Charettes dedicate monument

FORT KENT – Profits from a Charette family reunion held last July in Fort Kent have been used to erect an ancestral monument to assist the St. Louis Catholic Church at Fort Kent and a Canadian hospital.

The monument, erected in the old St. Louis Catholic Church Cemetery across East Main Street from the church, was unveiled last Sunday, Nov.12. More than 60 people attended the dedication and unveiling.

Carved into the obelisk-style, black-and-gray granite monument is a memorial to Mathieu Choret-Charette and Sebastiennne Veillon, the patriarchs of the North American Charettes. The couple were married on March 4, 1647.

The 5-foot-high, 3-foot-wide monument is dedicated to their memory, and to the memory of their descendants, especially those who have served and died in service to their adopted countries.

“It is also to all the homemakers, farmers, carpenters, painters and those in all the other professions who have struggled to pave the way for us who are here today,” Fern Charette, one of the organizers, said. “It is their hard work that has made it possible for us to be able to enjoy the freedom we have today.

“We have also donated $5,000 to the St. Louis church for their renovations,” Charette said. “We will also be donating about $1,300 to the hospital at Edmundston, New Brunswick, since many in the family have Canadian origins and still live there.”

About 400 Charettes attended the weekend family reunion last July at Fort Kent and in neighboring St. Francois, New Brunswick. The four-day reunion ended with a trip to Quebec City and several villages along the route.

“Northern Maine was not the destination of our ancestors when they left the Quebec City area, ” Claude Charette, chairman of the Charette family reunion, said. “It took them from 1670 to the late 1830s before they reached Fort Kent, after living at several sites along the way for three generations.”

Ancestral areas visited in Quebec included Quebec City, L’Ille d’Orleans and Charlevois. L’Isle d’Orleans was where the second generation of Charettes lived in North America.

While in the area, Charettes from across Canada, the United States and Belgium visited ancestral homesteads and cemeteries in St.Francois and neighboring Clair, New Brunswick. They also had roundtable discussions on family history and genealogy, and shared meals, music, a Mass and dancing.

They also had a re-enactment of the arrival of the first two settler families. The first two Charette families arrived in Fort Kent from St. Pascal, Quebec, in the late 1830s. Three Charettes served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Fern Charette said the group still has genealogy and history books of the family available.