(death or burial, 8 Jan. 1881), cooper, reported to be father of exceptionally large family. (Joseph Lozon) The Alexandria column of The Cornwall Reporter of 15 Jan. 1881 reported the death (at the age of almost 90) of Joseph Lozon (sic), of Alexandria,who had been married three times and had 38 children, most of them still living. He appears in the 1871 census as Joseph Lauzon, aged 72, a Kenyon Township resident, born in Quebec, a French Canadian and Roman Catholic, and a cooper by occupation. In the St. Finnan’s death records, no age is given, but he is described as a cooper resident in Alexandria. J. Lockie Wilson in his typecript autobiography recalls that when on request from a Cornwall newspaper he interviewed Lauzon, he found him a tiny, ugly, gloomy man, who gave his age as 91, and affirmed that he had been married three times, and that he had 36 children, with another about to be born. The Wilson text also gives his name as old Rosa [sic–Rosa not Losa] the cooper, but perhaps this is a typist’s error and in any case Wilson also gives the name as Lauzon. As with the remarkable claims about the extreme age of Ann Campbell, we need not worry much about what the exact truth behind the very human stories was. It would probably be to rationalize the legend too much to observe that the figure 38 would probably be fit enough if his descendants rather than his actual children were being counted.

Elliott 146 * St. Finnan’s CRNI I, 215, 216