There are so many love stories in a family tree. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. But some love stories tug at the heart
strings and cannot be forgotten, no matter how many generations pass. One of those is the story of Gedeon Talbot
and Flavie Provost. Gedeon and Flavie
were both born in French Canada. They
married in a double ceremony with Gedeon’s best friend, Solomon Lanoue and
Flavie’s younger sister Julie Provost on the 29th of September 1846
at Henryville, Quebec.
The Lanoues and the Talbots remained close all of
their lives. Where one couple moved, the
other followed shortly thereafter.
Gedeon and Flavie started their family in Henryville with the births of
their first three children; Julia, Victoria and Mary. They moved to Kankakee County, Illinois like
so many other French Canadians after Mary’s birth. Daughter Aurelie was the first of their
children born in the United States, born on the 21st of September
1856. In Kankakee County they welcomed six
more children in addition to Aurelie; Joseph, George, Napoleon, Alfred,
Josephine and Rosanna. On the 7th
of January 1866 they suffered for the death of a child.
Nine-year-old Aurelie passed away and was buried at St. George Cemetery in
Kankakee County.
It was around that time that Gedeon took part in a
trade mission through Kansas Territory and on to Pike’s Peak. He loved the country and decided to move
his family to this new land. Illinois
was crowded and there was no room to expand his farm. There was no available land for his sons to
farm when they came of age. It was time
to move on.
Gedeon put his land up for sale and in 1868 he left
for northern Kansas to establish a claim.
In February of 1869 Flavie brought the younger children on the train,
along with Victoria and her husband Eugene Fountain. They got off the train at the last stop,
which was Waterville, Kansas. They
loaded their belongings into two wagons and headed west to where Gedeon’s land
was. Eugene drove one wagon, Joseph
drove the other. Gedeon had built a lean
to which in later years they joked was a “lean to with nothing to lean on” for
the family that first winter. It was a
bitterly cold winter and the family nearly froze.
The Talbot homestead was on the southeast side of
what would soon become the town of Greenleaf, Kansas. Solomon and Julie Lanoue had also left
Illinois and they settled on the southwest side of town. The two families were the earliest settlers
of Greenleaf and were responsible for the establishment of the Catholic Church
there. The first services were held in
the Lanoue home until a frame church could be built.
Gedeon built a beautiful frame house for his family
in 1871. Until just four or five years
ago, that home was still lived in and though now deserted, it still stands on
the southeast side of town. At this
home, Flavie gave birth to their last child on April 15th, 1872, a
son named Phillip.
All of Gedeon and Flavie’s surviving children married
and settled in north central Kansas.
Daughter Julia had married Marcel Balthazor in Kankakee County and they
came to Kansas in about 1870, homesteading near Clifton. Eugene and Victoria settled in Clifton. Mary married John Baptiste Provost (no close
relation to Flavie and Julie that we can find) and moved to St. Joseph,
Kansas. The boys married and settled
right there in Greenleaf. Josephine
married Lue Odette and moved to Clyde, Kansas.
Rosanna married Napoleon Mailloux and lived in Kansas until after the
turn of the century, when they moved to South Dakota. The family was close and they often visited
each other.
In 1886 Gedeon donated a section of his land for the
building of a new Catholic Church. It
was a beautiful brick structure and he and his sons helped construct the
building. Son George Talbot and his
second wife, Ella Hayes, were the first couple married in the new church. Son Joe’s daughter Ella was the first child
baptized there.
Gedeon & Flavie (Provost) Talbot pose for a photo at Smith's California Photo Car in late 1886. Gedeon carefully wrote their names and ages on the back and the date the photo was taken.
Solomon and Julie Lanoue moved to Concordia Kansas
where many of Solomon’s siblings had established homes, but they rode the train
to Greenleaf often to spend time with Gedeon and Flavie.
The love that Gedeon and Flavie shared was one for
the ages. Together with the Lanoues,
they had a large 50th Anniversary celebration in Greenleaf with over
75 family and friends present. Both
couples renewed their vows at the Catholic Church and then went to the Talbot
home for dinner and celebrating late into the evening. The articles say that Gedeon and Flavie were
hale and hearty at the ages of 71 and 69 respectively.
Flavie Talbot died suddenly of a stroke on the 7th of
January in 1899. Her funeral was held on January 9th in the church
her husband and sons had built. Gedeon was devastated. Family legend says he set his affairs in
order and went to bed to die, for he couldn’t live without his Flavie. Upon further investigation, I found that this
was likely true. Gedeon wrote his will just
days after Flavie’s death and filed it at the county courthouse. He named his lifelong friend Solomon Lanoue
to be the executor of his estate. On the
13th of January the Greenleaf Sentinel reported that Gedeon was
“quite sick with pneumonia.” His
daughters took turns making their way to Greenleaf to care for him. Gedeon Talbot died on the 16th of
January 1899, just nine days after Flavie.
His funeral was held the following day and he and Flavie rest together
at Sacred Heart Catholic Cemetery, just a mile or so east of the house they
lived in for 28 years. One has to
wonder, was it really pneumonia that killed Gedeon Talbot, or did he die of a
broken heart?
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