The Acadian Archives, located on the University of Maine at Fort Kent campus, will host an in-person genealogy workshop on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at 6 p.m. at the Acadian Archives. The event is free and open to the public.
The workshop will focus on online genealogy databases and the opportunities they hold for people of Acadian and French-Canadian ancestry. Archives staff will offer advice on maximizing searches on well-known databases like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. They will also show how to make the most of NosOrigines and WikiTree and discuss the immense resources of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ).
“Genealogical inquiries keep us busy year-round,” states Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives. “We share visitors’ excitement about our physical resources. It is easy to lose track of the many new online platforms that complement our holdings. Without being comprehensive, this workshop will feature tips and tricks that can benefit genealogists in their digital research.”
Although not essential, attendees are encouraged to bring a tablet or a laptop. Future events will focus on the Archives’ physical resources, including obituary cards, maps, oral interviews, and family histories.
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at the University of Maine at Fort Kent will host a presentation entitled “Mūzikas Saknes – Musical Roots” by UMFK Professor of Music and Education Dr. Scott Brickman on Thursday, February 1st at 6 p.m. at the Acadian Archives. The presentation is free and open to the public.
During UMFK’s academic year 2022-2023, Dr. Brickman was on sabbatical – documenting, researching, and participating in Latvian musical culture.
Come and listen to Dr. Brickman share his experiences in Latvia during his sabbatical. He will, in his characteristic idiosyncratic and informal way, sing Latvian songs, talk about his Latvian ancestry, and transmit all that he can about the vibrant musical and cultural life of this wonderful country.
“From the beginning, the Acadian Archives has been a site of cultural education and cultural encounters,” explains Archives director Patrick Lacroix. “With Scott’s presentation, we will be invited to learn about a small community half a world away and reflect on our own.”
For more information, please contact Acadian Archives Director Patrick Lacroix at (207) 834-7536.
The little-known country of Latvia, formerly part of the U.S.S.R. and along with Estonia and Lithuania, one of the three Baltic States, is roughly the size of West Virginia and has slightly less than 2 million people. Latvia has an incredibly rich and varied musical culture.
La Frontière
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The Archives acadiennes/Acadian Archives will sponsor a screening of La Frontière, a documentary film on the border regions of Maine, at the University of Maine at Fort Kent on Friday, November 17th at 7 p.m. in Nadeau Hall conference room. The event is free and open to the public.
La Frontière is a documentary film portraying slices of life in northern Maine’s borderlands. This beautifully shot 35-minute film takes viewers on an intimate tour of the culture of the 611-mile border between Maine and Canada. The film is a must-see for cinema connoisseurs and anyone hoping to see northern Maine through a different lens. The film was screened at last year’s Camden International Film Festival in Midcoast Maine.
La Frontière was produced by Katy Haas and Megan Ruffe. A graduate of Smith College, Haas attended the Burren College of Art and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She was a co-producer with Florentine Films, a creation of Ken Burns, on Benjamin Franklin (2022), as well as an associate producer on the series Country Music (2019) and an apprentice editor on The Dust Bowl (2012). Ruffe studied film and geography at Penn State University. She, too, has worked on a number of Florentine Films series and, with a small team, is developing UNUM, a new digital project that uses Florentine’s library to bring historical context to current events. La Frontière also features cinematography by Lindsay Taylor Jackson and Jared Ames.
“We’re very grateful for the filmmakers’ willingness to share their work with our community,” said Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives. “Katy and Megan offer us new ways of seeing and understanding our borderland region.”
A question-and-answer session with the producers will follow the screening. Snacks will be available for attendees.
For more information, contact Patrick Lacroix at the Acadian Archives at (207) 834-7536.
Route 1 Book Talk
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Author Susan M. Bregman
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at the University of Maine at Fort Kent will host a book talk on Along Route 1: Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts by accomplished writer Susan M. Bregman on Thursday, July 13th at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
“If any road can match the imagery and significance of Route 66, it’s unquestionably Route 1,” says Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives. “Bregman’s in-depth research and the photos she collected are sure to captivate those of us living near Route 1. Her talk will help us see through a century of change in northern Maine and beyond.”
Along Route 1 chronicles the long, rich history of one of America’s most iconic thoroughfares. Bregman’s focus on Route 1’s northernmost span reveals a fascinating mix of famed motels, eateries, amusement parks, and drive-in theaters; it also tells the story of long-distance travel and the possibilities opened by the automobile and urbanization.
Route 1 has mirrored social and economic change across the region, and the book reflects both loss and survival. Along Route 1 includes a large number of photographs that were contributed by historical societies, museums, libraries, universities, and private collections. With Fort Kent being home to Route 1’s “First Mile,” the St. John Valley is well-represented in the book. Along Route 1: Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts is currently available from South Carolina-based Arcadia Publishing.
Writer and photographer Susan Mara Bregman is the author of Arcadia Publishing’s New England Neon and New England Candlepin Bowling. A native New Yorker, she moved to Boston after graduating from college and never left. The author will discuss her research and her findings and take questions.
For more information, please contact Acadian Archives Director Patrick Lacroix at (207) 834-7536.
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes is the premier center for the study of Acadian history in New England and serves as one of the many cultural hubs in the St. John Valley.
Lulu Pelletier Exhibit 2023
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That Loving Gaze, by Lulu Pelletier, acrylic on canvas, 2021
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at the University of Maine at Fort Kent will host an art exhibit titled “A Bit of This and a Bit of That” through the end of August. The exhibit, featuring paintings of an assortment of subjects, animals, people, and outdoor vistas, showcases the work of locally renowned artist Lulu Pelletier. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
Pelletier is a native of Fort Kent. Having painted from an early age, Pelletier explains, “I was encouraged by friends and family to continue learning, and as a result, I still to this day love to learn and apply new techniques from other artists.”
Noted Canadian artist Claude Picard was among her teachers. Pelletier earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Maine at Presque Isle. In 2008, UMFK honored her with the Gretchen Prize for exceptional industry and imagination in the Fine Arts.
Pelletier is well-known for her realistic portraits, but her portfolio includes other subjects, including scenics and animals. She works on commission and also teaches others how to find their artistry in painting. Her illustrations have appeared in a number of books.
“We’re immensely thrilled to promote and recognize local talent,” said Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives. “Lulu’s work is expressive and joyful and always worth rediscovering.”
The Acadian Archives will host an opening reception to mark the launch of Lulu Pelletier’s exhibit, “A Bit of This and a Bit of That,” on Thursday, May 25th, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The exhibit will then be open to the public during the Archives’ regular business hours.
For more information, please contact Acadian Archives Director Patrick Lacroix at (207) 834-7536.
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes is the premier center for the study of Acadian history in New England and serves as one of the many cultural hubs in the St. John Valley.
Acadian History Lectures
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Dr. Patrick Lacroix, Director of the Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, will host a five-week lecture series titled Acadian History and Culture starting on February 23, 2023, through March 30, 2023. (except for March 16th). All lectures during the series will be via Zoom on Thursdays at 6:00 p.m.
Among the scholar speakers are a Nova Scotia-based archeologist who will share findings from work in the Grand-Pré area, a renowned historian who’s authored a book on the deportation, and a researcher who will share connections between the U.S. War of Independence and the Maritime borderlands.
“We’re immensely pleased to showcase various facets of Acadian culture and history,” says Patrick Lacroix, the director of the Acadian Archives. “With such renowned scholars as Jonathan Fowler and Christopher Hodson and other knowledgeable speakers, our audience will have an incomparable learning experience.”
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at University of Maine at Fort Kent will host a community forum on the impact of the pandemic and international travel restrictions in the St. John Valley on Saturday, December 3rd, from 9 to 11:30 a.m. in Nadeau Hall conference room.
The event is free and open to the public.
The event came about from oral interviews conducted by the Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes during this past summer. The project, titled “Voices of the Borderland: The Social Impact of International Travel Restrictions in Northern Maine,” captured local residents’ challenging experience with international travel from 2020 to 2022. The testimonies are now being transcribed and will form a new permanent collection at the Archives.
During the community forum, Acadian Archives’ staff will share their findings. You will also hear from Lisa Lavoie, Ph.D. candidate at the University of the Cumberlands and UMFK assistant professor of behavioral science, who wrote her master’s thesis on borderland communities, and Amber Rankine, executive director of the Greater Fort Kent Area Chamber of Commerce. The forum will provide the audience with the opportunity to share their experience of border restrictions, family hardships, economic effects, challenges at ports of entry, and testing requirements.
“We gathered oral testimonies about the pandemic and its consequences while they were fresh in people’s minds,” states Dr. Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives. “This event will help us think about our region’s past, present, and future relationships with the international border.”
Light refreshments will be offered.
This event is generously supported by the Maine Humanities Council.
For more information, please contact Acadian Archives Director Patrick Lacroix at (207) 834-7535.
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes is the premier center for the study of Acadian history in New England and serves as one of the many cultural hubs in the St. John Valley.
Dana Murch Book Talk
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Author Dana Murch at Port-Royal National Historic Site
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at the University of Maine at Fort Kent will host a book talk by Dana Murch, author of The Ancestors and Descendants of Daniel F. Thibodeau and Rebecca Jandreau at the Acadian Archives, on Thursday, November 10th from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
In the presentation, titled “The French Connection,” Murch will discuss the life and times of some of the Acadians and Québécois in his tree and the family connections of his maternal grandparents, St. Francis natives Daniel Frédéric Thibodeau and Rebecca Jandreau.
Written in the vein of Leo Cyr’s classic Madawaskan Heritage, the book is a major addition to the genealogy of the Thibodeau and Jandreau families, which also includes sketches of 160 related families from Albert to Vallière. Most significant among these sketches are those of the Dubé, Ouellette, Pelletier, Michaud, Nadeau, Paradis, and Miville dit Deschênes families, followed by Ayotte, Cloutier, Gagnon, Jalbert, and Saucier.
The hardcover book includes copies of vital records, synopses of U.S. and Canadian census records, family photos, and photos of gravestones, family memorials, and churches. It also features a selected history of Maine and New France (including Acadia) from 1604 to 1850 and a chronology of the arrival of all immigrant ancestors.
“We are very fortunate to have an opportunity to welcome Dana Murch to campus,” explains Patrick Lacroix, director of the Acadian Archives. “It’s great news for experienced genealogists but also beginners who stand to learn about their roots and make fruitful connections.”
A Caribou native, Dana Murch is a retired state environmental regulator and a 13th-generation “Maine-ah.” He is a descendant of many early settlers of both Acadia and Quebec, as well as a multiple Mayflower descendant. He is now working on the definitive genealogy and history of the entire Murch family of Maine, whose roots have been traced back to 17th-century Devonshire, England. He currently resides in Belfast with his wife, Meredith Jones.
Copies of Murch’s book will be available for purchase at the book talk.
For more information, please contact Acadian Archives Director Patrick Lacroix at (207) 834-7536.
The Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes is the premier center for the study of Acadian history in New England and serves as one of the many cultural hubs in the St. John Valley.
Poetry Express at UMFK
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Poet Valerie Lawson will lead Poetry Express events at UMFK on September 21 & 22.
The University of Maine at Fort Kent’s Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes will host Poetry Express, a collaborative poetry performance program, Wednesday, September 21st, and Thursday, September 22nd, on the University campus. The event is free and open to the public.
The theme surrounding the Poetry Express event will encompass Acadian Heritage.
On September 21st, the poetry workshop will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Acadian Archives. Program participants select Maine poems with support from Maine State Library and learn to perform those poems in a workshop taught by guest Poet Valerie Lawson.
Valerie Lawson’s work has been published in Café Review, About Place Journal, The Catch, Maine Farms, and others. Most recently, Lawson participated in the Writing the Land project, connecting protected spaces with poets. She wrote about Reversing Falls in Pembroke, conserved by the Downeast Coastal Conservancy, and with the help of the Maine Arts Commission, created a video of one of the poems. You may view the video at valerie-lawson.com.
At the Archives, on September 22nd, the poetry workshop will continue with a rehearsal of participants’ poetry presentations to be held from 3 to 4 p.m.
The Poetry Express event will conclude with a community poetry reading and conversation event for the public to come together and celebrate Maine poetry will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at the UMFK Bengal Lair.
If you would like to participate in the Poetry Express, please contact Assistant Professor of Business Michael Curran at (412) 200-0978.
Poetry Express is a collaborative poetry performance program in partnership with the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine State Library to bring poetry to UMFK.
The Acadian Landing Monument at 100
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There are few pages in American history, if any indeed, that surpass in age, interest, or pathos, those which record the trials and triumphs of that heroic race now commonly known as the Acadians.
Bangor Daily News, July 7, 1922
On July 3, 1922, the Catholics of St. David, Maine, and surrounding communities gathered for an imposing and unprecedented ceremony on the banks of the St. John River. After a church service and addresses from religious dignitaries, Bishop Louis S. Walsh of Portland led a procession to a giant cross that awaited his blessing. The cross marked the location where, in 1785, Acadians had—according to local tradition—begun to form new communities after thirty years of tragedy and uncertainty. It seemed the Acadians were finally having their day in the sun.
Catholic and French
Walsh, an Irish American, may seem an unlikely player in this cultural pageant. Historical works portray him as Maine Franco-Americans’ ultimate bête noire. From 1909 to 1913, he was engaged in a lengthy conflict over the ownership and management of Church property in the diocese. Franco-Americans’ campaign to restore elective parish councils ultimately ended in failure. Walsh even placed a small group of activists under interdict, preventing them from receiving sacraments. The controversy ended with bruised and bitter feelings on both sides.
By the early 1920s, it was clear that Walsh and Franco-Americans needed one another. Tentative partnerships were not merely the result of Franco-Americans’ growing integration and the intervening cooling-off period. The Ku Klux Klan spread across the state and posed a threat to all Catholics; the Irish and French populations would benefit from working together. Walsh and Maine Catholics—including Franco-Americans—also expressed concern about growing federal and state intervention in education and healthcare. They formed a common political front.
The battle with the most enduring consequences occurred over the implementation of English-only education in public schools, a bill passed by the state legislature in 1919. Former legislator Irénée Cyr brought a lengthy petition signed by St. John Valley residents to Augusta—in vain. It remains unclear whether Walsh sincerely supported the French population of the Valley in their defense of their language—or simply disapproved of state overreach. Either way, Maine’s French population now recognized that the biggest threat to their culture came from beyond the Catholic Church.
Faced with recurring waves of xenophobia, it is little wonder that Walsh wished to assert the deep historical roots of the Church in Maine. He did so in commemorative ceremonies in August and in October 1913. The second of these was held at the city hall in Portland and put a Franco-American speaker front and center. Both events marked 300 years since the founding of the first Catholic mission in what would become Maine. The consecration of the Acadian Cross in the Madawaska region nearly a decade later served a similar purpose.
Acadian Cross (Acadian Archives Image Collection)
The rhetoric of that time depicted the original Indigenous inhabitants of the land as a population destined to be civilized or erased. As a result, major ceremonies identified French settlers as the first to occupy the land. In St. David and elsewhere, Walsh presented Catholics as full-fledged participants in the building of the country. People of Acadian and French-Canadian descent gladly showed their “Yankee” neighbors that they had preceded them in many parts of the continent. Precedence seemed to confer legitimacy.
Although the ceremony was led by an Irish-American bishop, this was a day by and for French-heritage people. The event drew L.-N. Dugal, the vicar general of the diocese of Chatham, in New Brunswick, and a pastor from Lewiston. Local French children received the sacrament of confirmation. Father Thomas Albert, author of a recent work of history, delivered a sermon in French.
As the epigraph above shows, in the wake of the event, the Bangor Daily News gave space to the Acadian story. Subscribers learned about the persecution wrought by the English Puritans, whom the author deemed guilty for the “crime” of deportation. References to these wandering people, escaping captivity to finding new, permanent homes, hinted at a providential destiny—if not something entirely Biblical.
This public recognition of the Acadians’ trials and resilience was not an isolated event; other developments offered signs of hope. In eastern Canada, the late-nineteenth-century Acadian Renaissance had led to interprovincial conventions and inspired elites to adopt new symbols. A month after the St. David ceremony, the first Acadian bishop, Edouard LeBlanc, blessed the cornerstone of what would become the iconic church at Grand-Pré, in Nova Scotia. Acadians had long occupied positions of political influence; their visibility as a people would grow later in the decade with the silent movie Evangeline. Cultural challenges would still abound, but recognition of their unique identity and their place in Maine history was finally at hand.
History and Commemoration
The St. David ceremony and the subsequent newspaper report told an Acadian story. To this day, so does the monument. Closer scrutiny of the people it honors offers a more complicated picture, however, and reminds us of the monument’s double meaning.
A plaque (much more recent than the cross) bears the names of the 35 “pioneers” of 1785. With the exception of Pierre Duperré, all are couples that had their own households. Not appearing on the plaque are these people’s children, many of whom would marry and intermarry in Saint-Basile after the establishment of the parish in 1792. Counting these children, we’re nearing some 100 individuals who might be considered original French-heritage settlers in our region.
French heritage may in fact be the better term for them, for by no means were they all Acadians. Brothers Firmin and Pierre Cyr married sisters Marie Josephte and Madeleine Ayotte. The Ayottes’ parents also appear on the monument; their whole family was French-Canadian. Other names originate from the St. Lawrence River valley and therefore are not Acadian: Guerrette dit Dumont, Bélanger, Lefebvre, Fournier, Potvin, and Consigny dit Sansfaçon. Nearly all of these families resided in the Kamouraska area when they were joined by Acadian refugees in the 1750s and 1760s. The meeting of Cyrs, Daigles, and Thibodeaus, and French-Canadian families anticipated the eventual cultural fusion of these two peoples in the Upper St. John Valley.
Ceremony near Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, in 1924 (Fonds Arsène Hébert, P62,S1,D30, BAnQ)
Acadians married French Canadians in Kamouraska but few stayed permanently. Some of these “mixed” households were enumerated on the St. John River near present-day Fredericton in the early 1780s. The influx of Loyalists and the challenge of securing land titles after 1783 led these families to seek a more stable future elsewhere. The Upper St. John River was a natural option as the midway point between the St. Lawrence and Fredericton; this also happened to be a river route that many had traveled and that promised trade between Quebec City and the eastern colonies. Officials in Quebec and New Brunswick were planning a military road connecting the two colonies and a settlement on the Upper St. John River would help guard that road.
We know the events of the summer of 1785 only through context, limited documentation produced by outside officials, and oral traditions. At the very least, we should not imagine a large convoy of families moving upriver from Fredericton with all of their personal belongings. The work of many summers was needed to turn forests into productive land. Settlers would spend the first season chopping trees. They would plant turnips and potatoes between the stumps, which might in time be burnt or pulled out once oxen and horses were available. Only then could fields be sown and plowed as they were elsewhere—and thus feed growing families.
In fact, whole families likely would not have come without some assurance that they held legal title to these lands, which they received in 1785. Beyond the small Indigenous village near Petit-Sault, a traveler passing through the region in September 1785 might have spied no more than a small riverside camp composed entirely of men—maybe in the shadow of a cross, and maybe not. The development of stable, enduring agricultural communities would take years and would be the joint work of Acadians and French Canadians.
By the time Bishop Walsh stepped down from the train with his clerical entourage, those communities’ survival was no longer in doubt. In fact, we could argue that the 1922 ceremony marked an important turning point in the region’s history. It looked back to the sacrifices of the original pioneers while responding to new challenges surrounding language and culture. The cross in St. David calls us to remember the men and women whose names appear on the base of the monument; it should also remind us of the struggles of the 1920s, when the cross was planted, many of which are still with us today.
The Madawaska Historical Society will recognize the centennial of the Acadian Cross during its annual luncheon on June 26.
Sources
Older, antiquarian works like Charles W. Collins’s The Acadians of Madawaska, Maine (1902) and Thomas Albert’s Histoire du Madawaska (1920) were standards for much of the twentieth century. Historians have since expanded our understanding of the region and its development. Sources for this essay include:
“La bénédiction de l’église de Grand-Pré,” Le Droit [Ottawa], August 16, 1922, 1.
“Commemorating the Coming of the Acadians,” Bangor Daily News, July 7, 1922, 2.
Craig, Béatrice, “Immigrants in a Frontier Community, Madawaska 1785-1850,” Revue de la Société historique du Madawaska (April 2008).
Craig, Béatrice, Maxime Dagenais, Lisa Ornstein, and Guy Dubay, The Land in Between: The Upper St. John Valley, Prehistory to World War I (Gardiner: Tilbury House, 2009).
“L’église-souvenir de Grand Pré,” La Tribune [Sherbrooke], February 18, 1922, 10.
Lacroix, Patrick, “À l’assaut de la corporation sole: Autonomie institutionnelle et financière chez les Franco-Américains du Maine, 1900-1917,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, vol. 72, no. 1 (summer 2018), 31-51.
Lacroix, Patrick, “Hauntingly Silent: Some Questions Concerning Maine’s English Education Bill,” Le Forum, vol. 43, no. 1 (spring 2021), 24-27.
Richard, Mark Paul, Not a Catholic Nation: The Ku Klux Klan Confronts New England in the 1920s (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015).
“Le Tri-Centenaire Catholique,” La Justice [Biddeford], October 16, 1913, 2.
The Acadian Archives are home to a vast array of resources on the St. John Valley’s Acadian and French-Canadian settlers. For additional information or to schedule an appointment, please reach us at acadian@maine.edu or by phone at 207-834-7535.
