Update 6: East to Canada!

Later this week, I leave on my big research trip to Canada. That means heading east, not north. Although it sounds counterintuitive, my entire two-week trip will, in fact, take place in a narrow, 96-mile-wide strip between the latitudes of Taylor's Falls and Duluth, Minnesota.

For the first two-thirds of the expedition, I’ll be riding with two board members from the Little Canada Historical Society. They chose to drive so they could extend their trip and visit family and friends Quebec and Pennsylvania. But road-tripping to eastern Canada means we get to travel through Sault Ste. Marie and along the Ottawa River, retracing by car part of the famous voyageur highway that both Benjamin and Genevieve once traveled by canoe.

I have never been to Ontario or Quebec, so I am excited to see the landscapes!

Research Destinations

I will spend about half of the trip in research rooms of major Canadian archives:

• Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Ottawa

• Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ) at Montreal

• Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ) at Trois-Rivières

My research will naturally focus on Benjamin and Genevieve’s early years in Quebec (which was then called Lower Canada). I’ll be looking at archival collections about their home villages, trying to uncover as many details as I can about Benjamin’s experiences in the militia during the War of 1812, and flipping through pages of documents about the Batiscan Iron Works, a major iron forge built practically next door to Benjamin’s childhood home.

While archival research is the main reason for the trip, it’s not the only way to learn about the past. While I’m out there, I plan to visit a number of museums that interpret the lives of French-Canadian habitants in roughly the time period of my protagonists: a seigneurial manor, a flour mill, a church, and a (different) iron foundry, as well as an archeological museum in Montreal located on the very site of an inn once owned by Genevieve’s uncle, where Genevieve lived for a while after the death of her father. And of course, we’ll be stopping in the villages where they grew up: Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan, Louiseville (formerly Rivière-du-Loup), and Berthier.

On Saturday, June 21, I have been invited by the communities of Berthierville and Sainte-Geneviève-de-Berthier to give a presentation about my research. The story of the Laurence family belongs to them as much as it does to Little Canada. I will share family’s dramatic tale of loss and betrayal, love and resilience. Genevieve and her siblings were all born in Berthier, but the forces of history scattered them across the world, from Manitoba and Minnesota to Switzerland. No one from Genevieve's immediate family stayed behind in Quebec.

New Discoveries

Some records I requested from the Archdiocese of Quebec way back in February finally arrived near the end of May. These documents capture the eccentric personality of Father Laurent Aubry, the priest who baptized Benjamin in 1792.

Aubry was quite a character. He loved pomp and pageantry and spent lavishly on decorations and adornments. He lacked the humility usually expected of a parish priest. His letters, as well as complaints his parishioners filed with the bishop, reveal a man desperate for respect and veneration and prone to wild mood swings. When the community revolted against him—a conflict initiated by Benjamin’s maternal grandfather—Aubry grew frustrated and forlorn. He occasionally resorted to violence as he tried cow parishioners into submission. He verbally abused his church council, punched the choirmaster, and struck another man with a whip.

The story of the conflict between Benjamin’s family and community against their parish priest, undergirded by these records, will become the prologue to my book. I have only just begun to transcribe and translate the documents.

Excerpt of a letter from Father Laurent Laurent Aubry to Father Joseph-Octave Plessis, secretary to Bishop Hubert, 29 Aug 1789. Archives de l’archidiocèse de Québec, Fonds de la paroisse Sainte-Geneviève de Batiscan. This is my rough translation of the text above:

"...my residence is no longer suitable to the one where I've been for four years. The greater part of the community is, I believe, completely revolted against me. Besides the outrages, which I have only very faintly described to His Grace, much more atrocious ones were committed against me these past few days. My horse having escaped the day before yesterday, either accidentally or by force, although well hobbled, it was immediately put in "prison." Being alone and quite ill that day, Dominique could only retrieve it on the third trip by paying a piaster, even though it had caused no harm. All this would be nothing; but I was expressly told to beware of their hands, to take care of myself because they would get me, them and many others. Can one say anything worse? And they also had it said that I had spoken falsehoods in the sermons and a thousand other invectives. You see by this that I can no longer stay in this place. Whatever I say, it's nothing in comparison to the reality. One must be in my situation to judge things in their true nature. Consequently, I am now more harmful than necessary in this parish. God, souls, and my reputation demand that I leave as soon as possible. Since the beginning of these troubles, I no longer live; on the contrary, the pains and sorrows make me die at every moment. If my Lord does not have the kindness to promptly remove me from these afflictions, I fear for myself."

I have also slowly been working my way through Ramsey County court records. One court case will help me show that Benjamin was neither a faultless man nor a perfect father-in-law.

No one ever said a bad word about Benjamin or Genevieve, at least not in public. Despite that, or rather because of it, I am very conscious that I need avoid treating them as characters who are too-perfect or too one-dimensional. Although they were victims of many hardships, they were not damsels in distress. They had agency. And while they were widely regarded as kind, generous, all-around good people, they were not Mary Sues. Since I don’t want to fall into those narrative tropes (traps?), I am always on the lookout for any evidence that will help readers see them as regular people, as folks with good hearts but also typical human flaws and rough edges that reflected their lived experiences.

After Benjamin and Genevieve’s son Jean-Baptiste died unexpectedly at age 22, Benjamin went ahead and retook possession of some of his son's livestock and personal possessions. The only problem was that Jean-Baptiste’s widow Adele believed those things belonged to her. Adele and a co-executor of Jean-Baptiste’s estate sued Benjamin to force him to return the items. When he refused, the court ordered the sheriff to collect what he could from Benjamin. My job is to try to tease out whether it was merely a legal misunderstanding—an immigrant steeped in ideas of communal property confronting a more rigid system of property law—or if there was perhaps some personal animosity between Adele and her in-laws. If there wasn’t before the case, there probably was afterwards.

What’s Next?

When I get back from Canada, my next major task will be helping the Little Canada Historical Society apply for a Legacy Grant. The pre-application is due in the middle of July.

We are counting on this grant to support writing the rest of the manuscript during 2026 and possibly into early 2027. LCHS will be the official applicant, but of course I am the only person in position to write up a research status report, annotate a bibliography, explain why the project matters in scholarly terms, and estimate how much time it will take to write each remaining chapter. I will continue to spend one day a week at the Minnesota Historical Society and continue processing transcriptions and translations. Thank you again for reading and showing your support!