The Annotated Trial of George Fred Boutelier and John Boutelier for the Murder of Frédéric Emoneau [Eminaud] and his family, with genealogies of the Emoneau and Boutelier families

By Kenneth S. Paulsen

Historian and genealogist Dr. Kenneth S. Paulsen has taken the 1791 trial transcript and annotated it to provide background information on everyone involved in the trial from the judge to the jury and witnesses. The participants in the trial represent a cross section of Lunenburg's multicultural settlement. Additionally, an introduction provides context on the Emoneau family. Genealogies of the Emoneau and Boutilier families complete the book. Dr. Paulsen's interest in the murders and trial is more than an historical curiosity as he is a direct descendant of murdered Emoneaus as well as a descendant of a sibling of the murderers.

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Contents include:

• Prologue
• Maps
• The Original Trial Transcript:
  • Title Page
  • Introduction
  • The Trial
  • Conclusion
  • Trial Endnotes
• Genealogies:
  • Emoneau Genealogy
  • Boutelier / Bouteiller Genealogy
• Bibliography
  Index
  

Background: The murder of the Emoneau (Eminaud) family in 1791 has fascinated genealogists and amateur historians for decades. The Emoneau deaths of 1791 at the hands of two Boutilier brothers were the first murders in Lunenburg since the community had been settled in 1753. The nature of the murders and the trial have been viewed as controversial since evidence to convict the Boutilier brothers was largely circumstantial and scant at best. Interestingly, the lawyer for the Crown published the transcript of the trial in 1791, but the trial faded from memory until 1895 when historian and judge Mather Byles DesBrisay published the History of the County of Lunenburg in which he devoted five pages summarizing the unfortunate events of March 1791. This summary of the murder and trial revived interest in the murders that persists into the 21st century.

About the author:
At native of Massachusetts, Kenneth S. Paulsen holds a doctorate in Canadian History from the University of Maine at Orono, with two Bachelors of Arts degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master of Arts degree from Northeastern University in Boston. He was a Fulbright scholar at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1992-1993, a Canadian Embassy Graduate Fellow in 1992 and the 1992 Winthrop Pickard Bell Fellow in Canadiana at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Currently, he is an adjunct professor of history and government at Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Kenneth is a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia, and the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society. The majority of his mother’s ancestors and about one-quarter of his father’s ancestors were foreign Protestant settlers in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. Kenneth’s paternal grandfather’s ancestry is Danish and Swedish while the last quarter of his father’s ancestors were Prince Edward Island Scottish and Loyalists.

Details

151 Pages
6 X 8" (hardcover edition)
8.5 X 11 (coil  bound softcover)
Index
Published by Global Heritage Press, Ottawa, 2017
ISBN 978-1-77240-074-8