Les Familles Québécois, 1900

One of the important emigrant groups in New England history were the French Canadians who came to the region during the last decades of the nineteenth century. By 1900, just over one hundred Middleborough residents claimed a French Canadian birth according to census takers that year who were meticulous about recording births as “Canada Fr.”, “Canada Eng.”, “Canada Scotch” and even “Canada Irish”. Though, in fact, a greater number of Middleborough’s citizens at the time of the 1900 Federal census had been born in Nova Scotia, the French Canadians have historically commanded greater attention from scholars and historians.

A myriad of factors prompted late nineteenth century emigration from Québec, but especially a deepening agricultural crisis marked by overpopulation, debt, infertile soils and declining agricultural productivity. Though industries in greater Montréal provided a possible alternative to a rural life marked by drudgery and poverty, wages there were lower and employment opportunities scarcer than in New England where factory jobs beckoned, particularly during the periods 1865-73 and 1890-94.

In Québec emigration was regarded as disastrous, and those first emigrants who did leave were uncharitably characterized as lacking patriotism, their departure regarded as undermining the place of the Francophones within the Canadian confederation. "Laissez-les partir, c’est la racaille qui s’en va" (“Let them go, it’s the riff-raff that are leaving”) was the harsh judgment of one French Canadian leader. Eventually however, the sheer magnitude of French Canadian emigration would prompt a reassessment of those who had left (and were continuing to leave in unprecedented numbers) and a more critical analysis of the realities of rural life in Québec.

In Middleborough, the first wave of French Canadians (many of them single men) arrived during the 1870s and 80s and took jobs as wood cutters in the local lumbering industry. One such immigrant was Charles LeGarde who was employed as a logger at South Middleborough where he eventually settled. Records indicate that these earliest French Canadians, known simply as “French”, were responsible for a considerable part of the timber felling in the local lumber industry. During the winter of 1887-88, the large amount of cord wood and logs cut at Lakeville by French Canadian lumbermen was noted by the Old Colony Memorial.

Several other references to the “French” at Middleborough indicate their presence and, specifically, their role in harvesting timber. One such reference indicates that these Canadian woodcutters resided in cabins situated upon the woodlots of South Middleborough rather than with families in the community, and the majority of these men probably proved to be itinerant, never staying in one location long.

A second wave of emigration around 1890 brought more permanent residents, and the majority of Middleborough’s earliest Québécois families arrived during the succeeding years. Among them were the Boutins who, like LeGarde, settled at South Middleborough.

Many Canadian emigrants arrived through l’émigration en chaîne whereby a member of a family would emigrate, find a suitable location in which to settle, then send for additional family members, thereby minimizing the cultural shock which otherwise would have been felt. Adelard Boutin arrived in 1887 from St. Isidore, Québec, and found work as a day laborer on farms at South Middleborough before sending for his younger brother, Joseph, who came two years later in 1889, eventually finding work as a section hand on the Old Colony Railroad.

By 1900, Middleborough’s small French Canadian community was centered about Everett and Arch Streets (one large boarding house at 30 Arch Street accommodated a large number of Québécois), in the Star Mill neighborhood, and at South Middleborough, though its relatively limited numbers prevented the formation of a compact ethnic neighborhood.

Locally, French Canadian immigrants found employment as railroad workers (Leo Courteney, Philip Imbault), shoe factory operatives (Louis Chartier, Charles Commeau, David Morin, Jean B. St. Laurent, Henry Manseau), farmers (Freeman Levellie [Lavalley], John Lacombe), day laborers (Joseph Commeau, Zenas Auger, Maurice Fournier) and saw mill operatives (Fred Charrette). Many like my great grandfather Ovila Rémillard came from Québec to work in the Star Mill, a manufacturer of woolen cloth, where young French Canadians were employed as weavers (Charles Rue, John Brambeault, John Samochat, Emile Caron, and siblings Phillip Duber, Angeline Duber, and Lucy Duber) and older men and young girls as wool carders (Paul Benoit). Louis Laflamme held a more prestigious job as a loom fixer at the mill, while his wife, Adele, was engaged as a weaver.

In Middleborough, the cultural assimilation of the Canadian immigrants occurred both immediately and rapidly, largely due to the small number of French Canadians locally. While in many nearby cities such as New Bedford, Woonsocket and Fall River (the third largest French Canadian city after Montréal and Québec), the great number of French Canadians permitted the Québécois to retain their language through French language newspapers, cultural organizations and churches, and form ethnic neighborhoods, in smaller communities such as Middleborough, the French were compelled to assimilate more quickly, a process which allowed them to avoid the stigmatization which characterized the French Canadian experience elsewhere, but which undermined their rich cultural heritage.

One organization which tended to promote cultural assimilation locally was Sacred Heart Church which previously had been dominated by Irish Catholics. Through Sacred Heart, French Canadian communicants came into regular contact with religiously like-minded though culturally diverse fellow residents. While many of the French in places like Fall River married other French and continued to do so for generations, in Middleborough, French Canadian emigrants frequently married outside their own ethnic group early on, frequently finding partners at church-related functions.

Other assimilating forces included bilingual landlords and the public school system. Census records from 1900 indicate that upon their arrival in Middleborough, many of the French Canadians could not speak, read or write English. Frequently, these French speakers took accommodations with English-speaking French Canadians like Adelard Boutin who lodged three of his French-speaking co-workers in his South Middleborough home. Through these landlords, the French Canadians frequently learned English and American ways. Boutin, in fact, was the sole member of the household able to speak English. Yet his children would be educated in the South Middleborough school and become fluent in English, thereby demonstrating the “Americanizing” influence which local public schools held over local French Canadian children who, unlike some of their peers elsewhere did not have the option of an education in their native tongue.

Within a generation after 1900, local French Canadians had readily assimilated into the local community, becoming an integral part of the Middleborough. No longer referred to as “French”, the French Canadians had become Americans.

Illustration:

Région du Richelieu, Carte de la Vallée du Richelieu, map, 1923

Many of Middleborough's French Candian immigrants came from the region surrounding Montréal, an area depicted in this map dating from the early twentieth century.

For more on French Canadian emigration to America, visit the informative site on Québec history hosted by Marianopolis College, Montréal.

Julius Thompson's Odometer, 1854

Generally well known in Middleborough is the Thompson family of painters including Cephas Thompson (1775-1856) and three of his children: Cephas Giovanni, Jerome and Marietta. Generally less well known is Cephas Thompson’s youngest child, Julius, who pursued a life of science rather than art.

Julius always seems to have been somewhat different from his siblings. He was a half-brother to the remaining Thompson children, being the only child of Cephas and his second wife Lucy (Thompson) Thompson, and was the only Thompson child educated at Middleborough’s Peirce Academy, the others being schooled at Bridgewater..

Yet, like his siblings, Julius, undoubtedly drew (and was encouraged to draw) as a child, but his drawings likely proved less artistic than technical. While the others were painting, Julius no doubt was tinkering with gears and mechanical devices in the barn on the family’s River Street farm. Julius did however engage in the more technical aspects of the family’s work, assisting in grinding and preparing paints with his father who recorded in his journal in May, 1843, that the two were occupied in making Ultramarine Blue.

Julius’ interest in mechanics and science assuredly derived from his father. As George Decas has revealed, Cephas Thompson had a definite mechanical skill, and it was later said of the elder Thompson that “his inventive and mechanical genius were of superior order.”

Throughout the 1840s, particularly, when Julius was still residing on the Middleborough farm, Cephas Thompson was most actively engaged in developing inventions. Decas’ account of Thompson’s many developments includes a “Delineating Machine” in 1806, a rolling machine to level ground in 1827, a “Phrenological Machine” in 1834, brimstone matches in 1838, “asphaltum varnish” in 1842, a “filtring frame” in 1843, “Brown Red” paint and a paint color mill in 1844, “Alumina” in 1848, “Citron lake” paint in 1850, a paint dryer in 1853, and a “shaking machine” possibly to mix paint in 1856. No doubt, Julius was involved in many aspects of this work.

Julius also worked independently upon projects of his own, the most noted of which he developed in the years immediately following his 1848 marriage to Bathsheba Thomas Warren: the Thompson Odometer, patented in 1854.

At the time Thompson applied for patent protection for his invention, the prestigious Scientific American took notice of it, and explained to its readers just what the device was. “The odometer is an instrument for telling the distance or space of ground over which a vehicle – such as a wagon or carriage – has traveled….Such instruments have been long known, but from some defects in their operation, do not seem to have come into general use.”

As noted by the journal, at the time Thompson perfected his odometer, such devices were not new. As early as 15 B. C., the Roman engineer Vitruvius had developed a rudimentary device to measure distance traveled. In 1847, William Clayton and Orson Pratt, Mormon trekkers from Missouri to Utah wished to record the distance traveled by their group and so developed the “roadometer” which was built by Appleton Milo Harmon, a member of the group, of wooden cogs. Similarly, Samuel McKeen of Nova Scotia invented a prototype of an odometer which measured distance traveled through recording the revolutions of a wagon’s wheel. However, these early odometers were unwieldy, technically deficient or both.

Thompson’s odometer corrected these problems. Thompson developed a way to transfer the motion of the wheel to the odometer by means of a stationary weight which Scientific American termed “an ingenious contrivance for the purpose.” Thompson’s patent claim explained that “the nature of the improvement of this odometer consists in the peculiar means employed for communicating the motion from the wheel of the vehicle to the working parts of the implement, viz., by having a cylindrical weight placed within its case, said weight being detached, and from its gravity remaining stationary (not revolving with the wheel) and thereby giving motion to the working parts, as the wheel revolves.” Essentially, as the case, attached to the hub turned, the weight, though remaining in a fixed position, turned as well, transferring the revolution of the wheel to the odometer’s ratcheted dials.

On October 31, 1854, Thompson received a patent for his odometer. He was thirty years old, coincidentally the same age his father was when he received his first patent for his delineating machine of 1806.

Thompson tried unsuccessfully to capitalize upon his odometer patent, offering to sell territorial rights to its manufacture. The odometer was touted as being easily mounted to one of a wagon’s outer hubs in twenty minutes time. Dials on the device would be set to zero by aligning them with a mark incised on the case. “I have tried it thoroughly on a carriage wheel”, said Thompson of his odometer, “and find it all that can be desired. It will not get out of order; is safe to indicate, and cannot be interfered with by those who hire the carriage.”

Thompson claimed a number of advantages which his odometer had over others: “the working parts are perfectly protected from dust and moisture, and the operation is sure. The device is simple, but not liable to get out of repair, and may be applied to any vehicle in use.”

It is not readily apparent how successful Thompson was in marketing his invention, but the indication is that sales were sluggish. With the development of photography in the early 1850s, Julius found an interest which combined the family tradition of art with the technological advances of science and he became a professional daguerreotypist. Ironically, it was the success of early daguerreotypists like Thompson that ultimately led to a decline in the livelihood of his family, portrait painting. “In this respect, Julius played a unique role among the Thompson children,” notes Decas.

Nevertheless, Thompson never fully stopped inventing. He later would receive Patent 35,377 for an advanced screwdriver in 1862 and, not surprisingly given his occupation, Patent 44,678 for improvements to an apparatus for drying photographic plates in 1864. At the time of these latter two inventions, Thompson was residing in Taunton. In later life, he appears to have left both inventing and photography behind. He became a dentist.

Illustration:

"Thompson's Odometer", Scientific American, Volume 10, Number 17, page 134.
Julius Thompson’s odometer as it appeared in his patent application of 1854 (the part marked “D” is the stationary weight which revolutionized odometer design at the time and which Scientific American termed “ingenious”). The odometer which most likely was developed on his family’s farm on River Street in Middleborough, failed to bring Thompson much in the way of financial rewards, though it attracted significant attention at the time.

Sources:

Scientific American, "The Odometer", Vol. 10, No. 4, October7, 1854; "Odometers", Vol. 10, No. 9, November 11, 1854; "Thompson's Improved Odometer" [advertisement], Vol. 10, No. 14, December 16, 1854; and "Thompson's Odometer", Vol. 10, No. 17, page 134, January 6, 1855

Key Theatre

The Key Theatre was a short-lived motion picture theater which operated on the upper floor of the American Building on South Main Street near the Four Corners.

In 1912 when the American Building was remodeled, a theater for motion pictures was created on the upper floor in the space formerly occupied by the American Hall and later a roller polo rink. At that time, Ivan Rogers and Eldoretta Cushing Bourne transfered their Star Theatre motion picture business from Center Street to the new theater which they named the Lyric and which opened in May, 1912. Three years later, an entirely modern motion picture house known as the Park Theatre was constructed and opened on Nickerson Avenue opposite the Town Hall, providing formidable competition for the Lyric. Following 1917, when the Lyric Theatre’s manager left to assume charge of the Park, the Lyric closed. Many years later, in the late 1930s, an effort was made to revive the Lyric as a motion picture house as indicated by Mertie E. Romaine in her History of the Town of Middleboro:

“An attempt was made by the Middleboro Amusement Company to reopen the Lyric Theatre, changing the name to Key Theatre, but the venture was ill timed, as the town could not, or would not, support two theatres, and the Key Theatre soon closed.” [Romaine:336] Also contributing to the short life of the Key Theatre was the fact that it seems primarily to have run less expensive pictures as opposed to the bigger Hollywood productions which were featured at the Park Theatre.

Movie posters advertising both the Lyric and Key Theatres do survive. Those for the Key were economical featuring only text which was printed in primary colors in a bold, easily read font on inexpensive poster board. Given the fact that features changed a number of times each week at the Key Theatre, there was little need (and few funds) to produce lavishly illustrated advertisements such as those employed by the Park Theatre.

Illustration:
Key Theatre, Middleborough, MA, advertising poster, January, 1940
This surviving poster from the Key Theatre dates from the second week of January, 1940. Featured films during the week included the Bob Hope-Paulette Goddard remake of the silent film classic The Cat and the Canary (1939); Bad Boy (1939), an inexpensively produced crime drama; Men with Wings (1938), an action vehicle starring Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland; Thanks for the Memory (1938), a Bob Hope comedy from which he took his signature song; Lady of the Tropics (1939), a romantic feature from MGM starring Hedy Lemarr and Robert Taylor; and Colorado Sunset (1939), a western starring Gene Autry and "Buster" Crabbe.



Click on the movie poster to view a clip from The Cat and the Canary with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard







Click on the movie poster for a clip from Lady of the Tropics with Hedy Lamarr and Robert Taylor


Or click on the title to watch Bad Boy in its entirety.

The Ocean House

Located on the west shore of the mill pond at Wareham Street was once a ramshackle building known around 1900 as the “Ocean House”, possibly as a satiric barb aimed at luxury hotels which were then in vogue at the seaside. For local Middleborough children, this was their oceanside alternative. The Ocean House proved popular with neighborhood children who would dive from its open windows into the mill pond below. This activity ended, however, following the tragic 1905 death of six year old Wallace Spooner who while engaged in diving from the building struck his head upon a stone wall, fell into the river and drowned. Nothing, however, was done with the property until 1908 when the Middleborough Board of Health condemned the structure which was demolished two years later in spring of 1910.

The “Ocean house,” a blot on the landscape by the river side for many years, is no more, and all the lumber has been cleaned up. The beneficial change which has resulted would well repay one a trip to the Wareham street bridge. All the old tumble-down structures are now out of the way, and the appearance in that locality is materially improved. [Middleboro Gazette, "Middleboro: Ocean House 'a blot'", May 6, 1910, page 4].

Illustration:
"Wareham Street Bridge, Middleboro, Mass.", John H. Frank, publisher, postcard, c. 1905
While the subject of this turn-of-the-century picture postcard was the Wareham Street dam, a portion of the so-called Ocean House may be seen at the far left. Its situation directly above the mill pond explains its attractiveness to local children who would dive into the pond below. (Behind the Ocean House may be seen the Municipal Light Plant which still stands on Wareham Street though its smokestack is long gone).

Smith's Shoe Store

Smith's Shoe Store operated briefly in 1922-23 on Center Street. The Smith firm appears to have suceeded to the business of George H. Keedwell & Son which retailed boots and shoes, and was noted for also selling damaged samples and cancellations from the Leonard, Shaw & Dean shoe manufactory in Middleborough for which Kenneth B. Keedwell had formerly worked. Smith's seems to have operated for one year only. On March 16, 1923, it was advertising an "Assignment Sale" and there appears to be no further record of the business.

Illustration:
Smith's Shoe Store, advertisement from Middleboro Guide (Middleborough, MA: H. W. Blackburn, 1923)

I'm Missing My Followers

Over the past week, the followers listed in the sidebar and their avatars have disappeared. This appears to be a somewhat common problem with Blogger. I hope to have this situation corrected shortly. I truly appreciate all of the readers who follow Recollecting Nemasket and thank you for your interest in Middleborough and Lakeville history!

Then & Now: Doane Block, South Main Street

July, 1973

May, 2006

Illustrations:

Doane Block, July 19, 1973

At the time this photograph was taken, Shurtleff Hardware (which had occupied the building since 1938 when it acquired both the building and the Doane hardware business) had itself closed its doors, and the building was for sale as indicated by the sign in the vacant storefront.

Doane Block, May 27, 2006, photograph by Michael J. Maddigan

For a period of time following the departure of the Shurtleff business, the building was occupied by Corsini Auto Parts. It is presently tenanted by the Hometown Mortgage Company.