A Word Of Advice For Brendan And Dugan

A ringing phone woke me from a sound sleep at 6:30 this morning.  After I say Hello a male mechanical voice begins;  "This  call  is  for  Rob  bert  LoM  barge.  If  you  would  like  to  ac  cept  a  teach  ing  po  sit  ion  to  day  please  press  one."   Because I already have tests scheduled for today I press 2 without waiting for the next prompt and hand the phone back to Jackie, who unfortunately for her is the guardian of the phone.  She mumbles something before managing to place the device back into it's charger station.

My last name happens to be LaBarge, not LomBarge, and it would be nice IF my name WERE to change that I actually had something to do with the decision.

The clan LaBarge has been in this country for over two hundred years.  Each LaBarge individual has the option of putting a space between the lower case A and the upper case B.  When handwritten it always looks like La Barge, but typed it may appear either LaBarge or La Barge.

My dad told me that one time in the 1940's a door to door genealogy salesman convinced my Grandmother LaBarge that his firm could do research and come up with a great looking LaBarge coat of arms for "only a few hundred dollars".  She was pretty excited until my Grandpa Henry came home and put the kabosh on it.  Henry told the salesman that there were some things in his ancestry that he wasn't sure he wanted other people to know about and that it would end up "costing more to shut you up than it did to get the coat of arms."   That's when I knew that Uncle Jack came by his quips naturally.

I remember one time that my Grandma LaBarge called up and said that Henry had fallen in the tub.  My dad and I rushed over, got a very shaken up Henry into his bed and my dad pulled up the covers.  Looking at his father my dad whispers: "Dad, how do you feel?"  Opening his eyes a little Henry sticks his hand up and rubs two fingers together.  "Like this."

Despite Henry's warning there has been quite a bit of genealogical research done on the family.  We can trace our ancestry back to an individual who married a Marie Poitevin in 1636 at Columby on the Theon, Calvados county, located in the Normandy region of France.  This area is on the west coast facing England and the person's name was Jacques de la Berge.  de la Berge means "on the bank of a river" and that makes sense if the name was derived from the location.  The name can also mean "on the edge of a mountain" so there is speculation that the de la Berge family may have emigrated from another region a generation or two prior.

Jacques had a son who was named Robert de la Berge.  In 1658 my name sake sailed to New France (Canada), on a three year work contract and settled at St. Anne de Beaupre, Quebec.  I find that bit of information really cool because I met Jackie on the train we were both taking to that same place for a ski trip while at college.

After the three years were over Robert de la Berge decided to stay but he started to sign his name in a variety of combinations of de la Berge.  After about 10 years it consistently became LaBerge.  Our ancestry in North America flows from Robert to his son Guillaume (the French word for William) to his son Gabriel, who is credited with changing LaBerge to LaBarge.  Gabriel also had a son named Gabriel and he was the father of Joseph.  It was this Joseph Marie LaBarge in 1808 who traveled from Quebec to St. Louis using a birch bark canoe.

Joseph Marie was a scout for the US army in the war of 1812, losing two fingers and incurring a tomahawk wound to the head.  His son was the famous riverboat captain, Joseph LaBarge, whose life and career from 1815 to 1899 spanned the rise and decline of the riverboat as a prime factor in opening up the American Western Frontier.

One of Captain Joe's sons was named Henry and he was the father of my grandfather, Henry Jr.  My father's name is William (Guillaume in French), and then we make it all the back to me, Robert.  Looking forward I have one son, Benjamin and he has two sons, Brendan and Dugan.  They are the 12th generation of LaBarges in North American and hopefully they will not change their last name to LomBarge.  Besides, living "on the edge of a mountain" in Tennessee currently suits them both quite well.