Week 50 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge is “Chosen Family.”
When Melanise Laberge took her husband John to court for failure to support her and their children in 1900, several neighbors testified on her behalf. In some of the most damning testimony, Alexina Gendron told the judge that the Laberge children walked barefoot through the snow to beg for coal and wood to heat their home. She provided money and food to the family several times each week. If it sounds like Mrs. Gendron went above and beyond the kindness of a neighbor, she did. The Gendron and Laberge families were friends.
The couples had several things in common. They were French-Canadian immigrants and close in age. They attended Notre Dame, the local French-Catholic church. Although the Gendrons married and started their family nine years after the Laberges, the younger Laberge and oldest Gendron children overlapped in age and were likely playmates. Alexina and her husband Hulderic were named my great-grandmother Blanche’s godparents when she was baptized in 1898.
Hulderic worked as a weaver in one of the many mills in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and Alexina stayed home and raised the couple’s seven children. Two of Alexina’s brothers lived with the family and worked full-time, so although they weren’t rich, they were comfortable. By 1900, they owned a tenement house on Earle Street and were able to help Melanise and her children financially. Unlike John Laberge, Hulderic rarely appeared in the newspaper, and when he did it was never for anything scandalous.
Alexina was especially close with her sister, Anna (Hebert) Towner, and the sisters even married in a double wedding ceremony in 1894. Regarded as a pious woman, she was active in the Notre Dame Church and when St. Mathieu’s Church was established in 1929, she was one of the founding members.
At some point after the Laberge family broke up, Annie Laberge moved in with the Gendron family. As the middle Laberge child, Annie was a few years older than any of the Gendron children and may have helped Alexina around the home. It wasn’t terribly uncommon at the time to take orphans in as free labor, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Annie. The Gendrons had genuine love and affection for the girl. She was listed on the 1905 Rhode Island State Census twice – once in the home of her mother Melanise, but also as an adopted daughter of the Gendrons. Annie married Edward Glode in 1912, and they lived in one of the Gendrons’ apartments in the early years of their marriage. When another Laberge child, Rose, filed her marriage intention in 1914, she listed the Gendrons’ address, though she was likely living with Annie and her husband in their apartment. It’s possible several of the Laberge children filtered in and out of the Gendron home throughout the years, but Annie was the only one they claimed as their own. She’s referred to as a daughter or adopted daughter in an article about Hulderic and Alexina’s 25th wedding anniversary. The Gendron children considered her their sibling and listed her as such in their obituaries as well.
In 1929, Hulderic died after a lengthy illness at the age of 68. Alexina passed away twenty years later in 1950 at the age of 81 in the home she shared with her daughter Eglantine Prive. The Gendrons were a warm-hearted couple who worked hard for everything they had but weren’t afraid to share it. The stability they provided Annie may have been the most impactful thing they did in their lives. She was one of the few Laberge children who didn’t get in trouble with the law or whose marriage wasn’t in some way touched by divorce. Annie was secure in the knowledge that no matter what happened, the Gendrons’ door would always be open for shelter and their hearts filled with unconditional love.
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