The Duchaine Website
Welcome to the website of the descendants of Gideon and Rachel DuChaine! Here you can become acquainted with relatives spread all over the United States and Canada. Please take note of the information under Reunions, and consider joining us next August at the annual reunion.
Gideon & Rachel
Gideon DuChaine (1863-1935) was a lumberman working in the forests of Elk and Clarion counties in northwestern Pennsylvania. He met Rachel Rosella Willets (1870-1949) when she was 19 years old and he was 26, and their courtship began. Against her aunt and uncle's wishes, she ran away and married Gideon in DuBois, PA on October 8, 1889. They made a living working in lumber camps in northwestern PA and NY and for a short time lived in both Chicoutimi, in northern Quebec (Gideon's family homestead), and Lowell, Massachusetts, where Gideon worked alongside his brothers as a loom fixer at the Merrimack Textile Mill. Their marriage produced eleven children, nine of whom survived to adulthood.
In 1925, after jobs became more scarce in the lumber industry, the couple moved to Westfield, NY along with three of their children, Howard, Bernard and Edward. Gideon died there in 1935 at 73 years of age, while Rachel passed away fifteen years later in Warren, PA, at the home of their daughter, Ruby. Both Gideon and Rachel are buried in the Westfield, NY cemetery.
The name DuChaine has had several spellings, for whatever reasons, but we are also related to the Duquesne's and the Duchesne's.
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