52 Ancestors Week 26: A Hard Choice

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 26:

The theme for Week 26 is “A Hard Choice.” We usually don’t know exactly what an ancestor thought about a choice they faced, but when you remember that they were human, it isn’t hard to imagine. For instance, imagine how it would feel to contemplate moving to the other side of the country – or the other side of the world.

Where do all these free sign post images come from?!

    Life is all about hard choices and our ancestors are no stranger to making difficult ones over the course of their lives. Earlier this year I wrote a blog about how hard it must have been for my great-grandmother Maria Tedesco to leave San Pietro a Maida for Haverhill knowing she might not ever see that Calabrian town ever again. Sadly, she never did. It's a risk you had to take when traveling across the ocean. However, immigrants didn't always travel by sea. They traveled by land as well. I know I don't talk about it a lot but can you imagine the hard choices a French-Canadian immigrant had to make when they went south to the United States? I'm not talking about just their toppings for French fries. Poutine does sound good, by the way.

     Like the Italians, they had to contend with a language barrier because they spoke a different language than most of the people in America.  French was not spoken in New England like it is in Canada. There's no doubt about it. French-Canadians had to make hard choices like the ones their Italian friends had to make.

    Now picture another hard choice. Imagine being a French-Canadian woman living in Haverhill in 1901. Your husband unexpectedly passed away at the age of forty-nine leaving you with several small children including an infant. You two had been through a lot together. You and your husband lived with your parents in a very crowded house and moved out when it was financially possible. Do you attempt to raise the kids by yourself or do you try and find a husband who could help you raise your many children?

    Enter my 2nd great-grandmother Lucie Cadran. She was just forty-six years old when her husband Antoine Legault fell ill and unexpectedly passed away. When he died their oldest child Lucy was in her mid twenties and their youngest Oliver was an infant. In between those two she had young adults, teens or young children to look after and keep in mind there were a lot of them! People say Italians have large families....

    When he passed away, Lucie had to make some pretty hard choices and at the turn of the century there weren't a lot of options available for her.

    The most logical choice we in the twenty-first century would say would be "Lucie should get a job!" Uhh...that would be pretty difficult. I would imagine it'd be pretty hard for her to find a job in 1901. Women like Lucie didn't even have the right to vote until the 1920s. The right to work was still in its infancy. She still needed someone to help with the children.

    In the 1910 census in Haverhill, she was living with her children Blanche, my great-grandmother Henrietta, Clara and Oliver. This was the first census without Antoine being present and from the looks of things they were living a decent life. The children's' ages at that point ranged from eight to 17 and I'd like to think that seventeen year old Henrietta was helping her dear mother with the rest of the motley crew.

Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault

    Eventually, Henrietta moved out since she married Austin Felker just three years after the census was enumerated. She and Austin still lived in Haverhill and chances are she still helped her mother with the kids whenever she could. 

    After Henrietta and Austin got married, Lucie was still likely feeling pressure. She was raising quite a few children by herself and most of her children were married by the 1910s.They were living their lives and grandchildren were being born at the time so time with the family and with their mother became a bit of a balancing act.  She still needed help with her children after spending more than a decade as a single mother.

    In those days, being a single mother was a bit of a taboo topic. Though, I think a widowed mother might have been less of a hot topic. Regardless of age, single motherhood was probably looked upon with pity and maybe a little scorn. Once Henrietta was out of the house and living her own life, she had a choice to make. Should she stay a single/widowed mother and raise Blanche, Clara and Oliver by herself? Or should she find herself a husband. 

    From a 21st century perspective she seemed to be doing alright for herself. I didn't see a job listed but she did have plenty of help. Though, I understand the need to find someone. She might have been lonely and wanted someone to help with the children. And that's where Paul LaHaye came in. I don't really know how he met Lucie. Chances are they met in church or something. However, I do know that they were married in 1917. That was four years after Austin and Henrietta got married.

Blanche and family (Not her grandkids.)

  How the children reacted to the new man in their mother's life is anyone's guess. Was he a good stepfather? I honestly have no idea. I assume he was but then again it's hard to say. By the 1920 census, the only child living with them was Blanche and her first husband Frank Paradis.

    Blanche had changed her last name to "Lahaye" and everyone else was scattered by that point. Some of the Legault siblings obviously still lived in Haverhill. Matilda was living in Connecticut and I'm not sure where Oliver was living. I suspect he was living in Falmouth, Mass. since he married a woman there. I'm not entirely sure about that. 

    I do know that in the end Lucie may have made the best decision for her. Sadly, Paul passed away sometime in 1932. This meant that he and Lucie had a good twenty years together before he passed away. At least we can say she wasn't lonely.

    Lucie passed away in 1937 and for some reason she's not buried with her second husband. I'm not sure why. She's buried with her daughter Mary , her husband Oliver Gariepy and her family in Saint Joseph's cemetery in Haverhill. To date I have not been able to find Paul's final resting place. He may be buried with them. I'm not sure and I'm not in any real rush to try and find him. Finding him is not as important as finding Antoine's final resting place to me. As of this blog I still haven't been able to find his grave! It's so annoying!

    Anyway, Lucie clearly had to make a hard choice. She chose to be a single mother for over a decade before marrying Paul. In those days, being a single mother was extremely hard, and possibly looked at as a less-than-desirable situation. One has to wonder if she felt pressure to find a husband after Antoine passed away. Some widows do not waste any time and get remarried right away. Some remained single and in the end it was really her decision to get married again. I don't like putting words in peoples' mouths. But I do know she likely made the right decision for her family. She had over a dozen children and while they likely helped when they could. Of course they had lives of their own and she more than likely respected her children's lives. Though, she probably would have accepted help. It takes a village and she had that for a good while before Paul came along.

    In the end, it was a tough call getting married after so many years being a single mother. In those days it was not an easy thing to do and one has to respect her hard choices. I like to think that the kids all turned out okay despite their mother's choices. Were they happy with Paul? Who knows? All I know is that it happened and Lucie had to do what she could. She likely didn't want to be alone and they seemed to have a nice life together. What more could anyone ask for after losing your first husband at a relatively young age?

See ya next time.