Hello Jennifer,
I just put a link list, "a few Métis links," on my website at http://www.ojibwe.info/Metis/index.html;
some of those web pages may be helpful to you; there are a few other
genealogical links at http://www.maquah.net/Minn-Rez.html#Genealogy.
Some of them may also be helpful in 'filling out' your general
background information, for example the Metis Culture and Heritage
Resource Centre has an (from the first few paragraphs I just read)
informative article on Red River Cart building.
I put the genealogical databases online as a way of making them
publicly accessible, but have not personally done much genealogical
research since 1997 -- and the growth of the Internet has really
changed things! Presumably you've already
done things like enter Beaudette Genealogy into a search
engine?
There is a list of genealogical resources specific to Crow Wing County
at http://home.att.net/~Local_History/CrowWing-Co-MN.htm
and a catalogue of the holdings of the Crow Wing County Historical
Society at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mncwcghs/hs/.
As you probably already know, in 1860 there were a lot of Métis
people
living in Crow Wing - a bigger county then than it is now - for
several centuries it was on 'the main highway' (for Métis
traders)
travelling between the Red River settlement and St. Paul, and as a
wagon-maker, Cyrill Beaudette was right in the middle of things.
Forty-eight years old (more or less) in 1860, Cyrill was probably
beyond the age where he would have been getting his own children
baptized - I'm thinking of what kinds of 'tracks' he might have
left
for you in still-extant records - but maybe his grandchildren, or
he'll show up in the records as a 'godfather'?
Notes for Cyrill
BEAUDETTE
Birth: 1812, ,,,Lower Canada
U.S. CENSUS: Crow Wing County, 1860, family 10/10,
wagon maker, estate
$100
The information for Cyrill Beaudette came from the U.S. Census, 1860,
Crow Wing County.
Notes for Germain
BODETTE
Birth: 1730/1795
SOUR: The Fur Trade in Minnesota, Bruce White (1977),
ISBN Number:
0-87351
-121-2, published by the Minnesota Historical
Society: Hired by R.
Crawford
on August 4, 1810 to winter on the Mississippi River
for 600 livres
CITATIONS: [manuscript at the M.H.S.] Abbott, Samuel.
Notorial Records,
1806-18;
He was indexed in "The Fur Trade in Minnesota," a 1977 listing of
resources for people involved in the fur trade; the record citing that
information is in a Minnesota Historical Society manscript collection,
Samuel Abbott's notorial records, 1806-18.
The Minnesota Historical Society has a significant collection of fur
trade records - and a good online presence for geneaologists at http://www.mnhs.org/genealogy/index.htm
[I just looked
up "Beaudette" in the Death Certificates index, limiting my search to
records before 1900, and found three, including two infant deaths,
which - beyond the personal recognition that probably a member of your
family lost at least two children in infancy - is a pretty strong hint
that there were Baudettes living in Hennepin County (where the infants
died).] They also have a collection of artifacts, you can search
the
catalog at http://www.mnhs.org/collections/museum/furtrade/furtrade.htm
; their library homepage is at http://www.mnhs.org/library/
Good luck!