No history as rich and complex as that of Franco-Americans can be reduced to small vignettes. But what would a survey of iconic Franco-American documents and moments—perhaps destined to a neophyte—would look like? As a fun experiment, I propose the following. It is hoped that these texts (some well-known, some less so) will encourage readers […]
Continue readingCategory: Roman Catholic Church
The Franco-American Origin Story in Parish Records
They went to Corbeau and Whitehall. They went to Vergennes and Highgate. They returned, and again to the Great Republic they went. This was a proto-industrial era, a time before ubiquitous factories, before national parishes, before the idea of Franco-America could form as something succinct and coherent. These were the early days of French Canadians’ […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Cohoes, N.Y., Part II
See Part I here. As Cohoes Franco-Americans became more numerous following the Civil War, they attracted the likes of Ferdinand Gagnon, who helped to bring the community into a larger Franco world. They also produced their own luminaries. Joseph LeBoeuf was one pioneer who anticipated the role that Hugo Dubuque and other attorneys would play […]
Continue readingBender’s French-Canadian Holidays
Frequent blog readers need no introduction to Prosper Bender, whom I first introduced here. Though a homeopathic physician (yes, quite likely a contradiction in terms) by trade, Bender was most famous in his day for writing on the culture and political affairs of French Canadians.[1] As a contributor to prominent U.S. magazines, he helped nineteenth-century […]
Continue readingFinding Francos in Le Forum (1988)
Making Connections By the end of the 1980s, the Forum had broadened its horizons considerably by bringing in more voices and carrying items from other publications. (For background, see last week’s post.) It still included genealogical content and poetry—and in 1988 its pages captured new perspectives with short texts by Fort Kent high school students. […]
Continue readingFranco-Americans Since 1945: An Overview
“With a little more education and a forty-hour week and some time on our hands—and we’ve become mobile—we looked around,” he said recently. The world of quiet beaches and summer cottages and golf courses no longer seemed so remote. “We see all these things and, we say, ‘Hey, we’d like to have an ice-cream cone, […]
Continue readingTurning the Past into Policy with Quebec Historians
Life by itself is formless wherever it is. Art must give it a form. – Hugh MacLennan, Two Solitudes (1945) The historical events we remember can be very revealing, not least because recollection is not a pure, spontaneous act. Collectively, it is a response to present-day concerns and the result of careful selection by well-placed […]
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 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 […]
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