An 1863 Visit To The St. John Valley

by Brian Swartz

Acadians mostly on their own

The St. John Valley in northern Maine is a beautiful place to visit, as a Portland writer calling himself “P.” learned during a spring 1863 excursion through Aroostook County.

Most Portland-area residents then looked south toward Boston, not north toward Augusta, Bangor, or (heaven forbid) the thick forests stretching away to the New Brunswick border. The southern Maine legislators waging a political war to move the state capital from Augusta to Portland (its original site) in 1863 cared not a whit how far their northern Maine counterparts must travel to conduct the people’s business.

While the Military Road (modern Route 2A) connected Houlton with Bangor, St. John towns lay another day’s or two days’ travel beyond the Shiretown. A lack of good roads reaching either Van Buren or Fort Kent meant Valley residents and travelers relied on the St. John River, no matter the season.

“Our lumbermen on the head waters of the St. John, have a … more direct and shorter road, by which their supplies are brought into camp from Quebec,” but “then they have the St. John itself—the highway to their natural seaport, the city of St. John,” New Brunswick, P. explained to readers who may have never seen the Androscoggin or the Kennebec.

“Thus, they are isolated in a business point of view from the southern slope, and the principal cities of Maine,” he wrote.

Trying to delineate the Valley’s geography for his readers, P. explained to that the Madawaska Territory — or “the district formerly bearing this general designation” — took its name from the Madawaska River, “which flows into the St. John [River] on the northern or provincial side.

“The plantation known to our maps and State [news]papers as Grand Isle is properly [called] Grande Isle; so, named from a large and fertile island in the St. John river, near the heart of the Madawaska territory,” he wrote.

P. had already traveled up the Valley and met its original white inhabitants, the Acadians. “The settlers of this territory were originally French,”

ROBERT PELLETIER OFFICE CELL : 207.834.2052 : 207.249.2584 BUILDING CONTRACTOR

P.O. Box 363 • Fort Kent, ME 04743 • email: bobpell363@gmail.com

Bouchard Family Farm

French Acadian Buckwheat

No Eggs • No Milk No Sugar • No Oil Fat Free Cholesterol Free 834-3237

Bouchard Country Store

Located on Rt. 161 just 2 miles outside Fort Kent!

Bouchard Family Farm Ploye Mixes & Gi Packages Jams/Jellies • Maple Syrup • Local Honey • Veggies/Fruit Our Own Naturally Grown Beef & Pork Locally Made Cra s: Scented Wax Tarts, Soaps, Painted Glassware, Prints, Woodwork, Primitive Signs and decor, hunting related gi s Livestock Feed, Pet Feed & Supplies, and Much More! 207-834-3237 Stop By and Visit Us Today!

Your Hosts: Bruce & Jean Ouellette

93 Main Street • Madawaska, ME 207.728.3395

Snowmobilers Welcome

Off ITS 83B

Telephones • Refrigerators Available Flatscreen TV Complimentary Continental Breakfast

martinsmotel@gmail.com

he stressed, “as most of the inhabitants still are.

“From the eastern line of the State, near the Grand Falls [in New Brunswick], these French settlements extend up the valley of the St. John to its junction with the St. Francis, a distance of about seventy-five miles,” P. noted.

Under the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the St. John was “made the boundary line between Maine and the British Provinces, thus dividing the Madawaska settlers between the two nationalities,” he wrote.

That was about all the arbitrary border accomplished, however. The Acadians “are …. still united in origin, religion and language, and their general pursuits and interests remain very much as before” the treaty’s signing, P. wrote. “They are a people by themselves,” with little desire “to adopt the customs and language of outsiders.

“The original settlers were Acadians, who fled first from Nova Scotia, then from New Brunswick, and pitched their cabins in this valley, then remote from all other settlers, near the close of Revolutionary War,” P. reviewed Valley history for his readers.

Many Quebecois later “joined them, and the two elements intermingled, although the lines of Acadian blood are still traceable in some families, who pride themselves upon their origin,” he wrote.

Fluent in French, P. thought the Valley French was “somewhat purer French” than spoken in Quebec Province, “much nearer the Parisian standard than is often represented. With a few variations in the vowel sounds, the spoken French of the Madawaskans is essentially the same as that of France.”

Valley “settlers are very industrious … peaceable, cheerful, and well disposed,” P. noted. Many families were large, “fifteen or twenty children,” and the 1860 census had reported 4,678 people living in “the ten townships” along “the south bank of the St. John from Hamlin to St. Francis.”

That number included 2,576 children ranging in age from four to 21.

The surnames noticed by P. thrive in the Valley to this day. “We have for example the names of Daigle, Havier, Cyr, Firman, Souci, Vincent, Paradi, Violette, Michaud, Cormier, Plourd, Thibodeau, Sirois, and others,” wrote P., aware that many English speakers downstate butchered French words.

“Our friend Sirois, a member of the last [Maine] House of Representatives, whose name was differently — and indifferently — pronounced by members at Augusta last winter, I found in his field at Dionne diligently sowing the good seed, wheat, barley or buckwheat, which will make due returns at harvest-time,” P. said.

He noticed how the original Acadian farms occupied the St. John’s shore and later farms developed behind them. “The farms show long stretches of in(cont. on page 21)

madtownclothing@yahoo.com

Custom Printing & Embroidery Retail Store 207-316-1133

334 Main Street • Madawaska, ME

“Highest quality Cannabis products in Aroostook County”

Presque Isle 483 Main St. 207-760-7586

Grand Isle 613 Main St. 207-895-8003

Fort Kent 258 W. Main St. 207-231-5076

FullBloomMaine.com

__ _ ________________________ ___ _ _______________________ Your care is in our hands 40 Village Road, Fort Kent, ME 04743 Tel: 207.834.3701 | Fax: 207.834.2895

(cont. from page 19) tervale and upland, entirely free from the stumps and burnt logs, which mark the face of the new [English] settlements in the Aroostook townships below them,” P. commented.

“The soil is a rich loam, intervales or upland sloping gently back from the river on either bank,” he said. “As you pass up toward Fort Kent, the banks become steeper, and the hills approach the river more closely.”

Returning to the St. John Valley’s poor transportation connections with the rest of Maine, P. opined that “a railroad up the Penobscot and down the streams emptying into the St. John, to some point at the banks of that river, is one of our political and military necessities.”

A Portland newspaper ran P.’s column in mid-June 1863. Readers whose concept of Maine extended from Casco Bay to Kittery Point thus learned about far northern Maine and the Acadians living there.

Fine Jewelers Since 1955

312 MAIN STREET MADAWASKA, Me 207-728-4301

www.robertsjewels.com

Your Premier Source for Earth & Lab-Grown Diamonds

Largest Collection of Estate Jewelry in Northern Maine GIA Graduate Gemologist GIA Trained Goldsmith Expert Instore Repairs We Buy Gold, Silver, Diamonds & Coins

Follow Us On FaceBook

LEVESQUE business solutions _______

Bangor • Caribou • Madawaska

Serving Maine Since 1963 Proudly Serving Central and Northern Maine since 1963

Authorized Dealer

Copiers, Printers & Digital Imaging Solutions Founders: Reno and Eva Levesque PH: (800) 439-3382 • FAX: (207) 493-4449 www.levesquesupply.com

Farm located near Madawaska Bridge, ca. 1900. Item # 9578 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com