SUCH a challenge: who was the father of Ida Frances Pike? Ida did not know her father, but she had an opinion: her last name should have been Billard. Was she right?
Ida Frances Pike with her new husband
To get at any sort of an answer, let's start with Ida's mother, Louisa Pike.
Louisa was the first child of Timothy Pike, a fisherman, and Mary Magdalene Huelin. She was born a little too soon after their marriage, which took place on 26 April 1866, well into Magdalene’s pregnancy. Channel Anglican Marriages Louisa arrived in August 1866. Her parents promptly had her baptized on 2 Sep 1866 at St. James Anglican Church. Channel Anglican Baptisms You'll notice we are relying here on the work of many dedicated volunteer transcribers, to whom I am very grateful. Although unindexed records for Newfoundland are making their way online, this particular district isn't up yet.
Anyway, Louisa’s parents had a steady stream of children after her. Her brother James came along in 1868, followed by Adelaide in 1870, John in 1871, Catherine Jane in 1873, Edward in 1874, Timothy in 1876, and Thomas in 1878. The children were regularly baptized and sometimes confirmed at St James Anglican Church.
The children did attend school in Channel. Louisa started at the age of seven (in about 1873) and continued until she was fourteen. Even several generations after Louisa, attending school until 12-16 years of age was the norm. 1945 Census of Newfoundland, Louisa Pike In 1864, about nine years before she started, one man in Channel was the designated school teacher, indicating they did have one school when she was small. Hutchinson’s Newfoundland Directory, 1864-1865
In 1875, Louisa’s father became the lighthouse keeper for Channel Head. At first, only the light house itself was built on the island, and Louisa and her family continued to live in Channel on the mainland. This was concerning to the lighthouse inspector, John Neville, who quickly noticed that the lighthouse was “in a place very difficult to access, rendering it undesirable that the light should be operated by a resident on the other side of the gut”. Honestly, that "gut" is a narrow waterway: about 150 feet across judging from Google Maps. But it must certainly have been inconvenient, especially in winter. On at least one occasion, Timothy had been unable to reach the lighthouse due to poor weather, and the light had not been lit. Neville recommended that a small house be built adjacent to the lighthouse, and a dwelling was built in 1877. History of the Channel Head Lighthouse So, at about eleven, Louisa would have moved into the little house on the rock island, and started crossing the water each day to go to school.
Then, starting at the age of sixteen, Louisa began to appear in the records as a witness to weddings. With her father, she attended the wedding of William Carter and Martha Chaffe on 23 Nov 1882. On 23 Dec 1885, at the age of 19, she attended the wedding of Philip Strickland and Jane Chaffy. The very next day, she went to another wedding, this time of John Pike (who might be her cousin) and Susan Stoodley. And at 21, she attended the wedding of John Buffett and Diana Patience Pike on 4 Jan 1888. Channel Anglican Marriages
So, she went to a lot of weddings. Then, when Louisa was 23, she attended the wedding of Ralph Gore and Susanna Pike at St James Anglican Church. The date was 7 Jan 1890. Also in attendance was a Peter Billard (gasp!), who would have been about thirty at the time.
167 Ralph Gore 28 bachelor Fisherman Burgeo father: Matthew Gore Store Keeper
Susanna Pike 21 spinster Channel father: Loyal Pike Mariner
7 January 1890 in Church of St James, Channel
Loyal Pike, Louisa Pike, Peter Billard [witnesses]
Just nine months and 25 days¹ after that wedding, on 1 Nov 1890, Louisa gave birth to a daughter. Louisa at 24 years old was still unmarried, and Ida Frances Pike was marked as illegitimate in the records. No father is listed. Little baby Ida was baptized on 21 Nov 1890.
Note: Louisa wasn’t the witness to another wedding for another five years (the next one was that of her sister, Adelaide). I wonder how she was treated after having a baby out of wedlock. Just looking through the list of babies born, it doesn't seem to be a common occurrence. It was much more common to get pregnant, get married, and THEN have a baby. Like her own parents had done. Heh. (In case you are curious, Louisa did go on to marry thirteen years later. She moved away from Channel with her husband and went on to have more children, and I think she left young Ida living in the lighthouse. I've also written more about Ida Pike and her move to Nova Scotia.)
That's a thin thread, I admit, from Ida to Peter. So what do we know about Peter Billard?
Peter was baptized on 27 Aug 1860², the son of Martin and Harriett Billard. They lived in Grand Bruit, Newfoundland, about 40 miles (65 km) east of Channel. There are some interesting things about Peter Billard.
According to his entry on wikitree, Peter was married, had a daughter, and was widowed, all by the young age of twenty six. Poor Peter. He was widowed four years at the time he was witness to that wedding with Louisa. And no one has found any record of him after that last wedding he witnessed with Louisa in 1890. He just disappears.
Note: Grand Bruit has a good story as well. Like other small and remote fishing villages, it was only accessible by boat (or, in modern times, by helicopter), and its population had been in steady decline since the 1970s. Finally the last of Grand Bruit's inhabitants were resettled in 2010, abandoning the town entirely. It must have been tremendously sad. Fortunately, the artist Michael Fantuz spent the last inhabited week there and images of his paintings, still online at this time via Wayback Machine, are heartbreaking and absolutely beautiful. Worth a look.
And so it was the mystery of Ida, Louisa, and Peter that got me to spit in a tube for DNA testing. I used Ancestry.com, for what that's worth, and it's been a good experience: I regularly get matches popping up. Sadly, most of those matches do not have attached trees. Some people are only in it for the ethnicity estimates, I suppose, which are pretty cool after all. But just recently a few Billards have been in the mix! No trees with Peter in them yet, but with his father, Martin. And a couple of links at the generation that would contain Peter. I have messages out, requests have been made, fingers have been crossed.
It looks like Ida was right about that Billard name. But which Billard? The challenge continues.
1. That's 298 days. A pregnancy is usually calculated to be 280 days.
2. "Newfoundland Vital Statistics, 1753-1893," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QK9Y-9DLB : 11 March 2018), Peter Billard, 27 Aug 1860; citing Baptism, Grand Bruit, Burgeo, Newfoundland, Canada, Provincial Archives, St. John's.