The Gauquie Sister School of Dance - Ancestors in 52 Weeks

 Another prompt by 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. It's run by Amy Johnson Crow.

Information on the Topic

The birds are singing, so what better time for the theme of "Music." Any musicians in the family? How about someone who loved music and dancing? What about someone who makes you think of a song?

All my siblings and I all admit we cannot hold a tune to save our lives. However, there are people within the family that can do that and dance like crazy. 

I never knew about them until I started to do research. One of my cousins actually asked me if I knew about the dance studio in Washingtonville and I knew nothing about it. Imagine my surprise when I did find out about it. 

Who ran the Gauquie Sisters School of Dance? 

Two of my first cousin, once removed cousins. They were sisters of my grand Uncle James. 

Bernadette and Maryanne were the ones to run the dance studio. Louis Peter is my grandfather. 

Taken from Ancestry. Credit: J. Fitzgerald

They started when they were very young with singing and dancing according to the many newspaper articles. These are just a small sample.

Bernadette was only 3 years old and Mary Anne wasn't that much older. 

Credit  My Heritage

Credit: As above

The Gauquie Sisters are now a featured item. 

Credit: As above

Credit: As above

The top shows their mother is the director of the top show in which they now have the Gauquie sister School of Dance name and business. 

Credit as above

Maryanne continued even after she was engaged and later married. 

This shows they were even trying to do some good with their talents. 

Credit as above.

This shows they even sang with other groups to fine tune their craft. 

Credit as above.

One of the many advertisements in the newspaper. 

Bernadette has now married and is continuing with the dance school. 

Credit as above.

The School of dance is still going even after all this time - this is in the 1980s. 

Credit as above.

In the late 1980s its still going strong. 

Credit as above. 

I do not know when the Dance school actually closed. I have gone looking for it from time to time but couldn't find it. In fact, I found the address, but you can tell by the roads nearby this is the same family, but I think the dance studio located at 183 E Main St, Washingtonville, NY. When I looked this up, it was a family farm with what looks like a small office out the back which I think was the dance studio. 

Credit as at March 31 2021.

However, I still haven't been able to find anything about the school closing. 

What I have found was until at least 2008, Bernadette was active with drama, singing and dancing. However, it looks like she spent her time teaching this to her students at Bishop Dunn. 

Credit 

And according to her obituary, which I found while I was writing this post up, she had cancer for 4 years. This means the "Anything Goes" musical in 2008, was probably one of her last times doing the musical as she would have found the cancer in 2014 or 2015. 

I do have to look at her sister, Maryanne, but I believe she would have retired by now based upon age. However, I could be wrong as many people sing and dance or at influence others in later years. Maryanne, or any of her children, if you are reading this please feel free to contact me. 

Long Line - 52 Ancestors challenge

This is a prompt from 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

Information on the Topic
Is there a trait or an occupation that seems to have been in your family tree for generations? Is there a line in your genealogy that's been in a particular place for a long, long time? Maybe you have Long as a surname.

Unlike the Bachelor Uncle topic, this one I could apply multiple of ways. Some of these are: 

• temper and stubbornness - Yep, on all sides and one of the traits my husband has pointed out multiple of times. 
• business owner and cooking/baking - Yep, on both sides of the family although some family members have more of a gift than others or so I'm told. 
• being the country and away from crowds - Yep, once again on all sides. 

I think I'm going to concentrate on the business owners. Sometimes they had combined the business owner with cooking and baking. 

On my mother's Gauquie side, we have had people as far back as the My 3rd and 4th great grandfathers Jean Baptiste and Jean-Francois Gauquie in 1806 were farmers in Belgium. I consider farms a small business and they had to sell whatever they were farming somehow. 

Document Credit: Herve Costille

Then you have the descendants who were a range of occupations:

Johannes Jacobus Gauquie (born 1792 died 1833) was an innkeeper in Boezinge, Belgium. 

Desiderius/Desire Franciscus 'Didier' Gauquie (born 1820 died 1878) who owned (along with his wife) a small business of a baker. 

Many of Desiderius' children had farms or owned their own or married into families where they owned their own businesses like Hotel Gauquie in Belgium. 

Credit

Jules Gauquie (born 1871 died 1946) he had his own diary farm and sold milk which his cousin took to market for him. Then he turned to owning land which was later either sold or given away to his second wife, Belle. 

                 

Many Jules' children had their own businesses as well. You had sons who took up farming and one who started his own business of cleaning chimneys and furnaces. His daughter started up their own dance studio. 

                                

From there the family doesn't really do too well with the owning of businesses or farming. However, Jules' great grandson, Jason, does own his business of heating and air conditioning company from 2002. 

To go further with the baking and cooking, my paternal great grandmother (Mary or Maryanna) all loved to bake and cook. She would spend hours baking and cooking away. Further, my paternal great grandfather (Adam), loved to make Polish sausage and eventually made his own smokehouse. People would drive from all over to buy his smoked food. My great grandfather was so busy making the smoked food, he had to limit how many times a week he made it because the other part of the business would suffer if he didn't. 

Credit: J. Schmitz - Her parents outside their Polish food store in Linden, New Jersey in the 1930s. 

They owned a small Polish deli in New Jersey. A few times they had to close or move it around due to the economy, but he always came back to running the business. He loved doing it and had taken serious hits when the Depression happened in 1929 and during the wars because he was trying to look out for his community so he would let people slide on food and payments. This ment at times, he would have to close their store and even once he had to work in a factory for a short time. 

When Adam passed away, after a long battle of stomach cancer, and they had to run a small sentence in the business directory about his passing because people were still trying to contact him after he stopped working. 

The love for baking and cooking has passed down. I like cooking and baking various dishes. However, the one who went even farther is my cousin, John S. Schmitz Jr who is an Executive Chef at Ocean Center in Florida. John's brother, Joseph, run his own accounting firm in Florida as well.  

                    

Credit - John S Schmitz Jr.                                            Credit - Joseph J. Schmitz

No matter how you look at it, we've have a long line of running businesses and the love of cooking and baking. 

Comedy and Entertaining within the family - Ancestors in 52 Weeks

This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

Topic Info:
Have you found something humorous in your research? Perhaps something funny happened while you were researching? Tell the story this week.

Growing up, myself and one of my nieces, Becky, were clowns. When they moved to upstate New York, Becky kept us laughing for most of the 5 hour trip which was good after we lost radio over the mountains. We always thought she'd grow up to be a comedian, but we were wrong.

My brother and I, as I've written in an earlier blog, always told jokes to each other but they were of a "colorful nature" and we both had a really warped sense of humor. This always made us laugh especially when one of us upped the other one.

My brother and I in 2000 telling jokes. This is when he got me with one of his zingers. Credit: J. Fitzgerald

My oldest sister and I used to pick up my nieces and dance with them around the living room while trying to belt out a song. We all agreed we did not/could not sing but we kept on trying. I really stopped trying after I got pulled aside in chorus in school and asked not to sing any longer and to please just stand there and mouth the words. Yep, that bad.

My sister thought my younger nieces was very beautiful and even entered her into a beauty pageant when she was 3 or 4. She didn't win the event, it annoyed me because she didn't want to be there and my sister was boastful about her entering.After the event, I looked at my sister and told her bluntly we were never doing that again because it was awful the way people were, my niece didn't want to be there and everyone in our group was annoyed. We never did another one either. If my nieces wanted us to do something, we did try and figure out a way to do it with little to no money.

July 23 2015 Music Man Jr. In Rouses Point at the Civic Center. Credit R. Greenhaw

May 15 2017 My niece's daughter in gymnastics
Credit R. Greenhaw

2017 My niece's daughter in dance. Credit R. Greenhaw

Then when my nieces had children, they wanted to do dancing things and show business. Then one of my nieces said they always wanted to do something like this which stunned me because they never said anything. Anyhow, their children are now in plays, ice skating and stuff.

I found some of my other cousin, who live closer to where I grew up, were actually into dancing and singing too.

Newspaper articles about other Gauquie cousins who danced and went to Theatre school. Credit as above.

I didn't know about these cousins until after 2000 when I started to really research the family and was stunned they had a whole dance school, but my mother never talked about them.

Then when I continued my research, I found my 2x great grandmother's death certificate and it gave me a clue as to who else had these skills.

Florentina Van Rompaye's Death certificate which lists her husband as a cabaretier. Credit

As you can tell it's (above) in French. I only got to take beginner French in high school (it was many years ago now), so I couldn't read the entire entry. However, when I posted it in one of my Facebook groups for the Gauquie's, one of my cousins responded.

The discussion about what a cabaretier is. 

Imagine my shock to learn my 2x great grandfather liked to show off and entertain. This links into the dance school my other cousins run or used to run!

Then to also learn my cousin Chris has been in the entertainment industry was interesting and very unexpected.

Cousin Chris in 2009. Credit: Chris

2015 Cousin Chris with friends in play. Credit: Chris

2012 Chris as Madame Hortense. Credit: Chris

I'm not sure where we got it from, but the entertainment bug is definitely there. However, it's not shared by all of us. Even after getting up in front of crowds to speak over the past 8 or so years, it's not something I'm still not comfortable with, so I didn't get that gene unfortunately!