(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.

Explorer of the Pacific Northwest: The Amazing Voyage of François-Benjamin Pillet

My third great-grandmother was a woman of mystery called Cécile Pillet. She was somehow attached to the family of the prosperous fur trader François-Benjamin Pillet. This man was a pioneer and an adventurer who participated in what must be among the greatest journeys in the annals of North America.

François-Benjamin Pillet, also known as Benjamin Pillet (Pilet, Pilette) the son of Ignace Pillet and Marie-Josepthe Lamy dit Desfond, was born on August 12, 1791 at a mission near Montréal. The place was called Lac des Deux Montagnes in French but is better known as Oka.

Oka was the First Nations settlement that in Pillet’s day included separate villages for the Algonquins and Haudenosaunee (“Iroquois”), with a small group of Canadiens many of whom were active in the fur trade.

Pillet was from a line of fur traders familiar with both the interior of the continent and the languages and ways of the native peoples. His father and his uncle, Jean-Baptiste Paschal Pillet, left a paper trail relating to their activities in the fur trade in the 18th c. They hired voyageurs and traded in the Great Lakes region as early as the 1770s.

In 1810, the wealthy American businessman John Jacob Astor hired the not quite 19-year-old François-Benjamin as a clerk for his Pacific Fur Company. Astor was well aware of the recent voyage of Lewis and Clark and smelled a business opportunity. He inquired at Montréal and enlisted a number of Canadians mainly of Scottish and French descent to establish a trading post on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

Astor sent two parties westward, one over land and one by sea. The former was to start from the Great Lakes, descend to St. Louis, and then retrace the route of Lewis and Clark to the Western sea. 

The Panama Canal still a century hence, the sea route was to sail the Atlantic to the southern tip of South America, around Cape Horn, and then northward in the Pacific to the mouth of the Columbia. Pillet was with the group that traveled by sea. His companion Gabriel Franchère preserved their adventures for posterity in a detailed journal.

The Canadians set sail from New York City in September 1810 on the Tonquin under the American flag. A skilled seaman with the dickensian name of Jonathan Thorn captained the vessel. Thorn, a veteran of the storied engagement on the shores of Tripoli, had more than a trace of Bligh in him. He took an instant dislike to the land-lubbing traders.

His animus became dangerous when the Tonquin reached the Falkland Islands in search of fresh water. Pillet, Franchère and some others took to exploring the strange island of penguins and missed the signal to return to the ship. Thorn weighed anchor and shipped off marooning the party on the islands.

Perceiving their predicament, Pillet and company rowed hard for three and a half hours so as not to lose sight of the ship. At last Thorn relented and they were taken back on board. Thorn’s mood may have been altered by one of the Scotsmen, a relative of one of the men he had attempted to maroon, who drew his pistol and threatened to blow the captain’s brains out.

Rounding the Horn, the Tonquin's next port of call was the Hawaiian Islands. Pillet and Franchère spent a night on land exploring and observing Hawaiian customs. At Hawaii, a couple of the crew members remained, while the Tonquin engaged a number of islanders, famously skilled boatmen.

This mixed party of Scots, French-Canadians, Americans, and Hawaiians finally reached the Columbia in March of 1811. They quickly established a trading post they called Astoria. The party traveling over land having been divided and with some loss of life reached Astoria in January and February of 1812.

From Franchère’s account, Pillet emerges as singularly curious and intrepid. When one of the Hawaiians is killed in an accident it is Pillet and Franchère who accompany his countrymen to the burial of their comrade and observe their rites. Pillet makes several side trips to the interior, to the region near Spokane and another in the Willamette River area.

He is a skilled hunter and fisherman and appears to know French and English as well as more than one Native language. In one encounter with the natives, when several attempts at communication in other tongues fail, Pillet comes forward to try the Cree language which his interlocutors understand in part.

One of the Astorians named Ross Cox who also wrote an account of these travels relates that during his Spokane adventure Pillet fought a duel with Nicolas Montour of the rival Northwest Company, “with pocket pistols, at six paces; both hits; one in the collar of the coat, and the other in the leg of the trousers. Two of their men acted as seconds and the tailor speedily healed their wounds.”

In January 1813 news reached Astoria that Great Britain and the United States were at war. This placed the Canadians, British subjects trading under the American flag, in an awkward position.

In September the Astorians learned that a British warship had been sent to seize the American post at Astoria. Representatives of the Northwest Company, Canadians under the British flag, made an offer to buy out the Pacific Fur Company. The offer was accepted in October 1813. The British Union Jack was hoisted and Astoria was renamed Fort George.

A number of the former Astorians signed on with the Northwesters. Pillet and Franchère were two among a party of ninety that chose to return to Montréal. The Tonquin having been destroyed, and its captain and crew massacred in a battle with the natives provoked by Thorn’s arrogance, the party had little choice but to set out by land. A flotilla of 10 canoes, with men, goods, and provisions headed eastward on April 4, 1814.

They traveled mostly along the waterways beginning with an ascent of the Columbia. With great difficulty they survived the mountains and, by the first of June, found their way to the mouth of the Pembina River, west of present-day Edmonton, Alberta.

By the tenth they had reached Fort Vermillion near the modern day border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. They arrived at Lake Winnipeg by the end of the month, achieving Fort William at Lake Superior (now part of Thunder Bay, Ontario) on July 14th.

Here the party appears to have divided, with Franchère traveling sans Pillet with an advance guard. The route from the Great Lakes, to the Ottawa River, to the St. Lawrence was well known to the Canadiens. Franchère’s journey ended at Montréal on September 1, 1814. 

We know that Pillet was home no later than April 1815 since he is a witness at a marriage in Les Cedres, not far from Oka, in that month. When he returned home he must have learned of the death of his father in 1811. 

Pillet married his first cousin Julie Pillet, the daughter of Paschal Pillet and Marguerite LaCroix, on January 16, 1817 at Oka. His eldest son François d'Assise-Benjamin, also known as Antoine, was born there on September 21st of that same year. Around 1820, Pillet and family relocated to the parish of Sainte-Geneviève-de-Pierrefonds on the island of Montréal. 

Pillet appears to have been a prosperous merchant. The notary records reveal his many business dealings and transactions. The will of his mother, who died in 1826, was litigated leaving a detailed account of the impressive Pillet holdings. His son Antoine received an education at Montréal. He studied medicine and practiced this profession among the people of Oka.

1879 Map of Ste-Geneviève
The Pillet ("Pilette") property is
along the river northeast of the church
Source: BAnQ

François-Benjamin supported the Patriotes in the Québec Rebellion of 1837. His son was deposed regarding an incident in this war. Pillet’s nephew, Rodolphe Des Rivières, was among the leaders of the rebellion and fought at the Battle of St-Charles-sur-Richelieu.

François-Benjamin Pillet, astorian, died on January 31, 1858. He was buried the following day at Ste-Geneviève. 

In the 1911 Canadian Census I find his descendants still living at this parish a century after Pillet’s Pacific adventures. They may be there still.

[See this post for more about French-Canadians in the Pacific Northwest.] 

La Survivance and Revolution: The Ideological History of a Remnant (Part 2)

However, this conservative version of the ideology of la survivance was but one interpretation. The early 19th century witnessed the growth of a liberal movement in French-Canada, culminating in the abortive Rebellions of Lower Canada (Québec) in 1837 and 1838. Though these Patriotes took French North American survival as a datum, a self-evident premise, they seem to have been influenced by the republican currents streaming across from the southern frontier, accompanied by the influence of the more moderate, earlier phases of the French Revolution, as well as the nationalist movements of early 19th Century Europe. Consequently, the Patriote movement borrowed symbols from both the American and the French Revolutions.

Somewhat anti-clerical, or at least favoring some form of separation between throne and altar, as well as the abolition of seigniorial privileges, this republican Patriote movement represented a different flavor of survivance, when compared with the ultra-Catholic, ultramontane alternative.

The failure of these Patriote Rebellions to establish an independent French-speaking nation-state in North America resulted in a strategic retreat for the liberal interpretation of la survivance. Through much of the remainder of the 19th Century, Québec nationalism came to be identified with the vision of a French, Catholic, and rural future for our people. This seems to have been largely an anachronism by mid-century, since, by this point, over-population and a lack of economic opportunity within the traditional socio-economic framework started to drive a significant percentage of the population across the border into the mills and factories of New England or into the growing Western Provinces of Canada.

In all of the stories about the great migration of Québécois into New England there is at least one common denominator – poverty. In many cases the Québécois who came to New England in the migrations of 1870-1930 came, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. Most of them came from the growing class of journaliers – landless day-laborers who either found themselves in remote regions of Québec, living among a “foreign” Anglophone population such as in the Eastern Townships, heading to the metropolis of Montréal, or venturing south into the New England mills.

Anecdotally, all of my Québécois forbears who came to New England were from this journalier class. None of them seems to have owned a farm in Québec to which they could return. Their economic situation is evident from the descriptions of conditions in the mill-operated tenements which I have described elsewhere. Who would endure such an existence unless it was a dire necessity?

Little known or remembered among contemporary Québécois is that our ancestors who came to the States did not become Anglo-Saxonized overnight. On the contrary, this demographic revolution ushered in a new, Franco-American phase of la survivance. The French language, the Québec Catholic parish, and the traditional folkways of our people survived the border crossing intact, and, in many cases, for several generations. A very strong current of la survivance ran through the New England petit Canada.

It has been suggested that part of the motivation behind this Franco-American survivance was a continuation of the Catholic messianism in certain strains of 19th Century Québec nationalism. Another explanation is that the New England Franco-Americans were trying to prove to the elite back in Québec that they weren’t the scoundrels or sell-outs that conservative Québécois propaganda had portrayed.

Whatever its motivation, most Québécois would be surprised to discover the extent of la survivance in New England. Even to the present day, families where French is no longer spoken will, in many cases, maintain the foods, the musicality, the folkways and the traditional outlook and concerns of an earlier Québec; this is in a family, such as mine, whose ancestors left Québec as long ago as the 1870s-1890s.

Part 3

Prudent Racine: Patriote of 1837, Rebel Against Entrenched Power and Privilege

My great-great-great grandfather Prudent Racine was involved in the Québec Rebellions of 1837. By 1838 the movement had led to a failed attempt to overthrow British rule in Canada and establish an independent Republic of Québec (known as “Lower Canada” at the time).

Prudent lived at a place called Saint-Charles-sur-Richelieu where he was one of a group of Patriotes who stormed the house of the seigneur (feudal lord) Pierre Debartzch after the latter was perceived to have betrayed the movement. The rebels fortified the house and challenged the British army until they were defeated by the redcoats at the Battle of Saint-Charles.

The picture above shows an artist’s rendering of the battle, an artist who traveled with the British army and was an eyewitness to these events. The Debartzch manor house is center-left. My ancestor lived near the church (left), and so his house must be one of those depicted but he was most likely in the house of Debartzch when it was damaged by cannon fire.

Below is a page in a booklet called Report of Commissioners Relating to Compensation for Losses Sustained During the Rebellion in Lower Canada printed in 1840 which may be found in a library at Harvard. The booklet was in the collection of the noted 19th c. historian Francis Parkman. Prudent Racine is the last name on the “LIST of Rebels” who seized the house of Debartzch. Prudent later had the gall to sue the government for losses sustained in the battle a fact reported elsewhere in the 1840 report. The case was, needless to say, dismissed.

After the destruction of his hometown, Prudent Racine and family appear to have wandered about the Eastern Townships region of Québec and then moved for a few years to Northern Vermont where many of the rebels had taken refuge. He later returned to Québec settling eventually in a town called Roxton Falls, where his granddaughter, my great-grandmother was born in 1868. Prudent died and was buried at Roxton Falls in 1888.

Prudent Racine is doubly my ancestor since my paternal grandparents were second cousins and their common ancestors were Prudent Racine and his wife Eleonore. I am proud to come from a long line of people who had the courage to fight against entrenched, monarchial power and feudal privileges.