In this section, I offer stories written originally for family reading. These are stories of my grandmother’s life. Most of the stories below were published in From Saint-Narcisse to Fall River, a booklet which I gave in the mid-90s to family members as a Christmas gift.
The little booklet looked great and it was fun to walk with a basket full of booklets around my brother’s house where we were all gathered. I gave one booklet to each family and to each adult with a separate home.
In this booklet, I recalled my grandmother’s life from Memory Listing the details I knew. I found I remembered quite a few things about her—although she had died some 30 years earlier. To these memories, I added historical research to create stories that are, one hopes, interesting, accurate and meaningful.
I even went to the towns where she lived. I saw the house where she was born and the church, many hundreds of miles away in another country, in which she and my grandfather were married.
You can do it, too.
These stories drawn from the booklet are also an example for what anyone with curiosity and a modicum of writing ability (I hope you will find I have more than a modicum!) could write from their memories—and the Memory List.
As one nephew shared with me, “Every family ought to have its own family historian to write its stories down for future generations.”
Well, I’m all for that!
In conclusion
I hope you will enjoy my grandmother’s stories from another time and another place—and I hope they will inspire you to write your own family stories.
If you don’t, who will?
Writing An Old Family Story
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. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Marie Bilodeau Ledoux’s story
My grandmother Marie Bilodeau Ledoux was born in St-Narcisse-de-Lotbinière, Québec, on May 15, 1884. The following is excerpted from a booklet I wrote about my mémère some fifteen years ago and gave a s a Christmas gift to my extended family.