Earlier this year, I shared via Twitter my research on Russell Niquette, the first Franco-American to offer a serious challenge for the office of governor in Vermont. I happily share my tweets below. The other article to which I refer concerns the contemporary history of the New Hampshire presidential primary, in which Franco-Americans played an […]
Continue readingReview: Licursi and Paquette, Franco-Americans in the Champlain Valley
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, […]
Continue readingWomen’s History Month: The Franco-American Press
Accessing the historical experience of Franco-American women is not an instantly easy task, at least if we rely on written records. Many types of documents were, at their inception, purposefully gendered. The cult of domesticity, limited access to education, and entrenched barriers in the shaping of social narratives combined to conceal women’s lives. In addition, […]
Continue readingTwo Days in March: Historical Anniversaries
This week the blog takes a slightly different tack to recognize landmark anniversaries that had bearing on the history of French Canadians. The first of these comes a week from today. On March 5, 1770, a scuffle in the snow led British regulars billeted in Boston to open fire on civilians. Within minutes, three colonists […]
Continue readingBenjamin Lenthier: Sell-Out or Public Servant?
See Part I here. Lenthier was all in for Democratic presidential candidate Grover Cleveland and did likely find party monies to fund his efforts. Even with hindsight, it is unclear how much of this was a matter of ideological principle and how much an opportunity for personal gain. His papers depicted the Republican Party as […]
Continue readingA Franco Media Mogul: Benjamin Lenthier
Research on Franco-Americans’ political engagement is still in its infancy. Major works on their politics may be counted on a single hand. The assumption is that the Catholic Church, cultural societies, and textile mills were more central to Franco-Americans’ self-definition and daily lives. Perhaps. But none of these spaces was hermetically insulated from the world […]
Continue readingWhy Was Major Mallet Fired?
See Part I here. It might be argued that Mallet’s life only really conforms to the “great man” theory of history and therefore actually says very little about Franco-Americans’ lived experience. Perhaps. And yet, to late nineteenth-century Francos, Mallet mattered a great deal. His prominent role at the Rutland Franco-American convention, in 1886, made this […]
Continue readingThe Hero They Needed: Edmond Mallet
Thousands of French Canadians crossed the international border and served with distinction in the Union armies during the U.S. Civil War. Some of them went on to achieve more than passing historical fame. Rémi Tremblay survived incarceration in a Confederate prison and spent years in Woonsocket and Fall River. In the latter place, in 1885-1886, […]
Continue readingWright Revisited: The Frank Foster Controversy
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 readingPlacemen, 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 […]
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