I was one of those fortunate children to have known well both sets of grandparents. My Ledoux grandparents lived upstairs for most of my growing up while by Verreault grandparents lived 10 miles away. Because of this, I’ll admit writing an old family story is somewhat easy for me as I heard so many of […]

I was one of those fortunate children to have known well both sets of grandparents. My Ledoux grandparents lived upstairs for most of my growing up while by Verreault grandparents lived 10 miles away. Because of this, I’ll admit writing an old family story is somewhat easy for me as I heard so many of them when I was child!

My grandmother Marie Bilodeau Ledoux was the first to leave us. That was almost 60 years ago November 23, 1964.)

The following story is drawn from a booklet I wrote in 2001. It tells about le bonhomme Sept-heures who was also the bane of my childhood.

I offer it as an example of including historical information both about the specific people and about the cultural setting. This post does both as I encourage you to do the same for your memoir.

Perhaps you have bits of folklore in your family and can leave comments below about them

Writing an old family story about when my grandmother was young.

Growing up in the little house at the end of the rang Saint- Noël (Saint Noel Road) helping her mother Aurélie in the lathe-paneled kitchen, Marie, the fourth in a family of girls, absorbed the lessons her mother imparted about how to clean and sew and cook. Every year or so, there was a new baby in the crib that was placed next to the wood stove, every year another child who was made to climb the stairs to sleep with her and her sisters in the big loft room.
Marie knew that le Bonhomme Sept-Heures (the Seven O’clock Man) snatched children up if they weren’t in bed by seven o’clock. “Endormez-vous (Go to sleep),” Aurélie would shout up to her chatting girls in the bedrooms upstairs. “If you don’t, le Bonhomme Sept-Heures will find you awake when he makes his rounds.” In the summer, or when the children got older and naturally went to bed later, the Bonhomme Sept-Heures somehow transformed into le Bonhomme Huit-Heures (the Eight-O’clock Man).

Cultural history behind this story

This French Canadian bogey man ironically was not a Canadien at all! He was an Anglais (an Englishman) who had come into their mythology with the Conquest in 1760.
In Canada, there were few doctors. An itinerant healer, the bone setter, filled the doctor function. In the days before painkillers, the bone setter was naturally associated with the excruciating pain of having a bone set in place.
After the Conquest, the bonesetter was likely to be an Anglais. People called him le Bonhomme Bonesetter. (Bonhomme is an Old French equivalent of the Old English Goodman.) For people who did not speak English, the passage from le Bonhomme Bone-setter to le Bonhomme Sept-Heures was a phonetically easy one. In this land where the Anglais was the bad guy, it was simple enough for one of them to become the bogeymen.
Even with the impending visit of le Bonhomme Sept-Heures did the girls perhaps continue to giggle for a few moments after their mother had shouted up, before their father Thomas, in his turn, warned them from downstairs, “Les filles (girls), it’s time to be quiet. I think I see le Bonhomme Sept-Heures in the yard.”
The girls settled down. Le Bonhomme Sept-Heures in the yard was serious!

Family history when writing an old family story

This house that was Marie’s first home (see the image for the post that is my grandmother’s childhood home. It is not a stock image), the place of her earliest and fondest memories, had been built by her papa in the French Empire style, popular then in Québec. It faced the yard, with its side to the rang Saint-Noël that led into the village of Saint-Narcisse about a mile and a half away. The house is not big, perhaps 30′ x 30′. (Where the primary barn stood, I don’t know. My guess is that it stood at the end of the entry drive, not far from the house.)
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I hope you have enjoyed this little story. While I share with you in commemoration of my grandmother, it is also an example of including a bigger picture when writing an old family story.

I also published a story in these pages about her birth on May 15, 1884.