Filles du Roi / Daughters of the King: Marthe Quittel Comes for a Husband
Among the eight filles du roi aboard the Marie-Thérèse who were coming to find husbands was a woman from Normandy, Marthe Quittel, a Protestant from Rouen.
Hemingway and Dinosaurs
My pulse quickened as we walked up the white cement stairs to Ernest Hemingway’s famed Cuban home, La Finca Vigia. His presence lingered throughout the house.
The Howe Street Apartment
The following is an excerpt from We Were not Spoiled by Lucille Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. My Parents Establish Themselves in Maine and I Am Born The Howe Street apartment where I was born was my parents’ second home. When they first came, they lived downtown in a tenement on Lisbon Street. My […]
Something About the Water
The following memoir excerpt was written by Chris Madsen of Olympia, Washington. I never got used to that first splash of chilly water. It came from a natural spring concealed behind a stockade fence, so clean and pure that we all thought Mr. Trecartin should bottle it. Instead, he let the spring fill the swimming pool […]
Visiting My Parents’ Home Town, Thetford
It was my first time visiting Thetford since I was three. I did not remember anything from the first trip except being so pleased to sleep at my Lessard grandparents’ house. In my growing up, I had not had the luxury of staying over at a grandparents’ place as many other kids in Lewiston had.
The Summer I Was A “Slave”
In the summer of 1933, I started to work for the Laneuville family, who lived up the street. Like my mother, Mrs. Laneuville had a large family. However, she was not feeling well so she asked my mother if I could be spared to provide some help. This was to be my first job outside […]
Giving Dad the Bird
We enjoy when our readers submit their memoir-writing samples to us! The following story is from the memoir of one of our blog readers, Lori Robinson. We hope you will enjoy this sojourn in Africa: Two kinds of people sign up for African safaris. Most, myself included, want to see “The Big Five”–-lion, leopard, rhino, […]
A Maine Franco Memoir: My Sister Gertrude Almost Gets Spoiled
An excerpt from We Were not Spoiled by Lucille Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. While our family was already large by today’s standards—there were already 6 kids, it was to grow even larger. In the spring of 1929, my mother was pregnant again and she made arrangements to have the baby in the hospital […]
A Franco-American Memoir: April Fool’s Day
DL—The following excerpt is from We Were Not Spoiled, the Franco-American Memoir of Lucille Verreault Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. My Father Learns About April Fool’s Day Moving to Howe Street also meant that I lost my friends on Jefferson Street. I could still get together with Juliette and Jeannine at school but they […]