In preparation for the first regional National History Day (NHD) competition in Aroostook County, the Acadian Archives provided a set of primary documents to organizers and teachers. These documents, some drawn from the Archives’ own collections, showcase the history and experiences of French-heritage communities in far northern Maine. I am pleased to expand access to […]
Continue readingCategory: Acadians
Exploring the Acadian Peninsula
The deportation of thousands of Acadians that began in 1755 left human fragments across the Atlantic world. Few areas are known specifically for their Acadian culture—or named after the culture. New Brunswick’s Acadian peninsula stands out… figuratively and literally. It is the horn that juts easterly from northeastern New Brunswick. It is bound by the […]
Continue readingFranco-American Archives: Dartmouth College
The two-hundredth post of Query the Past finds us where we started more than six years ago—with Mason Wade. A twentieth-century historian, Wade earned attention and praise for his biographies of Margaret Fuller and Francis Parkman and later his magnum opus, The French Canadians 1760-1945 (1955). A follow-up post that elicited its own controversy addressed […]
Continue readingFinding Acadian Migrants in New England
The latest issue of Le Forum, published by the Franco-American Centre in Orono, carries my article on Hattie LeBlanc, an Acadian migrant accused of murder in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the early twentieth century. We know of Hattie from the extensive press coverage of her trial. Yet, in many respects, she is an exception, for the […]
Continue readingBritish Acadia Unraveled: The Deportation
See Part II here. The appointment of a professional soldier like Edward Cornwallis, with a mission to build, settle, and develop Nova Scotia, announced a new British seriousness in a colony that the metropole had long neglected. The new governor proved scornful of the past management of the colony and he sought to assert his […]
Continue readingBritish Acadia and French Neutrals
See Part I here. As we read through imperial correspondence, we begin to understand why, despite security concerns, early British Acadia was also the golden-age Acadia of our historical imagination. We can sense British governors’ frustration not with the Acadian people so much as their own superiors in London. Richard Philipps, a long-time absentee governor, […]
Continue readingBritish Acadia: The Beginnings
This three-part series was first presented as “British Acadia Between Imperial Imagination and Colonial Reality” for the Acadian Archives’ annual lecture series in 2022. Please cite appropriately. Recordings of past lectures are available through the Archives. “British Acadia”: The expression may, at first glance, seem like a contradiction in terms. We easily think of Acadia […]
Continue readingThe Lost Wor(l)ds of Franco-America
This post marks the fifth anniversary of this Franco-American history blog. Sincere thanks to everyone who has read, encouraged, and supported its research and reflections. The author delivered the following remarks as the opening lecture of the University of Maine at Fort Kent’s Scholars Symposium on April 26, 2022. The transcript appeared in the summer […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: New Bedford, Part II
This week we resume and conclude our overview of New Bedford’s Franco-American history. See Part I here. Franco-Americans’ institutional network continued to grow in the 1890s and early 1900s. The Francs-Tireurs, one of the earliest and largest fraternal and cultural societies in New Bedford, played a significant role in community building. Other groups appeared in […]
Continue readingNuancing Native-French Relations
The arrival of European peoples in the Americas had a cataclysmic effect on the original occupants of the land. Initially, the devastation of Indigenous nations owed primarily to the spread of unknown diseases. As Europeans became more numerous and asserted their influence, Natives suffered from war, the loss of their ancestral territory, heightened competition for […]
Continue reading