Book Review Kimberly Lamay Licursi and Céline Racine Paquette. Franco-Americans in the Champlain Valley. Images of America. Charleston: Arcadia, 2018. The nearly seven years I spent in the United States were as enriching outside of the classroom as in—and, mind you, I was there to study and teach. From one academic environment to the next, […]
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Those Other Franco-Americans: New York State
Prior posts in this series include studies of Exeter, Somersworth, and Berlin, New Hampshire. For research on early migrations to economic hinterlands, please see my posts on the Revolutionary War veterans in New York State, early migrations, the formation of hinterland communities, and numerical assessments. In the last two weeks, I had the immense pleasure […]
Continue readingFinding Francos on the Margins
While at the Quebec Studies colloquium at Bishop’s University, last spring, I introduced part of my research on French Canadians and Franco-Americans in geographical margins—areas usually overlooked by scholars. What do we really know about French-Canadian immigrants and their descendants outside of Lewiston, Manchester, Lowell, Fall River, and the likes? Local historians have done tremendous […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Berlin, N.H., Part III
See Part II here. Like prior studies on this blog (here, here, and here), attention to Berlin highlights the extremely diverse experiences of French Canadians on U.S. soil. These “migrants on the margins” enrich the overall story of Franco-America. In Berlin’s case, this is especially true as we enter the 1930s. French Canadians were long […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Berlin, N.H., Part II
See Part I here. Among the “Little Canadas” of the U.S. Northeast, Berlin’s developed relatively late. In 1860, the town was home to little more than 400 people, only twenty of whom had been born in the Canadas. (That small number nevertheless exceeded the Irish-born.) Most of the men were either lumber workers or farm […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Berlin, N.H., Part I
The Canadian element found in Berlin a safe, reliable place to live; and every year sees new families arrive from Canada. Berlin found in the Canadian a willing, obedient, and conscientious worker. The two combined are what has made Berlin what Berlin is today. – The Brown Bulletin, January 1927. There is something decidedly poetic […]
Continue readingThe First Franco-Americans Revisited: Revolutionaries and Refugees
Last spring, on this website, I wrote of Clément Gosselin and other French Canadians who participated in the American War of Independence. After three years, a lengthy labor of love now comes to fruition with the publication of my “Promises to Keep: French Canadians as Revolutionaries and Refugees, 1775-1800,” which will appear in the next […]
Continue readingQuebec and Hinterland Canadians
In several weeks, I will have the privilege and pleasure of sharing my work on Franco-Americans at a colloquium on Quebec Studies at my dear alma mater, Bishop’s University. Below is a sneak peak, which may touch on themes familiar to friends and frequenters of this blog. Though Franco-Americans in the hinterland were typically not […]
Continue readingEarly Canadian Migrations to the United States
As previously noted on this blog, it was not the call of political liberty that drew great numbers of French Canadians to the United States in the nineteenth century, but economic opportunity (if not, sometimes, economic necessity). Life in ethnic clusters, in the shadow of gargantuan textile mills, was but a small facet of this […]
Continue readingMignault and Son: A Transnational Story
Revolutionary War veteran Clément Gosselin was not alone. Basile Mignault, too, fought in the ranks of the Continental Army. Both would spend the better part of the post-war period in Canada, although Mignault could claim a more settled existence. Indeed, while Gosselin travelled as far as Yorktown, where he was injured, his counterpart’s war was […]
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