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| Eugene Hamel and Celanise Lefebvre |
Amy’s right. It would be entirely too easy to talk about someone who was in the armed services this week, wouldn’t it? If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you would find out that I have that in spades. This week we are going to do something a little differently. When the prompt mentioned school, one name came to mind. Eugene Thomas Hamel, my 2x great-grandfather.
Growing up, I knew much about him thanks to my grandfather telling me everything I ever wanted to know about the man and his wife. This included the proper way to pronounce “Celanise” and “Lefebvre”. I had issues saying the name much to my grandpa Hamel’s amusement. :) That being said, while I knew much about the man, I didn’t know until much, much later that he was actually a teacher!
Eugene was born in 1864 to Leon Hamel and Rose Flavie Dussault in St. Albans, Canada. From the look of him in the picture you might never guess that he was a teacher, right? He’s got a cigar in hand and a winning smile. He looks like he’s about to do a Groucho Marx impression! His wife, meanwhile, has this look on her face that says “Oh, God. What’s going to come out of his mouth now?!”
I found out he was a teacher by trade despite various censuses saying he was a cotton mill spinner in the 1900 US census for example. In 1900, he was living in Allenstown, New Hampshire with his new wife and several children including my great-grandfather Alfred who became known as “Mr. Fixit” in Newburyport, Mass. By the 1910 census onward, he was listed as a teacher. It didn’t give me any indication of what he taught or where he taught. Still, it does merit some investigation.
I don’t want to assume anything. I could stay he taught math when in reality he probably taught English or chemistry. We don’t know. With that in mind, I would definitely have to check out school archives in Allenstown to find out what he taught and where. It would be tricky because by the 1910 US. Census, he and his family were living in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Did he teach there, too? It’s possible. He was 46 years old at the time. Sure that’s young by today’s standards and general life expectancy. But, one never knows unless they dig into the archives.
Even then, there’s still the issue of what grade he taught. Did he teach high school? Was he a cool teacher with a Québécois accent? The guy’s got a cigar in his left hand and a smile on his face. You tell me. This guy was probably one of the “cool” early 20th century teachers.
Finding out he was a teacher was definitely something I didn’t expect. He definitely served the communities of Allenstown and Amesbury well. Trust me when I say that those communities are like night and day. Allenstown is a small town. Amesbury is a small city along the Merrimack river. I am willing to bet people learned a lot from him. But, I might be biased here. I just wish my grandfather told me he was a teacher because I’d have had so many questions.
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| “Laborer”? Sure, Jan.... |
Eugene passed away in June of 1943 and man the obituary is riddled with errors. It’s kind of annoying isn’t it. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Eugene was an English teacher? I am not sure who wrote the obit. Why would the fact that he was a teacher be omitted? OH! Could it be because back then being a teacher was considered a women’s profession? Who knows? Or maybe teaching was lumped in with laborers?
Whatever the case is, it’s safe to say that Eugene was a teacher. He served two very different communities very well over the course of his life and it would definitely be a good idea to dig into what kinds of classes he taught. Is there a way to look it up? You can look up anything these days! I would not be surprised if there was something somewhere about his teaching profession!
See ya next time!
Death announcements are expensive, could be they wanted to save money.
ReplyDeleteHmm. That’s true!
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