By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Elucidating one set of “Lost Names” puzzles always opens a window to a new unexplored family. The first part of this article could be titled “A Tale of Two Blackbirds.” Francis Blackbird was married in Brandon on June 18, 1842 to Vermont-born Eliza Field, their wedding officiated by Barzillai Davenport, Justice of the Peace. François Létourneau was born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec on June 5, 1810, son of Antoine Létourneau and Marie Louise Chagnon. Étourneau is the French word for starling, and with l’ affixed to the word, it became a nickname. We have not yet fully addressed why a French name would be translated. “Frank” Blackbird assuredly would have spoken English with a heavy accent. His changed surname name would not have concealed his identity. Perhaps, as we contrast him with other members of his family who settled in Brandon, he deliberately left French Catholicism behind, never to return to the faith of his cradle. In his embrace of a new language and culture, was he reacting to xenophobia? His two surviving daughters married Yankee Protestants: Theros Howard and Frederic Moore. At the time of his death, from liver disease, on December 30, 1860, age 50, Frank’s name had morphed into WASPy-sounding Franklin Blackburn. A sturdy gravestone endures today in Pine Hill Cemetery, speaking volumes that this family chose not to be buried in Brandon’s Catholic cemetery.
Just before the beginning of the Civil War, Vermont represented 44.3 per cent of the French-Canadian population of New England. This statistic fueled an already smoldering nativist backlash. Vermont poet and author Rowland Robinson (1833–1900), consistent with his Quaker roots, made his home, Rokeby, a stopping point on the Underground Railroad. While sympathetic to the plight of slaves, Robinson thundered against French-Canadians immigrants:
…swarms of Canadian laborers came flocking over the border in gangs of two or three, baggy-breeched and moccasined inhabitants, embarked in rude carts drawn by shaggy Canadian ponies…they have become the most numerous of Vermont’s foreign population…They were an abominable crew of vagabonds, robust lazy men and boys, slatternly women with litters of filthy brats, and all as detestable as they were uninteresting…The character of these people is not such as to inspire hope for the future of Vermont, if they should become the most numerous of the population.
This alarmist view may have diminished with time, as many Vermont French-Canadian families later moved to southern New England for jobs in the mills. Nonetheless, it still persisted as a strain in Vermont’s eugenics movement in the early twentieth century.
Frank Létourneau/Blackbird (1810–1860) had joined an already burgeoning French-Canadian community in Brandon, with many ties between and among families. One sister, Louise Létourneau, wife of Charles Touchette, was the mother of Angeline Shortsleeve [See Names Lost, Part 15]. Another sister, Julie Létourneau, had married Francois Xavier Bachand at St. Charles-sur-Richelieu on 24 January 1832. In Brandon by 1840, the Bachand/later Bashaw family remained staunchly Catholic. With no resident Catholic priest in Brandon, they brought their daughter Delphine, three weeks old, for baptism in their native church of St. Charles-sur-Richelieu, Québec, a journey northward of almost 150 miles!
In Brandon’s 1860 census, Francis Bashaw, age 50 [sic], wife Julia, age 57 [sic], and two children Alford, 11, and Austin, 5, lived in close proximity to the Shortsleeves, Cole, and Simes families, most likely all along present-day Maple Street, which was once known as Canada Street because of all the Canadian immigrants living there. Creating confusion in tracking families, Francois Xavier Bachand’s son of the same name, F. X. Bachand (1833–1911), married Ellen Blackbird/Letourneau, his first cousin, and if that were not already thoroughly entangled, he was also known as Levi Bashaw in Brandon! As Francis Bashan, however, in Brandon’s 1900 census, he headed a household which included his aged, widowed mother, Julie, who claimed to be 90.
Julie (Létourneau) Bachand’s long life merited an unusually detailed obituary in the Rutland Daily Herald, on March 13, 1905: “Mrs. Julie Bachand: Brandon Woman Dead at 98 years.” In fact, her age was off by eight years—she was truly 90! From the census, we know she bore 11 children, only six of whom were living. The article continues to record the number of her progeny: 40 grandchildren, 105 great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great grandchildren. Oddly, neither she nor her husband has a surviving gravestone. Alluding to her marriage to F. X. Bachand, her obituary stated, “Mr, Bachand, who died nine years ago, often drove to Boston and back with freight, and Bishop Louis de Goesbriand, the first Roman Catholic bishop of Vermont, stopped at the home of the couple frequently when in Brandon.”
Bishop De Goesbriand, born in France, served 46 years from 1853 to 1899, making his episcopate one of the longest in American Catholic history. Did he indeed make stops at the Bachand’s home? According to the Brandon town record, on April 25, 1876 Bishop De Goesbriand solemnized the marriage of Leander Blackbird and Louisa Shortsleeves. The corresponding sacramental record from St. Mary’s Church reveals their true names: Leon Létourneau and Louisa Courtmanche! Peeling back one more layer, Leon’s father Camille Létourneau was Julie Bachand’s and Frank Blackbird’s nephew. In Vermont records, Camille went by Campbell Blackbird. Six of his children, baptized at St. Mary’s Church, always had their names written in the church register as Létourneau.
“Camil” Blackbird, shoemaker, unemployed for three months, appears for the last time in Brandon’s 1880 census. Mirroring the demographic of French-Canadian migration out of Vermont to Massachusetts, Camille Blackbird, age 63, died from asthma in Deerfield, Massachusetts on February 14, 1892, but his gravestone in Calvary Cemetery in Greenfield reads “Letourneau.” French-Canadian? American? Both!
