Many of my ancestors were from Nova Scotia, both on my mom and dad's side of our family. Nova Scotia makes much of its living from fishing and shipping goods. My vision of fishing is casting a line into a small pond and maybe catching a 5 inch sunfish during the warmest days of summer while dangling my feet off a little red boat pier. Fishermen from Nova Scotia have a much more realistic vision of fishing which can be during the darkest and coldest days of November and December. It is not a picnic and it is very life threatening. Multiply these dangers two-fold before the times of our modern navigating instruments and state of the art life boats and life vests. This is what many of my male ancestors faced and I've learned that many uncles and cousins lives were claimed by the unmerciful ocean. One of these people was my great grand uncle (by marriage) Narcisse Jeremy Pothier.
When Narcisse Jeremy Pothier was born on February 19, 1866, in Wedgeport, Canada, his father, Jeremie, was 24 and his mother, Eulalie (LeBlanc), was 25. He had five sisters. He married Frances Anty Boudreau (my maternal grandfather's maternal aunt) at St. Michael's Parish in Wedgeport, NS on May 26, 1897. Their wedded bliss ended less than a year later when Narcisse died on February 4, 1898, at sea on the Brig St. Michel, at the age of 31.
Below was an article from "The Argus, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 36" that someone passed on to me and it was a poem of commemoration, that writes about Narcisse dying at sea and the pain of his young bride at losing him.
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