What A Hobby!

By Sara St. John

Have you ever wondered about your ancestors from several hundreds of years ago? Have you ever been just a might bit curious as to where your roots trace back to?

Leon Guimond, a resident of Frenchville, Maine, is a forty-nine year old man with a very interesting and time consuming hobby. Although Mr. Guimond enjoys his occupation as a carpenter’s supervisor, much of his time and effort has been dedicated to genealogy. What is genealogy? “Genealogy is the art of being enough of a detective to find your ancestors,” he explained.

For eleven years Leon has been gradually, but steadily building up his own little library in an upstairs room of his house. This library contains eleven hundred volumes of genealogy and historical information about the United States, France, and Canada. He has also typed himself out approximately twenty thousand cards containing the births, marriages, and deaths of the residents of the St. John Valley.

Many people come to Leon’s library and sit at his table for hours flipping through his very organized card catalogue and reference material. Although his Library is open to everybody, people who aren’t of Franco- American heritage wouldn’t have much luck. “I would need a library the size of the Library of Congress,” he speculates, “in order to trace other ethnic groups,” Leon has gone through much effort just to get the books he has simply over the Franco- Americans. “I brought in from all over the place,” he reflects, “New England and Canada… and some of them were out of print and I had to copy em. Couldn’t buy them if you had a million dollars.” As a result, he borrowed these books from various libraries and took them home to his photo- copying machine and copied them page by page. True dedication, no?

Genealogy is not nearly as simple as going to a source and copying down all the information. There are many cases in which information is extremely hard to come by and has to be hunted for and pieced together. In other cases this has to do with the history of the Acadian French and the Quebec French.

Mr. Guimond explained that many years ago there was an area in Canada called Acadia which is what we know of today as Nova Scottia, Prince Edward Islands, parts of New Brunswick and parts of Maine. This area, settled and ruled by the English, continued many French people who refused to bear arms for the King of England against their mother country. In 1755 this refusal to fgt was no longer tolerated and there occurred what was known as the Great Deportation. The English of Acadia mustered up thousand of French “Neutrals” and shipped them off to different parts if what is today the United States, splitting up families and burning records. This was all done in hopes that within a generation these people would lose their identities and become loyal English subjects. A few years later, though, England found out about the burning of the records and an attempt was made to reconstruct them. But because this was just from memory, many records were omitted. This is one reason why Acadian roots can be very difficult or impossible, to trace.

Another reason why Acadian records were distorted is that during the Great Deportation many people fled into the woods when they became aware of what was happening. Out in the wilderness people married and it was never recorded. In addition, children were baptized and that wasn’t recorded. Therefore it is now impossible to trace one’s genealogy back to these people.

Genealogy seems like piecing a puzzle together especially when one becomes aware of the fact that many name changes took place. During the latter part of the seventeenth century many people of France immigrated to the New World because they wanted to escape the religious wars and the feudal system of their homeland. However the New World was already considerably populated by the English. The only way these French people could have a chance at getting a job was for them to transform their names from French to English, or Anglicize them. Some examples of this are: Cloutier became Cluky, Roudier became Roohy, Roy became King, Sirois became Cyrway, and Lavois became Lavway. Some of this Anglicizing was done just to facilitate easier pronunciation, but both these factors contributed to making genealogy somewhat confusing.

Obviously, this fascinating man thoroughly enjoys uncovering bits of his past and bits of the past of his ethnic group in general. “I want to add that it’s really interesting to find your ancestors. It really is.” Mr. Guimond enthusiastically encourages all people to learn about their past. And who knows? Maybe one day everybody will have their own library in their homes!