Celebrating 175 years of French Canadian ancestry in Maine

Portland Press Herald‘s Franco-American blogger Juliana L’Heureux writes this week about Maine’s Aroostook County that recently celebrated its 175 anniversary. Located in the northern part of the state near the New Brunswick border, the county’s first settlers were Acadian and Québécois.

The most interesting part of this blog post for genealogists, however, begins at the midway point when she writes about her personal collection of archival material that includes a 1951 booklet by Lawrence A. Violette, How the Acadians Came to Maine. “Violette names the colonists who crossed the St. John River from New Brunswick to build Aroostook County’s towns. In Frenchville, the French Canadian pioneers’ names included Germain Saucier, Jean Baptiste Daigle, Dominic Daigle, Michel Morin, José Michaud, Emmanuel Michaud, Raphael Michaud, Sigefroi Nadeau, Belone Ouellet and Hubert Caron. Fort Kent was settled in 1812, by José and Siugefroi Nadeau, Baptiste Daigle, François Thibodeau and Basile Albert. In St. Francis, the first colonists Violette names were Louis Albert followed by a Thibodeau family.”

Two other resources Ms. L’Heureux mentions are: Madawaska: A Chapter in Maine-New Brunswick Relations, a thesis by Charlotte Lenentine Melvin, published in 1975 by the Madawaska Historical Society; and The Land In Between: The Upper St. John Valley, Prehistory to World War I by Beatrice Craig and Maxime Dagenais.

You can read the blog post in its entirety here.