Form: Short Note

(note to self)

FRENCH MATERNAL LINES (Farmers)

— France>NovaScotia>Quebec>Maine>Connecticut

— Sirois : Sih-ROY, or SEER-oh-way in the states.

— Theriault, Theery-o, or Tair-ee-oh in the states

— Ouellette, (her line English Wells origin) Well-ET.

— Blanchette, Blann-SHET

Emma Sirois married Eugene Theriault 1900.

Delia Blanchette married Joseph Ouellette.

Maternal line Family history is all written but it is in french and i cannot read it – and the author (a great uncle) is too aged to translate it.

The only English I’ve been able to read is about these people Theriault and his sons, and these were good ‘Gaulish’ men that were diligent in helping others in the community (village so to speak) with one story (newspaper) that they would check on town families after deep snow and help dig them out or bring them supplies.

Although my Grandmother was a font of stories about growing up in an era of horses and wagons, where we still lived ‘the old way’. Including scarlett fever, and the spanish flu. Houses burning down from lamps and candles. Large families in small houses. Sleeping three in a bed to keep warm.

My mother’s side is ‘very french’ and very ‘farmer-class’ – so much so that for the WASP side of the family – including me – other than my grandmother, most of that side of the family was ‘alien’. The women would get together, cook, and I would sit under the kitchen table listening to them. (My mother has a Master’s Degree. But I doubt there are many degrees, entrepreneurs, authors, preachers, lawyers, soldiers, and generals before her generation like there are on my paternal side.

My English Upper Middle-Class Martial Class Puritan Protestant father was threatened with disinheritance if he married my French earth-working Class Near-Serfdom Class Catholic mother.

My Maternal grandfather was a big strong man with a Gaul’s nose. His English was passable, but his hearing was damaged by one of the illnesses early in the century, so he was incomprehensible to me.

When young looked far more like my English and Scandinavian heritage but as I age I realize that I increasingly look like one of the (severe, judgmental) Sirois – who my mother has no kind words for.

My Sister Ellen and I have more Scandinavian, and my other sister Jean more French. And I find this whole gene expression thing fascinating. I wish that the Jewish pseudoscientists had been less effective selling Boaz, Freud, and Cultural Marxism to the unwashed and generations of women newly liberated from housework by electricity and machines.

Fascinating that in a century we have made such a great change.

interesting that the cause of it is petroleum products. And that the resource is not infinite or sustainable.

We forget that oil is equivalent to our discovery of Mastodon’s – and that while we can survive on either, they both can run out.