‘Maine Franco-American Reader’ full of history, reminiscences

Having married into a St. John Valley family whose roots go back to Quebec and Acadia, then France, I’ve long been interested in Franco-American genealogy and history.

A new book published by Tilbury House in Gardiner, “Voyages: A Maine Franco-American Reader,” edited by Nelson Madore and Barry Rodrigue with Corinna Miller and Chase Hebert, and Normand Beaupre as French language editor, offers a bit of genealogy and lots of history.

There are also many personal reminiscences, some excerpts from novels, essays and even political pieces. I would love to have been a fly on the wall as the editors worked on the book, deciding what to include! With 606 pages, they included a lot – certainly many more articles than can be listed here.

The introduction by Barry Rodrigue of Bath is very interesting, illuminating a number of Franco publications and organizations over the years.

The name Barry Rodrigue brings to mind the Arnold Expedition from the Kennebec to Quebec, so it’s good to find his article, “An Album in the Attic: The Forgotten Frontier of the Quebec-Maine Borderlands during the Revolutionary War.”

Did you know that in 1831, Vice President Aaron Burr, who had been on the expedition, gave many of Arnold’s papers to the Maine Historical Society?

Beatrice Craig of Ottawa is well-known for her work in St. John Valley genealogy and history, including the “reconstitutions” of valley families she donated to the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

Her work in this new book is “Immigrants in a Frontier Community: Madawaska, 1785-1850.” Here, the term Madawaska refers to the whole area, not the one town.

Craig discusses groups of people, not individual families, but there is much of interest for those who want to know how and why the area along the St. John River became populated.

Particularly helpful is a map showing the area of the “original settlement” in 1794, mostly in St. Basile-Madawaska and in Van Buren; the settlement in 1831; and finally in 1870. As we know, the border between Maine and New Brunswick wasn’t defined as we know it until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842.

Craig’s chapter also features a useful set of footnotes, as do many of the other historical articles.

Don Cyr of Lille wrote “An Acadian Odyssey,” focusing on his Cyr roots. Pierre Sire married Marie Bourgeois in 1669 at Port Royal, now known as Annapolis in Nova Scotia.

Dorothy Blanchard of Newcastle contributed “Into the Heart of Maine: A Look at Dexter’s Franco-American Community,” originally written for a seminar at the University of Maine, and first published in 1993 in the Maine Historical Society Quarterly.

French surnames in Dexter were anglicized more quickly than those in communities that were more heavily French, such as Lewiston, Blanchard pointed out.

Photos in the book, I might add, are well-chosen and powerful, from the Ku Klux Klan parade in Dexter in 1924 to a 1900 picture of women millworkers in the weave room at the Bates Mill in Lewiston.

An article on “The French Catholics in Maine” was written by the Rev. Clement Thibodeau of Caribou, whose pastorates have ranged from the Franco-American Notre Dame in Waterville to St. Mary’s in Bangor, which, like St. John’s Catholic Church, has Irish roots.

A brief excerpt from Gerard Robichaud’s “Papa Martel,” may lead you to want to read the full novel, which was the Penobscot Reads book for 2007. I liked the book very much.

I hope that you know the name Bob Chenard from Franco-American research, which he has been doing for decades. His article here is “French-Canadian Genealogical Research,” including 32 things he has learned while researching church records from Beauce County, Quebec.

Chenard, who is from Waterville, figures that of the French-Canadians who came to mid-Maine before 1900, 85 percent were from Beauce County. Look at a map of Maine and southern Quebec, and you’ll see that Beauceville – and Beauce County – are on the route from Waterville and Skowhegan to Quebec City.

For more on Chenard’s work, visit The French Connection at http://homepages.roadrunner.com/frenchcx/index.html, or read his column in Le Forum, published by Le Centre Franco-Americain at the University of Maine, or look up books by Robert E. Chenard on URSUS at ursus.maine.edu

“A Quebec Soldier in Maine” tells of the Civil War service of Barry Rodrigue’s DesRochers ancestors from Quebec.

Also of interest are Yvon Labbe’s “Out of the Shadows,” Ross and Judy Paradis’ “The Silent Playground” and Kristin Langellier’s “Voicing Memere.”

As of Jan. 2, URSUS tells us that “Voyages” is available at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, Fogler Library Special Collections in Orono and University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn campus. It is being bound for the Maine State Library in Augusta.

It retails for $30, and is certainly worth the price.

Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or e-mail queries to familyti@bangordailynews.net.