Author: Don Blais

Francois and Salome were my father's paternal grandparents. It was they who left Quebec to bring their family to Minnesota, where my father and I were born. Much of the information we have about Francois came from his granddaughter Evelyn Blais Peffer, who was the daughter of my grandfather's brother Phillip. Evelyn had known Francois and Salome during her childhood years and later recorded her memories of them.

Francois was born May 18, 1833 in the parish of Ste. Henedine, Quebec. St. Henedine is located in Dorchester County, about 30 miles South of Quebec City. It is understood that he had blond hair, no doubt a tribute to the ancient Viking raiders who raised havoc along the French Atlantic coastline. Francois was the eighth child in a family that eventually would include twelve surviving children. As a youngster, he and his brothers worked on his father's farm and in his father's mills. But he obviously acquired an urge to move out.

In 1853, when he reached age 18, Francois left home and headed South for the United States, more specifically Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We don't know how long he remained in Philadelphia, but it wasn't long. He then headed to the Midwest, landing in Eagle Harbor, Michigan. Eagle Harbor is on the North shore and toward the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula that sticks out into Lake Superior from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Eagle Harbor, at that time, was a boon town. Copper had been discovered near the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula and numerous mines had opened up. All of the supplies coming in and all of the copper going out passed through Eagle Harbor's docks. During the summer months, hundreds of workers came to town to work in the various businesses that were engaged in the function of "laying in" supplies for the winter. By winter, the summer workers had left, because, during the winter months, nothing came into or got out of Eagle Harbor.

Again, we don't know how long Francois remained in Eagle Harbor. We do know that his next stop was Superior, Wisconsin. Superior is located at the far western terminus of Lake Superior, across the St. Louis River (now called the St. Louis Bay) from the city of Duluth. According to the book This Is My Duluth, by Dora Mary McDonald, Superior, as of 1853 was "quite a place. "Its 50 residents had a boat landing of sorts, a barroom and shanties and tents." In 1854, a semi completed and not yet enclosed hotel began operating. Duluth, at that time, was nothing but trees, rocks and teepees.

Why might Francois have headed for Superior? In 1853, largely as a result of the copper being pulled out of the Keweenaw, ground was broken for the building of the ship canal at Sault Ste. Marie, at the eastern end of Lake Superior. This canal, which would be completed in 1855, would allow large ships to enter Lake Superior from the lower Great Lakes. There also was talk of a railroad to link the western end of Lake Superior with the Mississippi and points West. As a result, a rosy economic future was being widely predicted for the western end of Lake Superior.

While living in Superior, Francois took a claim for land in what is now Duluth. This had to have been in or after 1854 because, until the treaty of La Pointe in 1854, the Duluth area had belonged to the Indians and white people were not allowed in. Francois built a cabin on the land and, according to the homesteading laws, he must have left Superior to live in the cabin. There is a family story that he walked across the ice to attend Mass on November 1, All Saints Day. The church would have to have been on the Superior side of the river. However, it seems somewhat unlikely that the ice would be sufficiently frozen by November 1 to allow walking that distance (about a half of a mile) on it. Francois gave up the land after getting word that someone who wanted it was plotting to make it available by killing him.

Francois, together with all others in the area, experienced a difficult time during the winter of 1855-56. The boat that was to have been the last of the season, bringing the winter's provisions, failed to arrive. As a result, the settlers of the area faced near famine. The price of flour shot up to sixty dollars a barrel, and potatoes and butter were non-existent. Dough cake and salt pork became a staple. The situation was relieved on May 9, 1856 when the steamer Manhattan arrived with food.

According to my father, Francois worked on a construction crew building the first road to the Duluth-Superior area. The road had been authorized by congress following the La Pointe treaty to run from St. Croix Falls, which is in Wisconsin, to the head of Lake Superior. It was called the "Military Road" and it allowed travel to Duluth/Superior all the way from St. Paul. I estimate that it would have been about 1855 and/or 1856 that Francois worked on the Military Road.

On June 18, 1857, perhaps using his earnings from the Military Road work, Francois purchased 40 acres of land in and around Superior. But then the bubble burst. The financial boon that had been the stimulus for investment and settlement in the Duluth-Superior area suddenly became a nationwide financial panic that resulted in a mass exodus from the area. About three fourths of the population of some 1500 had pulled out by the time the last boat left in 1857. Francois, despite his newly purchased property, was among those departing. He was heading back to Quebec. He probably did not know it, but he soon would become a married man.

Salome Dubois was born January 1, 1838 in Becancour, Nicolet County, Quebec. This area also is on the South shore of the St. Lawrence River, generally across from Quebec City. Salome also was a blond. Her mother died while giving birth to twin boys when Salome was only 11 years old. Following her mother's death, she lived at times with her mother's brother, Leon Provencher, who helped support the Dubois children. Leon was a priest and a famous Canadian botanist and entomologist. I have included in this collection a translated and condensed version of his 509-page biography, The Life and Works of L'Abbe Provancher. As recently as the present time, I have scanned the Internet using his name and have found several connections.

Salome and Francois were married on August 18, 1857 in the village of Princeville, Arthabaska County, Quebec. Princeville is South of the St. Lawrence River, about midway between Montreal and Quebec City. I have visited the church in which they were married. Salome’s wedding trousseau had been purchased for her by her Uncle L'Abbe Provancher. It was a black silk dress and large black hat with plumes, right in style for then and there. However, when she and Francois showed up for the marriage the priest took a look at her in that dress and announced that she looked like a "trop mondaine," which means "too worldly." On this basis, he initially refused to marry them. However, Francois spoke up and argued that her clothing must be proper because it had been purchased for her by her uncle, the famous L'Abbe Provencher. Upon hearing that, the priest reconsidered and went ahead with the wedding.

It was the custom of the area to show the occupation of each male for whom a record, such as a marriage record, was being established. Given Francois's travels and his short time back home, his occupation, as shown on his marriage record, was the French word "vagabond." In English, this means pretty wanderer or roamer.

How was it that Francois was to become married so soon after returning to Quebec following his four-year absence? Unfortunately, I do not have the answer to that question. It would appear that the marriage might have had been arranged by some third party. It is noteworthy that about five weeks after their marriage, (i.e. on September 27, 1857) Francois's sister Philomene married Salome's brother Cyrille.

Following their marriage, Francois and Salome settled down on a rented farm close to his father's farm in Ste. Henedine. Beginning in 1858, and continuing through 1868, six children were born on that farm, all of them boys. My grandfather, Alfred, was the fifth. It appears that Francois remained on the rented farm throughout that period, without ever becoming an owner of his own. But that farm was not to be his future.

During this period, and perhaps after listening to Francois, six of Francois's brothers and a sister pulled up stakes in Ste. Henedine and headed for the U.S. midsection. By 1866, his brothers Andre and Jean had both moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula village of Nauganee. Jean appears to have arrived in Nauganee with his wife and nine children by 1863. Andre and his wife had their first child born there in 1866. In 1865 Francois's brother Nazaire arrived in the Leech Lake and Brainerd area of Minnesota. He was single at the time, but the next year he returned temporarily to Ste. Henedine to get married. He then took his new bride back with him to live in the central Minnesota village of Swanville, near Little Falls. Also in 1866, three of Francois's brothers came to Minnesota to settle in Swanville. They were Joseph, who at the time was unmarried, Jean Baptiste, who came with his wife and eight children, and Simeon, who brought his wife and six children. In addition to Francois's six brothers, by 1866 Francois's sister Eloise, who was married to Damasse Lemieux, was living near the Southern Minnesota community of Faribault.

Why did the upper Midwest of the United States and Minnesota in particular hold such an attraction for the children of Jean Blais and Elizabeth Gosselin? Certainly, they must have heard stories from Francois. But, most likely, it was an economic motive. The better farmland in Quebec was not readily available at an affordable price. As noted above, Francois appears to have been only renting his farm. At the same time, some of the best farmland in the world was available in Minnesota, which also contained huge supplies of virgin timber. The Nauganee, Michigan area was a center of iron ore mining and jobs were readily available there. Another factor might have been a desire to escape the rather rigid customs and traditions of Quebec, which certainly would have seemed oppressive compared with the freedom and individualism offered in the wilds of Michigan and Minnesota. Whatever the reason, Francois was not far behind.

In 1869, Francois, Salome and their children bid their good-byes to their families in Quebec and set out for Minnesota. It was not an easy trip. They traveled first to Quebec City, probably by horse drawn wagon. At Quebec City they began a 570-mile train ride to Sarnia, Ontario, sitting on hard wooden slats for the entire trip. Sarnia is at the Southern end of Lake Huron, a short distance North of Detroit, Michigan. At Sarnia they boarded a ship to take them up Lake Huron, through the canal at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and West on Lake Superior to their final destination, which was Duluth-Superior port that Francois had left twelve years earlier. The weather on Lake Superior was bad and the ship made poor time. Provisions ran short and during the last few days the only food available was soda crackers. I'm told the boys couldn't stand to eat a soda cracker for the remainder of their lives.

The family settled first in Superior, Wisconsin. Their home was near the junction of the "Left Hand River" and the "Right Hand River." Under current day's terms, this is where the Nemedji River flows into the St. Louis Bay, which previously was simply the last leg of the St. Louis River. Across the river from their home was Minnesota point, currently called Park Point. This is a part of the city of Duluth, Minnesota, where I was born and grew up.

The geography of the area may need some explaining. Park Point is a sand bar that is about one to two blocks wide and seven miles long. It stretches out into Lake Superior from the city of Duluth, which is on the North shore of Lake Superior. Park Point is interrupted only by a single canal which provides access to the bay on its West, but which was not there when Francois and Salome move in. At the end of the Point is a second canal, also providing access to the bay, and beyond that another three miles of sand bar which is connected to the Wisconsin shoreline and is called Wisconsin Point. Park Point provides a barrier protecting the bay on its West from the storms of Lake Superior on its East. The bay is about one half mile wide. Most of the West shoreline of the bay, where Francois and Salome had settled, is in the city of Superior, Wisconsin.

In 1870, one year after arriving in Superior, Francois took his family across the bay (i.e. then the St. Louis River) to live on Park Point, in Duluth. Near the northern end of the Point, he built a log cabin for them to live in. Francois and Salome's seventh child, Theopholis, was born in this cabin. No doubt drawing upon the knowledge and skills he had acquired from his father, he also built a sawmill. Park Point was heavily timbered with tall pine trees.

Francois had lots of business for his saw mill. Duluth, at that time, was a boomtown. Its citizens had dreams of greatness. The Eastern financier, Jay Cooke, had constructed a railroad to connect Duluth with the Mississippi River and was providing substantial financial backing for the city. The first passenger train arrived in town on August 1, 1870. A rumor of gold having been discovered North of the City at Lake Vermilion had brought thousands of adventurers to the city. The gold did not exist. The huge influx of population could not be housed and lived in tents and crude shacks, doing their cooking over open-air fires. A description of 1869 Duluth referred to it as a haphazard combination of Indian trading post, seaport, railroad construction camp and gambling resort, altogether wild, rough, uncouth and frontier-like. An 1869 copy of the Minnesotian read "Newcomers should comprehend that Duluth is at present a small place and that hotel and boarding house accommodation is extremely limited; however, lumber is cheap and shanties can be built. Everyone should bring blankets..."

But the city was getting its act together. A subscription library and reading room had been opened in 1869, and in 1870 it was formerly made a city by an act of the state legislature. Also in 1870, the first Catholic Church was erected. In 1871 a canal was cut through the Northern end Park Point, very close to where Francois and family were living. The canal provided access to the safe harbor of the St. Louis bay at the North, or Duluth, end of the bay. It is currently the site of the famous aerial lift bridge.

However, in 1873, as had happened to Francois in his first stay at Duluth-Superior area 16 years earlier, the bubble burst. Jay Cooke went into financial failure and a nationwide panic followed. For Duluth, which had been leaning heavily on Cooke's backing, his failure meant disaster. Real estate values plummeted and, inside of sixty days, over half the Duluthians engaged in trades went out of business. As had happened before, people rushed to get out before the navigation closed for the winter and the population fell from 5,000 to 1300. 1873 was followed by a horrible winter with ice remaining on the Lake until July of the next "summer." In 1874, Francois, who had stayed for the winter, decided to take his family out of Duluth. They headed for the copper mining area of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where he been before. Not, this time, to Eagle Harbor, but to the nearby village of Lake Linden. Francois, his son Phillip, and perhaps other of his older sons, went to work for a mining company.

The stay at Lake Linden was short. By about 1876, Francois and his family had moved to Morrison Township in Southern Minnesota's Rice County. They settled near Cedar Lake, about seven miles West of the city of Faribault. As mentioned above, his sister, Eloise Blais Lemieux, was already living near Faribault with her husband Damasse, and, in 1879, his brother Andre and family would also move there. The move to Farubault was Francois and Salome's last move. After arriving there Francois built a large brick home, a barn, corncrib, creamery, granary, and other typical farm "out" buildings. I remember visiting the farm about 1945. It was on the occasion of a large family gathering to celebrate the ordination to the priesthood of Francois's grandson Fr. Roger Blais, son of Alphonse. At that time the farm still included a dairy operation and I particularly recall watching the cows being milked.

A very different thing happened to Francois and Salome after they moved to the farm in Faribault. After experiencing the birth of seven sons who survived, plus two other sons who died in infancy, finally, a daughter was born. In fact, three daughters, their last three children, were born on that farm.

Evelyn Blais Peffer remembered visiting the farm as a child while Francois was still operating it. She said he would rise about four in the morning to start his chores, and that he would work until noon when he would come in for lunch and to rest for an hour or two. She recalls, further, that he did not wear stockings but, instead, wound something like a band around his feet and his legs before putting on shoes. She described him as blond and nice looking, with a small beard under his cheeks and chin. It is interesting that photos of his brothers show that they, also, had chin beards.

Evelyn also reported that Francois was very religious. He stopped going fishing and hunting on weekends because of feeling guilty about missing Mass. At his funeral, the priest related in his eulogy that Francois had been the first farmer to bring his family to Sunday Mass, the others believing they lived too far from the church, and that his example caused others to follow.

Francois died of a stroke in 1902. Following his death, Salome continued to live on the farm with her daughter Emma. After a few years, they sold the farm and moved to Duluth where Emma opened a small grocery or confectionery store. Salome remained living with Emma in Duluth following Emma's 1912 marriage. Salome died in Duluth in 1918 and her body was brought back to Faribault for burial alongside Francois.

Here are Francois and Salome's children.

*Alfred is my grandfather.