The topic for week 9 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Females, and I’ve been looking forward to sharing my great-great grandmother's story, Meet Georgiana Duchesne. She was my Grampy Phil’s grandmother, and they had a close relationship. My grandfather remembered and shared so many stories about her that the woman became a total legend in our family. She was kind and loving, but was also known to have quite a temper and a stubborn streak. The woman could hold a grudge, and all of her strong, female descendants have a bit of Georgie in them!
Georgiana was baptized in Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada on November 21, 1860. She was the eldest child of Louis David Duchesne and Sophie Belley. Like many French-Canadians at the time, the Duchesnes traveled back and forth between Canada and New England for work, spending some years or part of some years in New England, and some years in Canada. They first came to Maine in 1861, and permanently settled there sometime after 1881. My grandfather wrote about how Georgie came to America:
Georgiana Laviolette told me (Philip LaViolet, her grandson) how her family came to Westbrook, Maine when she was less than a year old. They came by wagon train through the “Old Canada Road.” In 1861, her family spoke and wrote French and English.
To me, the wagon train could only mean going west – the Oregon Trail or westward wagon train that we see in the movies or read about. I could not visualize how she came by wagon train. I thought it was a lot of “old folks tales.”
Only 60 years later while doing family research genealogy that I found out that the “Canada Road” did exist, and in fact today, historians are retracking it and will make it an historical road.
Grandmother Georgie, her father David Duchesne, and her mother Sophie Bellay came from Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada and travelled about a week to get to Augusta, and then to Portland, and finally to Saccarappa (now known as Westbrook).
Many things she told me about Westbrook were all true…the Indian tribe living on North St., the two large gullies between Cole St., North and King St. were brooks full of water leading down to the Presumpscot River until the Great Landslide of ’18 dried them up. There was a foot bridge across to where the church now stands.
On February 13, 1893, Georgiana married Adam Laviolette in Westbrook, Maine. Adam worked for the railroad. The happy newlyweds settled into a little home on Scotch Hill (Walker Street), in the same neighborhood as her parents and Adam’s brother, Lazare. They had a total of five sons together, though two died young.
Poor Georgiana experienced multiple devastating losses in a short timespan. Two years after her wedding, her father died from laryngeal tuberculosis. Two days before the first anniversary of her father’s death, her youngest living sister, Marie, died at just 20 years old. Joseph, her brother who had moved out to California for work, also died of tuberculosis six months after Marie. While early death was not uncommon at the time, so many in such quick succession must have rocked the close-knit Duchesne family.
Unfortunately for Georgie, her greatest loss was yet to come. In 1901, pregnant with their last son, the young family learned that Adam was dying from liver cancer. On May 15, 1901, while Georgiana was giving birth to Joseph Philip Laviolette, Adam passed away in their home. Imagine giving birth while your husband was dying in the next room? His body was laid out in the parlor for the wake. Georgiana was distraught, and far too weak from childbirth to attend the funeral. She was inconsolable and insisted that she get to say good-bye, so Adam’s body was brought to her room and she was able to see him one last time. I can’t fathom how unimaginably difficult her loss was. By this point she had also lost one of her sons in his infancy, so in the span of six years she lost a father, a sister, a brother, a child, and finally her husband. She was left with four young boys to raise, but her family wouldn’t let her do it alone. Her mother, Sophie, lived with them and helped raise the boys, and her sister Mary Anne and brother-in-law Joseph Lavigne were there to offer love and support. Joseph Lavigne often stepped in to act as a father-figure to the young Laviolette boys. Georgie, her mother, and the boys eventually moved to the French Hill area of Westbrook where Mary Anne and Joseph lived. As a further blow to the family, little Joseph Philip died in 1904, another tragedy in a long string of them for this family. I don’t know how Georgie survived it and had the will to keep going, but she pushed on.
Georgianna made a grab either at happiness, stability, or maybe both in 1905 when she married a man named Benjamin Lyrette, a bricklayer and laborer. The marriage lasted less than a day. During a small reception after their wedding, Georgie overheard her new husband boasting to someone that he married her for her money. There wasn’t any money to speak of. Georgie had inherited a small sum from Adam’s railroad life insurance policy, but it wasn’t much. When she heard that he was using her, she flew into a towering rage, and kicked him out. Because the marriage was never consummated, she immediately went to the priest and demanded an annulment, which was granted. You didn’t say no to Georgie!
That’s not the only story of Georgie’s famous temper. My grandfather shared some memories with the Westbrook Historical Society about the time her house was raided by the police. Georgie’s son, Joe, was a bootlegger. The police couldn’t catch him or figure out where he was storing his moonshine. Multiple raids on Joe’s house turned up nothing so they assumed that if he wasn’t hiding it at his house, it must be at his mother’s.
So one day they busted into my grandmother’s cellar and ransacked it. They broke many jars of her preserves and made a mess, but found nothing. I had never seen my grandmother so mad and had never heard her swear foul language before. She had a broom and finally swished them out.
Grammy Georgie, who did not know her son was a bootlegger, soon met with her very good friend and lawyer about the incident. “Georgie,” her lawyer said to her, “the sheriff will be back Monday and apologize, pay for damages, clean the mess, and place all the preserve jars in place.” Sure enough, the sheriff went to my grandmother’s house Monday morning and didn’t leave until everything was to her satisfaction, and never bothered her again.
I mean picture it: an enraged elderly woman not only completely unafraid of the police ransacking her home, but so angry that she chased them out with a broom! Then she made them come back, fix everything, and apologize! She is so badass! This is why she’s one of my favorite ancestors.
George Eliot said, “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.” Georgiana passed away on January 9, 1941, at the age of 80. No one in my family currently living knew her personally, but through my grandfather’s stories about her, we certainly feel like we do. All of her female descendants have a bit of her strength, her stubbornness, and her fiery temper. She lives on through all of us.
Comments