Top Menu

So you’ve decided to self-publish the book you have worked so hard to write. Congratulations! You have taken an important step, But, have you decided to self-publish with a book packager?

You are joining the ranks of some of the most well-known authors, including Deepak Chopra, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Anais Nin. In fact, you probably have several self-published titles in your own library. What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles and Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking are two examples. (more…)

In Canada in 1665, June had turned into July, bringing maturing crops and an abundance of wild berries. In the fields, men worked with oxen, pulling up stumps, harrowing new land. Their wives guarded them with muskets at the ready. The days were hot and long. In Québec, people adjusted to the influx from France—mostly young men. Mothers and fathers kept a close eye on their daughters. More ships were expected.

On July 16, the Marie-Thérèse, having left Le Havre on May 10, sailed into port. It was captained be the Sieur Poullet (Puet[1]) a frequent visitor to the colony who, in addition to bringing supplies, had two welcome cargoes—twelve horses[2] sent by the new Intendant, Jean Talon, who was yet to arrive and eight filles du roi.

Aboard the Marie-Thérèse, among the eight filles du roi who were coming to find husbands was a normande, Marthe Quittel, a Protestant from Rouen. Jean Bourdon was from Rouen and so it was understandable that his wife Madame Bourdon would have recruited girls there. It may have been she who was responsible for bringing the rouennaise Marthe Quittel. As chaperone, Madame Bourdon had likely taken it upon herself to instruct Marthe in the tenets of Catholicism. Although Marthe had been baptized a Catholic at the church of St. Maclou in Rouen in 1638, she had converted to Calvinism. Because Protestants could not stay openly in New France, this impoverished fille du roi, on the day after her arrival in New France, knowing that a return to Rouen held no promise for her, “abjured” Calvinism and “accepted the one, true faith” before Father Ango des Maizerets, the representative of Bishop François de Montmagny Laval [1].

In the next excerpt of Here to Stay, a book-length account of my 17 century ancestors, we read how Marthe met her future husband.



[1] One is tempted to paraphrase Henri IV by writing: “A better life in Canada is worth a Mass.”

a monument to our ancestors, the filles du roi

a monument to our ancestors, the filles du roi

This excerpt is drawn from Here to Stay, a book-length account of Denis’ seventeenth-century ancestors.

In the summer of 1663, ships, plying down the Saint Lawrence to dock at Québec, brought letters to the governor from King Louis about change that was to come to Canada. Hearing the news, many settlers were hopeful that, at last, Canada might receive the support it desperately required. Among the first changes were incentives to increase the population which, in 1663, numbered only 3,035. Given the small number of people, every death—whether due to natural causes, childbirth or war—was discouraging to the colonists. Every death meant one person less in New France to clear the fields, conserve the harvest, mind the family.

Louis XIV Promotes Migration

Realizing the role of women in increasing the population from within (vs. migration from without), Louis XIV encouraged female wards of the state to migrate to Canada by offering them incentives. Known as the daughters of the king, these filles du roi were mostly orphan girls or at least girls and women without a family to support and care for them.  In France, the future for these filles du roi was grim. Canada, with its surplus of men, held the promise of a husband, a home, and a family—and the king would not only pay the woman’s transportation to Canada, he would provide each of the wards with a dowry. But not every single woman who wanted to come would be allowed to.

“Before letting them on board, there has to be one of their relatives who assures us they have always been upstanding,” wrote Pierre Boucher, a sub-governor of Trois-Rivières.

Men Penalized for Not Marrying

To be sure that Canadian men responded to this royal initiative with appropriate marriage proposals, a tax was levied on all men over the age of 20 who were not married. In addition, obstinate men could lose their right to hunt, fish, and trap, but there was an out. Men who did not want to marry just yet took to the woods. Years later, these coureurs de bois would emerge and they might marry one of these filles du roi—and then they might not.

In all, about 900 to 1,100 filles du roi came to Canada. There is no person of Franco-North American descent who does not count one of them among his or her ancestors. Among the filles du roi was Marthe Quittel, the first of my female ancestors in my mother’s line in North America. She landed in New France, single, impoverished, and 27, in July of 1665. I write about her in another post.

If you want to write genealogical accounts and need help, give Denis a call or e-mail him. He offer writing coaching that can address whatever level you are at.

 

Gunnar owned the field and the house across the street. At one time, the house must have been a trim little cape. But now it rolled a bit, as if it was caught in a perpetual wave, and the white paint was badly flaked and faded.

The house gave way to a series of sheds that ended at the entrance to a monstrous barn three stories high. Inside were Gunnar’s prized possessions: his Harley motorcycle and his vintage automobiles. Gunnar loved motorcycles. As a child with his first bicycle, he’d liberated his mother’s brand new metal vacuum cleaner tubes to serve as tailpipes on his two-wheeler, an undertaking that ended in a tangle of twisted metal, both pipes and bike beyond repair.

The property was at the juncture of three towns, so Gunnar had a smorgasbord of town services to choose from. He used the garbage pickup from one town, sent his 10-year-old daughter to the better schools in another, and voted in the third. He lived there quietly with his current wife and daughter, as well as a medley of older children from his previous marriages and liaisons, and his wife’s. At any given time, there would be three or eight or twelve people living there. You could only tell by the number of big old American cars scattered in the dooryard.

The back part of the field and the woods behind it were also home to big old cars, ones that no longer worked, that had retired to stately disrepair after years on the road and then a year or two in the winter demolition derby.

We had already witnessed the demolition derby over the snowy weekend between Christmas and New Year’s. We figured the upcoming motorcycle party couldn’t top that. The demolition derby started with the arrival of large trucks bearing strange cargo, battered cars ripe enough for destruction. Starting shortly after noon on Saturday and continuing well into the darkness, these cars raced around the frozen field, sending up huge splashes of mud-riddled snow, slewing around the circle as fast as they were able. Few cars had shock absorbers; fewer had doors, and from time to time a driver would hit a lump of ice or frozen ground and pop from his car to land prostrate in the snow. The demolition part wasn’t intentional. It happened when one car lost control and smashed another, or, more frequently, smashed itself. Bumpers, tail pipes, and assorted lights littered the field.

But Gunnar was environmentally cautious: he insisted all cars empty their antifreeze before joining the contest. Everyone obeyed Gunnar. He was their leader.

The derby resumed on Sunday, and we were at our places at an upstairs window to watch. We were rooting for a lime-green and pink sedan. There was something about the carefree, door-free, windshield-free spirit of the car that captivated us, and we gasped every time another car part abandoned it. The muffler landed under the oak tree, the bumper clashed with another bumper and lost. Yet it gamely struggled on. Finally, it was the last car running, the winner triumphantly revving its engine as it took a victory lap, the pilot and co-pilot hanging out the sides of the car waving their beers at the crowd.

In the months since the demolition derby, people had dropped hints about the motorcycle party, held the first weekend in August, but we hadn’t really paid attention. What could top a snowy demolition derby, good to the last drop?

Gunnar was mowing his field. This was odd. He never mowed his field. He was making ever-tightening circles around the knobby acre, the sweet grass and raggedy weeds falling in neat windrows behind him. He rolled over the bumps and dodged the knot of trees in the middle and the outhouse at one end while perched atop a full-size tractor that, despite its bulk, failed to dwarf him. It was a nice grassy field, shimmering with seed in early August, rimmed with pines and oaks on three sides and a low-slung ancient stone wall on the fourth along the road, across the street from my house.

“I wouldn’t call the police if I were you.”

I turned to find my neighbor from up the road standing next to me in my front yard. He was grinning conspiratorially.

“I wouldn’t call the police,” he repeated. “About the party, I mean. You know about the party, don’t you?”

I was new to the area, “from away” as they say, still trying to learn the ropes to living on this narrow, pock-marked road on the outskirts of nowhere in the middle of Maine.

“The party,” I said vaguely. “Yes, I’ve heard about it. The motorcycle party.”

“It’s noisy, but they quiet down early. Just a bunch of people on motorcycles.” My neighbor was giving me this look that told me I might be tempted to call the police, but I should just wait things out.

I looked across at Gunnar on the tractor. He was waving to us, a broad, friendly smile peeking out from his bearded face. He was taller than he was wide, but not by much. He had a job somewhere up in the foothills, a mechanic of some sort. He was 40 or so, and he’d grown up in the house next to the field. He looked like the stereotypical teddy bear of a big, bearded man. The neighbor was exaggerating about the party, I felt certain.

We’d lived on this little road long enough to know that the neighbors got to do whatever they wanted with their land. Up the road, one house was surrounded by a professionally landscaped yard; across the street from it, the house there had been left to sink into the ground in favor of a rusted trailer. It was a neighborhood in transition, from a few farms to smaller tracts of land on which people from away built houses. We had bought one of the old farmhouses when the farmer called it quits, so we were in the in-between. We gained a lot of respect when we left our Christmas wreath hanging until it was the proper shade of brown, and even more when we drew the curtains during the cold months but left them open during the hot. One had to find the balancing point between practicality and neighborliness, privacy and exhibitionism.

We bit our tongues when people from away complained about Gunnar’s scraggly yard. We said nothing when some newer people starting a campaign to have the bulges and crooks taken out of the road. We knew the old-timers referred to the lumpy asphalt as speed bumps, keeping the brave drivers who attempted the road under the speed limit. We knew we had to take the neighborhood as it was. And that meant not calling the police when Gunnar had his party.


This is Part I of a four part memoir shared by Chris Madsen. For more of Chris’ work please go to www.whostolemybrain.com

When I was ten, I ran away. I packed everything that was important into my sturdy cardboard suitcase. I left a note on the kitchen table warning my parents not to look for me at the high-tension wires, those metal electrical towers that marked the back border of our property and which were in fact my destination. I never made it to the high-tension wires. I got as far as the start of the path through the woods where I found an accommodating rhododendron bush under which I could hide.

From here, I could see anyone headed for the path. The path led from our backyard through what we called the woods, though it was really just a severely overgrown lot, to the high-tension wires. I knew everything about both the woods and the high-tension wires from days and years of playing and exploration. I knew where to find day lilies and where to find cattails. I knew where wood violets grew beneath old elm trees, and I knew just where to jump to avoid stepping in holes on the uneven path. The woods tended to become downright swampy during the spring. One time when I was walking through them with my mother, trying to keep up with her, I stepped into a nasty patch of mud that sucked the boot right off my foot. I left it there and walked the rest of the way in one boot and one sock. My mother was not pleased.

The rhododendron bush was large and squat. I sat there waiting for someone to come looking for me. No one came.

This presented a problem. Did I stay hunched under the rhododendron and watch the night darken the sky? My food supply was modest, and the bathroom facilities not to my liking. Surely someone would look for me after dark. Or did I accept the inevitable now, before hunger overtook me completely, and return to the house? I opted for a gracious re-entry: I would stalk into the house and announce that I had forgotten something. Surely someone would beg me to stay.

pudgy the dollAnd so I walked the 50 yards back to the house. I flung open the back door as dramatically as I could, and announced to the kitchen that I had forgotten something.Dinner was cooking unattended. The TV set echoed the news in the living room. I marched to my room and closed the door. I put my suitcase on the bed and opened it. Had I really forgotten anything? There was my silver dollar, my locked safe disguised as a book, and my favorite doll, Pudgy. Nope. Looked pretty complete to me.

I hesitated, deciding what I was going to do. I could just close the suitcase, flounce into the living room and leave by the front door. Surely someone would notice. Or I could put Pudgy back in his place of honor on my pillow. Pudgy’s round celluloid face was framed by a head of pale blue plush that ended in a little point, as if he had on a hooded sweatshirt. His body was a big hollow ball of plush with a squeaker inside. His arms and legs were nothing more than overstuffed stumps, but they were long enough that he could sit up properly. I named him Pudgy as soon as I got him, a present from my Aunt Frederikke, whom we all called Aunt Rik, like reek. My sister got an identical doll, and decided to name hers Pudgy also. Since I was four at the time (she was two), I was not flattered by her imitation but rather annoyed that she was copying me. I’m fairly certain she didn’t even know what pudgy meant.

“Christy,” my mother called. “Time to set the table.”

I went back to the kitchen. There on the table was my run away note. I stuffed it in my pocket. No one had noticed.

Pudgy had a place of great importance in my hierarchy of stuffed creatures. He bumped the unnamed teddy bear from his position of honor in bed next to me. He spent his days surveying everything from my pillow. He became my confidant, my totem, my touchstone. Squeeze his belly for a reassuring squeal. Twirl his one lock of bright yellow hair. Stroke his celluloid cheeks. Pudgy had it all. No more than eight inches tall, Pudgy was a giant in my eyes. He noticed everything.

Dinner smelled good. And it was getting dark. I might as well stay, I figured. I could always leave tomorrow. I went back to my room to unpack. Pudgy sank gratefully onto my pillow, and gave me that knowing look of his. He didn’t question why we were back. But he knew I had my unread note in my pocket. He knew we might have to leave again.

My sister moved on to Chatty Cathy and then Barbie, but I remained true to Pudgy, even during the troll craze of the ’60s. I was a one-doll kind of girl. I don’t know what became of my sister’s Pudgy. I still have mine. His once-blue plush is now a threadbare gray, but his eyes are still bright. His tiny lock of yellow yarn hair is limp with age, but his lips are a nicely weathered pink. He sits on my desk. He notices everything.

Please share your lifestories with us. Mail them to: [email protected].

The following is an excerpt from We Were Not Spoiled by Lucille Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux.

Life during the war went on as usual, in some ways. I enjoyed working at Benoit’s Clothing Store. I liked dressing up to go to work. We were always meeting the public and we had to look good. Our dresses had to be just right and our hair done. I used to go to a hairdresser on Lincoln Street whose shop was on the second floor of a building her family owned. She lived downstairs with her parents, who had made the second floor available to her for use as a beauty shop. Today, people would say you have to have a shop on the first floor.

Most days, I would take the bus back for lunch, which my mother prepared. The trip up took ten minutes and the bus left me right in front of our house. I’d eat for a half hour. Then, I’d pick the bus up in front, and the trip back took minutes.

After having had twelve children, my mother did not have any more. Paul was still very young—four in 1943—and Roger was six. My mother was quite busy. During this time, certainly by 1943, she was not doing too well, but we didn’t think much of it. We continued to think of her as a strong woman.

That year, as the war was going on, I had a normal life. I served as president of les Enfants de Marie and met with other young women to prepare events to support Holy Family Church and its ministry. I also remember planting dahlias around the house. It was like planting little potatoes and getting beautiful flowers. In the fall, you had to dig them up and save them for the next season. It was a lot of work but I enjoyed doing it.

Many workplaces offered the option of having money taken from your pay to buy war bonds. The money was used by the US government to finance the war. I decided to join the effort and had money taken out regularly from my Benoit’s pay. It was a patriotic thing to do and, since Albert and many other young men I knew were in the war, I felt I was doing something to support them. It was also a way of saving money because the bonds were supposed to be redeemable with some interest after the war was over.

By then, I had definitely begun to think that I might marry Albert. Because the war was going on, these were not easy years to be thinking of getting married. Not just being married but what happened after you married—starting a family and raising children. Every week, we read in the English and the French newspapers that some young man had been killed, leaving a widow who was pregnant or a widow with children. That would be hard on the woman and hard on the children. All that year, Albert was in Keesler Army Air Force Base. He had gone through Mississippi’s easy winter and then through its hot humid summer. He was slated to graduate from the program in December 1943. We knew nothing beyond that.

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. It was supposedly exactly how he had left it in the 1960’s— animal heads adorning walls, books and papers stacked on his desk, dust-laden bottles of alcohol on a tray in the living room. The dining room table was set as if Ernest and his wife Mary were going to walk in at any minute and sit down for a meal. Small wire rimmed glasses folded on the bedside table. In the bathroom was Hemingway’s weight hand-written in pencil on the wall above the scale.

A Hemingway fan since my father had given me The Old Man and the Sea for my tenth birthday, I had been eagerly anticipating this visit since we had arrived in Cuba. But the sweaty little hand of my five-year-old daughter Gabrielle wrapped in mine quickly brought me back to reality. Her small body was becoming heavier and heavier as I dragged her around the house. We were on day one of our four days of discovering Havana—and on a break from the Cuban beaches at our all-inclusive resort. My husband George, also a Hemingway lover, was off discovering the property with our eldest daughter, eight-year-old Nathalie. Under the hot Caribbean sun, divide and conquer was our plan.

“Maman, are you done yet? I’m thirsty,” Gabrielle said.

She knew how I felt about Hemingway and had been impressively patient. To entertain her I was telling her about each room and sharing Hemingway tidbits. She was quiet and calm—maybe the stories were working? I would make a Hemingway lover out of her, even as a child.

“Let’s go visit the pool and fishing boat,” I said with enthusiasm, trying to inject some energy into our visit. Her eyes lit up, a pool? A boat? The pool was cracked and empty. And the boat, the Pilar, had seen better days but I could envision Hem at the helm, enjoying days of fishing and drinking. Gabrielle still seemed to be listening but after three hours at La Finca, I knew I could not expect much more from her small over heated body. She needed a cold drink and a break from endless Ernest babble. As we walked back up the rocky steep pathway to the main house, Gabrielle seemed lost in thought. I sensed an important question looming, most likely about the famed author.

“Maman,” she said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Did god exist when there were dinosaurs?” she asked.

God, dinosaurs? I laughed out loud. So much for my Hemingway stories sinking in. But I know she will remember this day. And I will still be giving her The Old Man and the Sea for her 10th birthday. She will learn to love Hemingway in her own time.

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 father worked at Dulac’s which was just down the way, and while the mills were not far from their tenement, my mother, who turned 21 on August 15 just a few weeks after marrying, did not seek outside work but kept house.

Language was not a problem because people spoke French in the stores and at church and on the streets. There were French-speaking doctors and dentists and lawyers. In that way, Lewiston was an easy place for my mother to come to, but still, it was an unfamiliar city. In the little apartment on Lisbon Street, she found herself alone all day. She had no friends or family there other than those of my father’s. I can only guess she must have been lonely. Like my father, she was the oldest of her family and had left five brothers and three sisters behind, the youngest of whom, Gabrielle, was only one year old. “I miss my Gabrielle!” my mother told me she said over and over in that first year away.

One day, perhaps wanting to please her young husband, she devoted herself to making a pie. When my father returned home and was ready for his desert, she proudly served him. When he pressed into the crust with his fork, the piece shot off his plate and landed on the floor. Then, it bounced away on the kitchen linoleum. My mother was nearby and the piece of pie came to a stop between her feet. My father who was still a young husband thought this was funny, but my mother did not. She was new at being a housewife and, being only 21 and having tried her best, she broke into tears. I don’t think she had much experience in preparing meals because, at the little house on rue Dubé, it was her mother who had done most of the cooking. My mother had worked at the hotel dining room and not in its busy kitchen.

Sometime before I was born, my parents moved from downtown to their Howe Street apartment. Towards the end of July, Dr. Morin was summoned to the apartment to assist in my mother’s first birthing. I was born on Thursday, July 21, 1921. (That made me only two years younger than my aunt Gabrielle.) Now my mother had her very own baby.

As was the custom, because I was the first born, my paternal grandparents, Eugène and Zélire Dulac Verreault, were chosen as godparents. I don’t know if they came down for the baptism or whether they were represented by proxies. Saint Peter’s parish had only a basement church then. Work was in progress for the upper church but it was often halted for lack of money. (Many of the Canadians could afford to give only dimes and quarters and so the money was slow in coming.) I was baptized in what was later to be called the lower church but then was the only church.

My maternal grandparents, the Lessards, did not come down. My young mother—she was after all only 21—must have been sad not to be able to present her new baby to her mother for her approval and blessing. I know it was important for me to have my mother around when I had children.

Memoir-Writing Support

How to Self-Publish with a Book Packager

So you’ve decided to self-publish the book you have worked so hard to write. Congratulations! You have taken an important step, But, have you decided to self-publish with a book packager?

You are joining the ranks of some of the most well-known authors, including Deepak Chopra, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Anais Nin. In fact, you probably have several self-published titles in your own library. What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles and Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking are two examples. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

farmhouse

There Goes The Neighborhood, Part 2

We had already witnessed the demolition derby over the snowy weekend between Christmas and New Year’s. We figured the upcoming motorcycle party couldn’t top that. The demolition derby started with the arrival of large trucks bearing strange cargo.

tractor mowing

There Goes the Neighborhood, Part 1

Gunnar was mowing his field. This was odd. He never mowed his field. He was making ever-tightening circles around the knobby acre, the sweet grass and raggedy weeds falling in neat windrows behind him.

Zemanta Related Posts Thumbnail

Pudgy: A Childhood Memoir

When I was ten, I ran away. I packed everything that was important into my sturdy cardboard suitcase. I left a note on the kitchen table warning my parents not to look for me at the high-tension wires, those metal electrical towers that marked the back border of our property and which were in fact […]

Life During The War

Life during the war went on as usual, in some ways. I enjoyed working at Benoit’s Clothing Store. I liked dressing up to go to work. We were always meeting …

ingrid littman

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 […]