence combined with our family tradition tells us that Winona is a little French girl who was raised by Indians.

On the other hand, I am very happy that I found Marie Rose Nadeau, my French 4th great-grandmother, who has been missing for over 250 years.

References:

(1) https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/kamouraska-que

(2) The Battle of Quebec, Full Movie, (2009) Noel Burton, Arthur Holden, Marcel Jeannin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osj47uHJkUs

(3) Poem by Jeanette Chamberlain Phillips, daughter of Spencer Chamberlain, written in 1860 to defend her father as the hero of Runaway-Pond.

(4) Alonzo Chamberlain Phillips packet of family information sent Dec. 21, 1927. His letter began “Dear cousins in the West”. He apparently sent this information to the families of Amanda Chamberlain Warren and John Harry Chamberlain. Both families lived in Spencer, Iowa at the time.

(5) From Harry Alonzo Phillips poem about Runaway written in1929. Harry Phillips is the grandson of Spencer Chamberlain.

(6) Spencer Chamberlain’s Army discharge papers, 1815