Preparing to Leave Home
In the summer of 1960 when I was thirteen, my mother drove me into Lewiston to Vincent & Leblanc’s on Lisbon Street at Ash Street. There, in a shopping spree that was unprecedented, she bought me more new clothes than I’d ever had at any one time.
Filles du Roi/Daughters of the King Meet their Prospective Husbands
The “daughters of the king” were introduced to prospective husbands at the Ursuline convent in the Upper Town of Québec
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.
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 […]
Starting Out On My Life
I was too young to marry, and my parents could not afford to have me stay at home. My mother took care of most of the housework, and my parents needed my salary more than they needed me to help her full-time at housekeeping. My mother had never worked outside the home except for a […]
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 Story of Why My Parents Came Down
While my parents were immigrants to the US, they had not really come to be immigrants. My father’s health had been affected by the tiny, deadly filaments called asbestos dust in his hometown…