As I have mentioned, before I started looking, I knew nothing about the Rivait’s.  I did not know how large of a family it was or how long we had been in Canada for.  My dad gave me a name of another Rivait that he said we were related to.  I contacted him and found out that we were second cousins.  With his father’s help I was able to piece together my grandfather’s brothers and sisters.  I now knew who my great-grandparents were, William Rivait & Alexina Guilbeault.  After further research, I found out that my great-grandfather was born Guillaume Rivet.  When I searched for Rivait, there was never very much.  My line of Rivait’s was only 3 generations old.  When I started investigating the Rivet name, I found a lot more historic documents.  After e-mailing another Rivait, she shared her research that took the Rivet’s back to Maurice Rivet (b. 1642 in La Rochelle, France).  Maurice is my 7 times great-grandfather.  He came to Canada around 1664 and settle in Cap-de-la-Madeleine.  Maurice married Marie Cusson, who was born around 1657 in Cap-de-la-Madeleine. They had 12 children and being good French Catholics, they all had large families.  Now the fun begins finding all the connections.

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