My great-grandmother Blanche’s sister, Rose, was a strong believer in love and marriage…so much so that she married four times! “Love and Marriage” is the theme for Week 18 of 2024’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge.
Rose Laberge was three days past her 18th birthday when she married Paul Elphege Oliver Quintin on January 28, 1914 in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Elphege was six years her senior and worked in a silk mill over the border in Connecticut. The couple had four children in rapid succession: Armand (1915), Rita (1917), Irene (1919), and Doris (1921). In 1922, tragedy struck the young couple when Elphege contracted an intestinal infection, which became so bad that it caused lung congestion and hepatitis. He died at the Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket two weeks later.
It was scary for Rose to be widowed with four young children at the age of twenty-six. She knew what it was like to grow up poor, in her case with a drunk father who didn’t do much to support the family. As a child, she watched as several of her siblings were adopted out of the family (she may have been as well, as she was living with neighbors who adopted her elder sister Annie when she married Elphege). Given her history, it's not surprising she wasted no time in finding another husband to secure the future of her and her children. Six months after the death of her first husband, Rose married Alfred Joseph Cadorette in Fall River, Massachusetts on April 2, 1923. Alfred, an ice dealer, was a few years younger than Rose and this was his first marriage. He was probably thrilled when Rose announced she was pregnant at the beginning of 1924. Tragically, that joy was short-lived. In March, Alfred became sick and was diagnosed with diabetes. It was the early days of treating the disease with insulin, which was not yet widely available or understood. He died from acute gastritis, a complication from diabetes, on July 21, 1924. On October 13, Rose gave birth to his daughter, Jeanette. Perhaps the baby was sick or maybe Rose felt unable to care for her new daughter with four other little ones at home. She placed little Jeanette in the St. Vincent de Paul Infant Asylum in Providence, Rhode Island. Given her family history, the decision must have torn her apart, and any guilt she felt was amplified when the baby died seven months later from convulsions and multiple abscesses of the head and body.
Rose didn’t wed again until 1940 when she married Olier Hedge, a widower twenty years her senior. By marrying him, she became “Rose Hedge,” an unusually pretty name. Olier was a successful plumber and life with him was likely comfortable. He died after a long illness eleven years later in 1951.
In 1954, Rose married her final husband, Theodore LaMarre. He was also a widower and worked as a carpenter. It's worth noting that Theodore was her third husband Olier Hedge’s brother-in-law, which is likely how he and Rose got to know one another. Olier and Theodore’s first wives were sisters. Without a firm death date on Rose, there's no way of knowing exactly how long they were married, but Rose Laberge Quintin Hedge LaMarre did predecease Theodore, who passed away in 1985. If she hadn't, maybe she would have married again!
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