Two professors at a college in New York are working to catalogue and tell the stories of the nearly one million miners, textile and other workers who moved from Quebec to New York from about the mid-1800s to early 1900s.
They plan to digitize the family stories and memorabilia, such as letters, photos, official papers, toys and household items, to help keep families’ personal stories alive for future generations.
Dr. Janet Shideler, a professor of modern language, and Dr. Karen Mahar, a professor of history, at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, received a $9,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2018 for their project, “Je me souviens (I Remember): Presenting and Preserving the Heritage of Upstate New York’s Franco-American Communities.”
The project focuses on the French Canadians who settled in Cohoes and other communities in upstate New York, beginning in the 1830s,
Photos and other memorabilia, including letters, furniture, clothing, and toys, are being digitized and made available on the ‘Je me souviens’ website.
Cohoes is a former textile mill town along the Mohawk River that attracted thousands of French Canadians with the promise of employment. By 1881, Cohoes was the adopted home of more than 6,000 Québécois, a number that represented more than a third of the city’s population.
The professors are working with a team of students, librarians, and community volunteers to digitize and preserve artifacts and oral histories that reflect the rich cultural heritage of French Canadians who settled in Cohoes.
Dr. Shideler said, “The heritage of French Canadian immigrants to Cohoes and elsewhere in New York state is largely overlooked, and so we are excited about giving their descendants — Franco-Americans — an opportunity to tell their story of how they left behind grueling poverty to become a thriving immigrant population and eventually proud Americans.”
Descendants who share their family memorabilia will receive a digital copy, and with their permission, the digital files and their bilingual (English/French) metadata will become part of the New York Heritage Digital Collections to which Siena College is a contributor.
A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Shideler spoke about the Je me souviens project on PBS.
The largest collection of Franco-American books and manuscripts is available at the Samuel de Champlain History Center in Champlain, NY.