Frank Foster wasn’t a nobody, but he was no Colonel Wright. In other words, Franco-Americans could with reason object to the disparaging remarks written into Carroll Wright’s report on labor conditions in 1881. This was a public report issued by a government agency whose claims were informed by Irish workers rather than Franco-Americans themselves. Foster […]
Continue readingCategory: Quebec Emigration
Placemen, Knights, and Laborers: The Politics of Jeanne la Fileuse
Emigration was political. Most late nineteenth-century French-Canadian emigrants left Quebec for economic reasons. But there were political causes underlying the province’s economic woes; efforts to stanch this demographic hemorrhage and to repatriate the exiles inevitably reverberated into partisan politics. Early reports on emigration to the United States (issued in 1849 and 1857) suggested solutions; policies […]
Continue reading“The most stupid reports and slanders”: The Repatriation Crusade in 1889
As previously noted on this blog, the first efforts to halt French-Canadian emigration to the United States were made not during the deluge of the 1880s, nor even in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. As early as the 1840s, statesmen in Lower Canada (by now joined legislatively with Upper Canada) raised a […]
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 readingAmerican and French: Robert Desty (1827-1895), Part II
Please see Part I here. By the mid-1870s, Robert Desty’s life was apparently more settled. He began the work that considerably eased the burden of generations of American attorneys and scholars, and through which his became a household name in the legal community. He compiled and indexed laws and court cases; he wrote digests; he […]
Continue readingAmerican and French: Robert Desty (1827-1895), Part I
Nobleman. Common Soldier. Legal scholar. Disqualified candidate. French. American. The contradictions of Robert Desty’s life cannot but make for interesting reading. That he is not better known—another victim of history—is remarkable. For one thing, to know him by his American name, under which he earned passing fame, misses much of his identity. Desty was christened […]
Continue readingIt’s a Big Country
Please indulge my truisms for a moment—and entertain a post which, in true scholarly spirit, offers more questions than answers. To say that the Great Republic is a big country—physically—usually means something very abstract, except for those of us who have a habit of driving when air travel is available. My better half and I […]
Continue readingCanadians in the Mexican-American War
As previously noted on this blog, my research on British North Americans in the Mexican-American War will be appearing in the International Journal of Canadian Studies. I appreciate the opportunity to bring greater attention to cross-border migrations in the 1840s. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with genealogist Sandra Goodwin, host of the Maple […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Exeter, N.H.
Much has been made of unconventional Franco-American experiences and stories, on this blog. (See here, here, and here, for instance.) Franco-Americans living in rural parts of New England and New York State are perpetually in the shadow of those who settled in industrial cities and worked in factories. A similar neglect is apparent when it […]
Continue readingMaska, Mexico, and Pre-Civil War Migrations
It’s a long way from the lowlands of the St. Lawrence to the Valle de México. As someone who once spent eleven hours simply trying to cross Montana, I can vouch for the almost unimaginable size of this continent. So too will anyone who has crossed North America by land. It is all the more […]
Continue reading