Exams of Franco-American WWI Draftees Show the Poorest State of Public Health in the U.S.

On February 20, 1923, Charles B. Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office in Long Island, NY, wrote a letter to Henry F. Perkins, eugenics point man at the University of Vermont. “Did you know,” wrote Davenport to Perkins, “that in the study of defects found in drafted men, Vermont stood at or near the top of the list as having precisely or nearly the highest defect rate for quite a series of defects? This result I ascribe to the French Canadian constituents of the population which, I had other reasons for believing, to contain an undue proportion of defectives.”1

Davenport knew well the “study of defects found in drafted men” because he co-wrote the detailed statistical report on the subject for the Senate Committee on Military Affairs.2  This 1919 report of more than 350 pages compiles data from medical examinations of 2.7 million men, 18 to 30 years old, drafted during the First World War. Examiners reported cases of what they regarded as mental or physical “defects,” which included a wide range of diseases and conditions from heart disease, to asthma, to blindness, to flat feet, to obesity, to drug addiction.

The report cuts the data three ways. First, it reports the distribution of these “defects” among the states. It then divides most of the states into smaller regions that reflect different economies: agricultural, manufacturing, mining, or commuter regions. There is also a similar series with the data grouped by environment or terrain: mountain, desert, maritime regions, etc. In these analyses, the researchers attempt to group the various health issues according to the draftee's occupation or milieu.

1919 report by Albert G. Love
and eugenics supporter Charles B. Davenport

Then comes what the researchers term “the racial series.” These “races” include groupings like “mountain whites,” “Indians” (Native Americans) and “Mexicans.” There is also a number of breakout groups of “foreign born whites.” “Group 19” is the French Canadian “racial” group.

This group was created, like the other groups, by aggregating areas with high concentrations of French-Canadians, where the latter constituted more than 10 percent of the population. All such regions were in New England, in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The French-Canadian group had “the highest defect rate” of any of the “racial” groupings in the U.S. (266). Areas with high concentrations of French-Canadians led the lists in a range of health problems associated with low socioeconomic status including alcoholism, malnutrition, and obesity. 

Presenting their findings on “Group 19,” the researchers state:

The French Canadian group shows an extraordinary excess of defects in various important respects, such as tuberculosis, spinal curvature, deaf-mutism, mental deficiency and psychoses, refractive errors [myopia and other eyesight issues], otitis media [inflammatory diseases of the ear], defective hearing, asthma, bad teeth, hernia, deficient size of chest, and height and underweight. The sections of which the French Canadians form a predominant factor are among the poorest from the military standpoint (46).

The French-Canadian group led the U.S. in alcoholism. Alcoholism was high across New England in 1919 and not only in the areas with high concentrations of French-Canadians. Of the ten states with the highest numbers of alcoholics among drafted men, five of them were in New England (86, Table 12). However, in the parts of New England with large French-Canadian populations, rates of alcoholism were many times higher than elsewhere. The rate of alcoholism among young men in the French-Canadian parts of New England was 0.91 per 1000 persons. By contrast, populations such as the Germans/Austrians and Russians in the U.S., stereotypically thought to enjoy a drink, had rates of alcoholism of 0.38 and 0.21 per thousand respectively (269, Table 106).

The French-Canadian grouping also had the highest rates, by far, of men judged “underheight” and “underweight” (294, Tables 180, 181). They also had the highest incidence of diagnosed malnutrition except for “mountain whites” and “Indians” living in “sparsely settled” places (294, Table 182).  Anemia, a condition often caused by vitamin or mineral deficiency, was found to be “exceptionally high in the French Canadian section(s) (305).” At the same time, the highest rates of obesity in the U.S. were found in places with large French-Canadian populations (272, Table 114).

The “French-Canadian immigrants” were also found to suffer from a high proportion of “defective physical development.” But exactly how this condition is defined and how it differs from “underweight” is unclear even to the researchers. However, the rate of “total defective development and nutrition” among the French-Canadian group was many times higher than that of any other group listed: 85.26 persons per 1000, as compared with the next highest numbers among Scottish-Americans and “mountain whites,” with about one-half the rate of the French-Canadian group. The researchers own that “defective development” “is due to a variety of causes” (33-34). Since Davenport was a eugenics supporter, the report often wishes to find a “congenital” or “racial” cause for some alleged “defect.” But it admits that “defective physical development” has environmental components.

The group [showing ‘defective physical development’] has a great importance for social therapeutics, since it is largely due to unhygienic methods of living, although in considerable part due, also, to congenital defects…. A center for defective physical development is found in the States which center around Chattanooga, and it seems probable that this area is largely determined by the presence of hookworm infection. There is another center in New England, and this seems to be controlled very largely by the French-Canadian immigrants, who show a high rate of defective physical development (33-34).

“Unhygienic methods of living” are blamed for the undernourished conditions of young men in the mill towns, and not the socioeconomic conditions that had turned the rural poor of Québec into a neglected labor pool destined for U.S. mills and factories. Whether the causes were congenital or environmental, many of the young men who came from the mill town milieu were no longer physically fit even for the trenches.

Having found that the French-Canadian group scored highest in a wide range of alleged “defects,” the authors then attribute the poor showing of some New England states to high concentrations of French-Canadians. 

Rhode Island had the highest “defect rate” overall. “Conditions in which Rhode Island stands first or second are: Alcoholism, obesity, neurosis, total for myopia and defective vision (cause not stated), hemorrhoids, bronchitis, deformities of appendages and trunk, atrophy of muscles of the appendages, underheight, and underweight (41).” Why does Rhode Island stand at or near the top in many “defects,” per Love and Davenport?

It is largely because of the defective or nonresistant stock which has been drawn to this the most urban of all the States—that in which the population is most generally engaged in manufacturing. While one may not ascribe the defects to the occupation, it is probable that the occupation has attracted stock with defects or susceptible to them. Next to Rhode Island stands Vermont....It is surprising in what a number of defects the small State of Vermont leads. The reason for this is probably because of the presence in Vermont of a large number of French Canadians in whom the defect rate is particularly high (41).

Love and Davenport ascribe Rhode Island’s high “defect rate” to “defective stock” attracted by the state’s manufacturing, while Vermont’s is attributed to its “large number of French-Canadians.” However, elsewhere in the report, the authors find that these two states “have this in common that they contain a large proportion of Canadian French (149).” More than once, they claim that the reason for these states' poor showing is the French-Canadian presence. 

The authors discuss some problems with the hypothesis that New England’s health woes were due to “defective” French-Canadians. They observe that New Hampshire had a larger percentage of French-Canadians than either Rhode Island or Vermont, and yet it was in the middle of the pack as regards alleged “defects.” The authors conclude that the “high position of Rhode Island and Vermont” with respect to “defects” is “due to a combination of...three factors...the thoroughness of the examinations made by local boards, the intelligence and care exercised at Camp Devens [where New England draftees were examined] and the high percentage of French Canadians in the population (149).”

Conditions that were environmental, a consequence of living in fetid mill towns, are ascribed to “congenital” causes. These conclusions were then used  by eugenics proponents, like Davenport and Vermont’s Henry Perkins, to class the French Canadians as an "inferior" breed in their racial hierarchies. Since French-Canadians in the mill towns were poor, they faced public health challenges; these challenges were then essentialized by eugenics proponents and made a part of the “racial” (their word) makeup of the French Canadian people.

Among the alleged “defects” that stemmed from life in the mill towns were problems with eyesight, hearing, and respiratory issues. And these health problems appear already in young men mostly in their twenties. High rates of obesity, malnutrition, and the off-the-chart rate of alcoholism show a community that’s been marginalized by the society of its day and relegated to an underclass status. Such a status, in all times and places, is hazardous to one’s health.

My maternal grandfather (right)
and his brother in their WWI uniforms

The data from drafted men paints a shocking portrait of the Franco-Americans in the mill towns in the early 20th century. They emerge as among the most disadvantaged groups in the U.S. from a public health perspective. When compared with groups recognized as poor or historically disadvantaged, such as “mountain whites,” rural Native Americans, and Mexican-Americans, the data shows the tragically poor condition of public health in the New England mill towns where the French-Canadians predominated.

Both of my grandfathers were in the military in the World War One era and they were both born and raised in the areas Love and Davenport have aggregated to create their French-Canadian “racial” group. Their data provides insight into the world of my grandparents, the places where they were born and raised. My father was born less than a decade after the report on drafted men was issued, in one of the heavily French-Canadian areas of Maine. The “defective” French-Canadian men described here were relatives, friends and neighbors of my parents and grandparents. This report captures the stark reality of the mill town milieu that formed previous generations of Franco-Americans, the forbears of most of the two million French-Canadian descendants who still live in New England. No surprise that little of what happened there was passed down to younger generations.

For more on eugenics and Franco-Americans see Chapter 13 of my book A Distinct Alien Race.

--------------
Notes

1. David Vermette, A Distinct Alien Race (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018), 256.

2. U.S. Congress, Senate, Defects Found in Drafted Men: Statistical Information Compiled from the Draft Records, Prepared under the direction of the Surgeon General, M.W. Ireland, by Albert G. Love, M.D. and Charles B. Davenport, Printed for the use of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 66th Congress, 1st Session, 1919. Parenthetical page numbers and table numbers refer to this report.

Louis Riel: A Franco-American?

“Father Jean Baptiste Bruno, the priest of Worcester, who was my director of conscience, said to me: 'Riel, God has put an object into your hands, the cause of the triumph of religion in the world, take care, you will succeed when most believe you have lost.” ¹

-- Final Statement of Louis Riel at his Trial, Regina, July 31, 1885

This transcript records the name of the priest of Worcester incorrectly. The priest Louis Riel mentions at his trial was Fr. Jean-Baptiste Primeau, the curé at the parish of Notre Dame des Canadiens in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was to this same Franco-American priest that Riel entrusted “une bonne partie” of his papers.²

His close relationship with a priest serving in a New England Franco-American parish should come as no surprise since, by the time of his execution in 1885, Riel was a U.S. citizen. He became a naturalized citizen on March 16, 1883 at Helena, Lewis & Clark County, Montana Territory. As part of his oath of citizenship, he renounced his allegiance to all foreign powers and monarchs, including and explicitly Queen Victoria.³

Indeed, one might say that at the time of his death Louis Riel was a Franco-American. Canada executed a foreign national for alleged treason against a Queen and a government that he had abjured.

Riel in New England and New York in the 1870s

Worcester was not the only Franco-American center in the Northeastern USA that Riel visited in the 1870s. In the Summer of 1874, he addressed Worcester’s Franco-Americans at their St-Jean Baptiste Hall and then gave speeches rallying support for the Métis cause elsewhere in the region. During the 1870s he visited Woonsocket, RI, Manchester, Nashua and Suncook, NH and maybe other New England towns with large Franco-American populations as well. He also visited the Franco-Americans of Northern New York at Plattsburgh and Keesville.⁴

Riel spent a month-and a half in the region again between December 1875 and January 1876, again visiting Worcester and Suncook. This period coincided with a mental breakdown that led to Riel’s stay at the Beauport asylum in Québec.

After his release from Beauport on January 23, 1878, Riel returned immediately to the Franco-American centers of New York and New England. He visited the priests Fr. Fabien Barnabé at Keeseville, NY and Fr. Louis-Napoleon St-Onge at Glens Falls in that same state. He visited Fr. Primeau at Worcester and also visited New Hampshire. He then returned to Keesville where he settled for a time as a farmer and contemplated marriage.

Between his visits in 1875 and 1876, and his longer stay in 1878, all told, Louis Riel spent more than a year of his life among the Franco-American communities of New England and New York.

Riel’s activities on behalf of the Métis in the 1870s and 1880s coincided with the zenith of the movement from the Québec countryside to the industrial towns of New England and northern New York. Riel found in the Northeastern USA an audience eager to support Francophone communities elsewhere on the continent.

New England Franco-Americans demonstrated their support for Riel at a massive meeting called by the Saint-Jean Baptiste Society of Montréal for June 24, 1874. It was the Franco-American delegation, led by the indomitable journalist Ferdinand Gagnon of Worcester and his sometime partner Frédéric Houde, who pressed the convention to support Riel unequivocally.

The Québécois Liberals at the meeting, with their eye on the delicate politics of the newly minted Canadian Confederation, were more reticent about supporting Riel too vocally. The Liberals did not want to embarrass their own party’s government. Houde, in particular, however, was eager that the Society should make a strong statement of support for Riel.⁵

After his travels in the East, in November 1878 Riel moved westward to St. Paul, Minnesota, a city founded by a Canadien. He also spent time in the French-Canadian/Métis town of St. Joseph, Dakota Territory, eventually moving on to the Montana Territory where he became a U.S. citizen.

Riel, New England and New York in the 1880s

Persuaded to return to the lands north of the border, Riel led the resistance against the Canadian government in 1885 in Saskatchewan as he had led the earlier uprising on the Red River in 1869-70. During the period of his subsequent trial, leading to his execution, the voices of Franco-Americans in the Northeastern USA spoke again in his support.

The Franco-American citizens of Lawrence, Massachusetts petitioned U.S. Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard on Riel’s behalf, on the grounds that Riel was a U.S. citizen and that his trial had been unjust.

The petition from Lawrence reads as follows:

August 17, 1885
Petition of the Canadian-French citizens of the United States of Lawrence, Mass.

SIR: Considering the partiality shown in the proceedings in the trial of Louis David Riel, in which the accused was sentenced to death for high treason towards Her Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain, for the more or less active part he has taken in the recent North-West Canadian troubles, and claiming that the said Louis David Riel is a citizen of the United States, we hope that the American Government will have him equitably treated.

In consequence, Mr. Secretary, we beg of you to be our interpreter to His Excellency the President of the United States requesting him to assist in preventing this abuse of justice, and that the Stars and Stripes which are our safeguard, shall shield under its noble folds the unfortunate, who is the apparent victim of fanaticism.

Hoping that our request will be favorably considered, we are, Mr. Secretary, Your most humble servants, citizens and residents of Lawrence, Mass.,

JOSEPH BLANCHET, 

MAGLOIRE BOLDUC,

JAMES L. BOLDUC,

ERNEST A. DEMARS,

HECTOR DUCHESNE

And four hundred and five others.

The petition of American citizens “of French-Canadian nationality” from Rochester, New York is more pointed:

Petition of French-Canadian citizens of the United States residing at Rochester, N. Y.

To the Hon. T. F. BAYARD, Secretary, of State of the United States:
The undersigned, citizens of the United States and of French-Canadian nationality, respectfully represent, as they are credibly informed and verily believe: That Louis David Riel is, and was at the time of his trial, a naturalized citizen of the United States, and had for many years and up to the time of the troubles in which be became involved in Canada, resided at Montana, in the United States, where he was engaged as a teacher;

That while residing there he was prevailed upon to go to Canada to intercede for the oppressed inhabitants of the Canadian North-West territory.

That while residing temporarily there he was arraigned and indicted for high treason against Her Majesty the Queen of England;

That during the month of July last he was put upon his trial, which resulted in his conviction and sentence of death; That, all your petitioners are credibly informed, his trial was not only not impartial, but that he was deprived of giving evidence which might have shown him entirely innocent of the offense of which he was accused;

That under the then existing political excitement in Canada, resulting in a measure from questions bearing upon the rights of the people for whom he was contending, he was deprived of the means of making his best defense, and that his trial was unfair, partial, and unjust;

That, as your petitioners are advised and believe, the court before whom he was tried was without jurisdiction, and that his conviction was unsupported by the evidence and contrary to law.

Your petitioners therefore ask such interposition on the part of the United States government as may seem reasonable and just for the relief and protection of one of its adopted citizens, now languishing under the sentence of death by a foreign court. Rochester, N. Y., August 29, 1885.

A. E. MANSEAU,

PIERRE GAGNIER.

LOUIS G. LA FONTAINE,

and sixty-six: others.⁶

Secretary Bayard answered the petition of the Franco-Americans of Rochester politely but unsatisfactorily since he does not resolve the paradox that Riel was charged for treason against a Sovereign he had renounced explicitly.

Also among Riel’s friends and supporters was Edmond Mallet, one of the most famous Franco-Americans of his day.

Born in Montréal, and raised in northern New York State, Mallet was a hero of the Union Army in the American Civil War and rose to the rank of Major. Mallet was also one of the first historians of Franco-Americans, composing articles and books about the French and French-Canadian contribution to the United States. Appointed to a government position by President Abraham Lincoln, and subsequently enjoying other government jobs, Mallet had the ear of powerful individuals in Washington.⁷

Major Edmond Mallet
Source: Assumption College

It was Mallet who had most likely urged Riel to seek U.S. citizenship after the two met in Washington. It had also been Mallet who, when he had sensed that Riel’s mental state was crumbling in 1875, had led the Métis leader to Fr. Primeau in Worcester.

In 1885, Mallet contacted Secretary of State Bayard urging him to speak to President Cleveland and to prevail upon him to intervene on behalf of Riel. Ferdinand Gagnon also agitated in favor of Riel in 1885.⁸ In the event, however, Cleveland did nothing. 

Even the Anglophone, mainstream press in the States covered the trial, with a tone of sympathy toward Riel for the most part. However, none of the English-language coverage mentions his status as a U.S. citizen, although the Franco-Americans were well aware of it.⁹

Conclusion

We generally think of the story of Riel in connection with the Francophone Métis of the Prairie West, and this seems to be the area where he himself felt most comfortable. Although he visited New England and New York, his home in the USA was Montana, across the border from the midsection of today’s Canada, the area that Riel knew best.

Riel's Execution
1885

However, in Riel’s day one thought in terms of a French-Canadian nation that spanned borders: national, state and provincial. A Canadien(ne)-français(e) was a Canadien(ne)-français(e) whether his or her home was in Montréal, Manitoba, Montana or Maine. And Riel’s Métis had a place within this broad definition of “French-Canadian nationality.”

Although Riel himself identified as Métis, Riel was no foreigner to the Franco-Americans. His supporters from New England and New York, including the priest Primeau, the journalist Gagnon, the war hero Mallet, and the Franco-American people of Lawrence and Rochester, considered Riel to be one of their own.

Notes

1. For the quotation from Riel’s final statement see: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/riel/rieltrialstatement.html

2. Glenn Campbell (Ed.) et al. Les Ecrits Complets de Louis Riel, (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press), 1985, xxvi. 

3. For Riel’s oath of citizenship see “Message From the President of the United States (Benjamin Harrison), In response to Senate resolution of February 11, 1889, a report upon the case of Louis Riel”
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/riel/messagefrompres.html

4. For Riel’s activities in New England and New York see Mason Wade, The French-Canadians, 1760-1967, Volume 1, (Toronto: MacMillian & Co., 1968) 405. For Riel's moves see also the timeline of Riel’s life in Les Ecrits Complets de Louis Riel esp. 105-107.

5. Thomas Flanagan, Louis David Riel, Prophet of the New World, Rev. Ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 48f.

6. Full text of the petitions from Lawrence and Rochester are included in the  “Message From the President of the United States.”
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/riel/messagefrompres.html

7. For a brief biography of Mallet see Edmond J. Mallet Collection, Manuscripts and Photographs, Held at Assumption College Library: Biographical Note.

8. Jeremy Ravi Mumford, “Why Was Louis Riel, a United States Citizen, Hanged as a Canadian Traitor in 1885?” The Canadian Historical Review 88, 2, June 2007, 256-258.

9. For the American press coverage of the Riel affair see Mumford, 251-253.

(Another) Canadien in the American Civil War: Cyprien Racine Becomes George Root

In an earlier post I told the story of Philibert Racine alias Philip F. Root. Philibert was a Canadien veteran of the Civil War and the brother of two of my great-great-grandmothers. He served with the First Vermont Battery Light Artillery that saw action in the Red River campaign in Louisiana.

I mentioned in that post that Philibert reportedly had a brother who called himself George S. Root who served in this same unit in the Civil War. I surmised that “George” was an alias for Cyprien Racine, baptized May 30, 1843 at Saint-Damase-de-Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec. I believe that I can now confirm the theory that George S. Root was Cyprien.

In the records of the U.S. National Archives I find the following pension document recording the February 25, 1928 death of a George S. Root.

The record appears to indicate that George S. Root’s rank was Artificer, that he served in the 1st (Independent) Battery Vermont Light Artillery, and gives his place of death as Mendon, Michigan.

The place of death was significant since I had information from Racine genealogist extraordinaire, Jules Racine of Québec, that another brother of Philibert, Charles Appolinaire Racine, had contracted his second marriage in Mendon, St. Joseph County, Michigan.

I turned to the 1920 U.S. Federal Census, eight years prior to the veteran’s death, and found a George S. Root living with his wife Lucy in Mendon Township, MI. The census reports that George was born in Canada, his mother tongue was French, and that the same is true of both of his parents.

The census gives his age as 75 on January 9 or 10th of 1920, which, assuming he hadn’t yet had his birthday that year, yields a birth year of 1844. Tracing George and Lucy back through the U.S. Census of Mendon, MI, I find that George, a farmer by trade, in 1900 gives his month and year of birth as May 1844.

This is reasonably close to the May 1843 date of birth of Cyprien Racine, given that these discrepancies are often found in the census records. The information in the census seems fairly consistent with my theory that George and Cyprien are the same person.  

In 1880 I find George, Lucy and family in nearby Leonidas, MI. Here we learn that the couple had three daughters Mary, 9, Catherine, 7, and Virginia, 2. The two older girls were born in Kansas, while the youngest was born in Michigan. This places George and Lucy in Kansas from about 1871 to about 1873 but likely back in Michigan by 1878 or so.

Searching for the marriage record of George and Lucy, I find a wedding at Mendon, MI on May 27, 1869 of a George Root, born in Canada, to a Lucia Monton (also Mouton or Moutaw) born in Mendon. The age of the groom is recorded as 24, which is consistent with a birth year of 1844 or 1845.

The final document in this series is an application to the U.S. War Department for a veteran’s headstone made by Mrs. Virginia Lighthiser, most likely George S. Root’s daughter whom we met as a two-year-old in the 1880 census.

This record confirms that a George S. Root, who had close kin named Virginia, served in the Civil War in the First Vermont Battery Light Artillery, died on February 25, 1928, and is buried in Mendon, MI.

I have little doubt that my theory is correct that George S. Root is Cyprien Racine. I can now piece together the outline of his life.

Born in Québec in 1843, his family lived briefly in Richford, Vermont, on the Québec border, in the late 1840s and early 1850s before they eventually settled in Roxton Falls, QC. By 1861, Cyprien, says the Canadian census of Roxton Falls in that year, is back in the United States.

In January 1862, at the age of 18, he enlisted for service in the American Civil War and served until August 1864. He appears to have returned to Canada but, by 1869, he is married in Michigan to a woman from that state.

The family spends the earlier portion of the 1870s in Kansas before returning to St. Joseph County, Michigan. George’s is a farm family and he lives for most of his days in his wife’s hometown where he dies, at age 84, and is buried.

His brother Philibert lived in a Franco-American enclave in Brunswick, Maine, but George did not live among other Canadiens. Philibert used his Yankee alias, Philip F. Root, when it suited him and reverted to his ancestral Racine identity when that served him better.

His tombstone in St. John’s Catholic Cemetery in Brunswick reads “Philibert Racine” while the document above indicates that Cyprien's government issue headstone reads "George S. Root."

I see no evidence that Cyprien ever used his French name after coming to the States. The census says that he was a naturalized U.S. citizen and he was so not only by law, but also de facto.

Cyprien Racine, the son of a man who fought for the liberté of Québec in the Rebellion of 1837, became Grand Army of the Republic veteran and Midwestern farmer George S. Root.

The French Canadian Presence in Michigan: Two Waves of Immigration

French North Americans have dwelled in the Great Lakes region since the 17th century. For the 18th century French, this area was the Western part of Canada as this map indicates. The USA’s upper Midwest remains the home of a significant community of French descent on the continent. I have turned to Michigan native and guest blogger James LaForest owner/writer of the fine blog Red Cedar to provide an historical perspective on the French Canadian presence in his home state.

Two Waves of Immigration

by James LaForest, guest blogger

When Michigan became a state in 1837, it began the latest stage in the evolution of an area inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous tribes. It had been over 200 years since Étienne Brûlé explored the area in 1620 and French Canadians had inhabited the region since the late 17th century when missionary Father Jacques Marquette set up the first permanent settlement at Sault Ste-Marie. Detroit was founded in 1701 and the first wave of French Canadian immigration to this particular area of New France then began in earnest.

The second wave of French Canadian immigration was to the state of Michigan spanning the period from1840 to the early 20th century. This wave of immigration was largely in the mold of other great immigrations to the USA when people seeking a better life left their homes for other lands. Jobs in mining and lumber in Michigan were plentiful and the new arrivals went on to have a strong impact on the development of the Saginaw Bay area and the Keweenaw Peninsula. 

Like other immigrant groups, this second wave sought to maintain their ethnic identity. This was initially achieved through publishing French-language newspapers, new Catholic parishes, and building communal organizations. Unlike the first wave of immigrants, the 19th century arrivals were consciously moving to the USA. Many had some English-language skills, facilitating their assimilation. As the immigrant generations passed away, succeeding generations did not maintain the cultural organizations formed by their parents and grandparents.

The first wave of immigrants had moved to the Great Lakes area not so much as immigrants but as habitants, residents of New France. Subjects of the King of France, they were in Detroit as farmers, millers, traders, voyageurs, coureurs de bois, missionaries, outfitters, and soldiers. When the French lost the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, the French-speaking population of what would become Michigan became subjects of a new king. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formalized their new status. American control of the territory was largely consolidated by the late 18th century under treaties that ended the American War of Independence.

Hennepin's Map of the Great Lakes Region 1683



Habitants and voyageurs in the land they called the pays d'en haut were very much on the margins of empire, at the far reaches of society. They were in the process of discovering, pressing on the boundaries of civilization. Despite illiteracy, this French-speaking population created a new culture that was influenced highly by the experience of travel to and within the great interior of North America.  

Michigan's earliest French Canadians intermarried with many tribes that lived here already, and the Métis communities that formed in the 17th through 19th centuries were part of the fabric of the culture at that time. Descendants of the early Métis families largely integrated either into French or Indian families and subsequent generations did not see the flowering of Métis culture as occurred in Canada. Nevertheless, many French Canadians in Michigan today who descend from the first wave of French arrivals can also trace their families to the indigenous tribes of the greater Great Lakes area.

I'm generally of the mindset that most of my ancestors were not native to this land. However, there is also a sense of belonging that comes with longevity. It might be called a sense of place, in which after so many generations, the air you and your ancestors breathed, the water you drink, and the land upon which you walk all become intimately familiar. 

When you know the landscape so well, and you are inherently part of it, when a place is unveiled to that extent, the idea of immigration fades away. Where you are is in you and you are in it. This is simply to say that French Canadian identity in the Great Lakes area is a unique heritage, an identity that was shaped in ways that do not conform to the typical image of an American immigrant community. 

Les Cheneaux Islands, Lake Huron
Upper Peninsula of Michigan

The idea that the first wave of French Canadians in Michigan were immigrants at all is dispelled through this reading of history. First, they were explorers, traders, and missionaries. Then they were habitants, living in the Detroit River region and other areas. When Quebec fell, they became part of another nation, with allegiance demanded by another king, and when that king lost his colonies, they became Americans. For most French Canadians in Michigan today, their French ancestors did not immigrate to the territory; rather they were residents in a course of historical events that ultimately made them Americans by circumstance rather than design. 



This set of circumstances creates a picture of a much more complex French Canadian identity in the Great Lakes area than might have existed if the only wave of immigration had been the 19th century arrivals. This perspective should not undermine the sense of place and belonging of later immigrants, nor should it minimize the experience of the aboriginal peoples. Rather, it places first-wave French Canadians among them as family, partners in trade, and ultimately countrymen. And in the end, it ties us to the land in a way that is unique among Americans and which is a heritage that many descendants of those early habitants are keen to ensure is not forgotten.   

Thank you to David for the invitation to be a guest blogger. Also to Michelle and Anne, with whom I share many early Detroit ancestors, for their thoughts on the topic. For further reading, I recommend John P. Dulong's French Canadians in Michigan and Jean Lemarre's The French Canadians of Michigan: Their Contribution to the Development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula, 1840-1914.

Next: My Book A Distinct Alien Race Now Available for Pre-Order

What is French North America?

 

Take any map of North America. Ignore the national boundary between Canada and the United States. Then trace the vast arc beginning in the East where the Atlantic Ocean meets the great St. Lawrence River, move your gaze westward to the Ottawa River, the Great Lakes region, southward to the Ohio Valley, and then follow the Mississippi to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. Throughout this vast expanse you will find one French place name after another, from the many parishes of rural Québec named after ancient saints, to American cities such as Detroit, Saint Louis, and Baton Rouge, which most Americans now forget were originally pronounced with a French accent.

Throughout this territory and further west in both Canada and in the United States, through these names our ancestors left to mark their presence, one may perceive the remnant of a forgotten chapter in the history of our continent. This is the history of our French ancestors, who were among the earliest European explorers and settlers in North America. Small in numbers but great in courage and intrepidity they pressed deep into the continent before the USA was born.

This Gallic presence, ignored today by most of the inhabitants of North America, casts its shadow across the continent. Except in Québec, where our people make up the majority, and in certain pockets of New Brunswick, New England, and Louisiana, French North America is not distinct in the minds of most of the continent’s inhabitants – even in the minds of the French North Americans themselves. Starting with the voyages of Jacques Cartier in the 16th c. up until the historic defeat on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and even beyond, the French established a presence, the ghost of which still haunts North America.

Confused by the artificial border between Canada and the USA, and separated from one another by the vagaries of history, many peoples with different names – Québécois, Canadien-français, Acadian, Cajun, Créole, Franco-American, Franco-Ontarien, Franco-Manitoban, Fransaskois, etc. – are all the descendants of the same period of migrations from 17th and 18th century France, the France of Louis XIV, the Sun King, the France of The Three Musketeers, of Racine and of Molière.

Separated by history and geography, these peoples and the lands they inhabit together constitute French North America. This blog will explore their common roots, their history, genealogy, geography, and cultures. The author has spent years researching this topic. I have pieced together the story of my own ancestors and those of other French North Americans and I have developed my own viewpoint on their past, their present, and on how their future could unfold. I will concentrate on the regions I know best in the Northeastern portions of the continent but also hope to give the topic its continental scope.

I wish that all peoples, of all ethnicities, those whose native tongue is English, French, or any other language, will read and learn about one of the least-known communities on this continent: French North America.