Parked at Home | #5 Ste. Geneviève National Historical Park
On Thursday, March 30 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the fifth installment of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) and Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. During this Parked at Home talk, park rangers Mark Mello and Andrew Schnetzer of BRVNHP were joined by Claire Casey of Ste. Geneviève National Historical Park in Ste. Geneviève, MO, one of the newest parks in the National Park Service.
The talk began with a brief presentation by Schnetzer as he described commonalities between the Blackstone Valley area and Ste. Geneviève. He recalled the beginning of English colonization in New England, including the first settlements at Jamestown, the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony during the 1620s, and the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay Colony from the 1630s onward. At the same time, French colonists arrived in Nouvelle France, hoping to become rich from fur trapping and fishing in areas like Acadia, near the mouth of the Fleuve Saint-Laurent or Saint Lawrence River. King Louis XIV, popularly known as the Sun King, wanted more permanent settlement in Quebec. From the mid to late 17th century, French farmers established agrarian communities jointly led by the government and the Catholic Church. Unlike their comparatively diverse New England counterparts, these communities had a highly structured economic, social, cultural, political, and religious system. Schnetzer described the role of the Catholic Church as “a cohesive element to binding communities together”.
At this point, Schnetzer’s talk borrowed heavily from a presentation I gave as a virtual tour guide at the Museum of Work & Culture in Woonsocket, RI. He explained that land became limited as French-Canadian families had many children, with each son inheriting a portion of land. Poor farming practices prevented crops from growing. Many families became indebted to the Catholic Church, as they were unable to pay their tithes. Some colonists went west to the Mississippi River Valley. Others sought work as loggers in Acadia and other parts of New England, cutting the trees near the mouth of a river in winter, then riding the logs down the river to reach the sawmills in spring. Some French-Canadians worked in mills during the winter when they could not farm.
Schnetzer referred to previous Parked at Home talk that featured Eisenhower National Historic Site as he explained the Rhode Island System of Manufacturing. In this system, mill owners built factories and a surrounding village built near farm country to encourage entire families to work in the mills and create a closed community. Slatersville in northwestern Rhode Island, now a site in BRVNHP, was the first of these planned communities. From the 1820s onwards, demographics in these areas changed from the descendants of English colonists to Irish immigrants fleeing the famines and Québécois seasonal workers who sometimes came to stay. By the 1860s, the Civil War created a labor shortage as the same time as the government signed contracts with mills to make military supplies. Irish mill workers joined the Union army, but French-Canadian mill workers kept at their jobs, even buying farmland near the mills to continue their agrarian lifestyle. While Irish and French-Canadian immigrants both belonged to the Catholic church, they built separate buildings to maintain their own version of worship.
Casey gave the next section of the presentation, describing the history of Ste. Geneviève. She reiterated that New France once stretched from modern Canada to modern Louisiana, following the Mississippi River. Before French settlement, many Native American tribal nations had lived in the area for generations. Around 1750, colonists constructed Ste. Geneviève in the middle of a massive French colonial network, with access to the river system. Settlement began on the east side of the river, as colonists travelled from Kaskaskia, where they had over-farmed, ruined the soil, and struggled with flooding. They traveled to the west side of the river to form New Ste. Geneviève, where the town stands today. Like other French colonial settlements, the colonists built houses clustered around a Catholic church with Le Grand Champ or The Big Field on the outside near the river where they farmed and grazed animals to take advantage of the rich floodplain soil. They named the town for the patron saint of Paris, yet another reminder of their French heritage.
The colony extracted other resources from the environment, including lead and salt from nearby minds. Native American nations had previously used these resources and likely taught the French of its existence. Enslaved Black laborers from the trans-Atlantic slave trafficking system and enslaved Native American laborers from pre-colonial slave networks worked in these mines, accounting for about forty percent of the population. French slave law, called Code Noir, differed from British slave law. Enslaved people could not work on Sundays, and enslavers could not break up families if the parents had married in the Catholic Church and children were of a certain age. In this way, enslavers could find a way around the laws. Later, free people of color would form communities within Ste. Geneviève.
Ste. Geneviève became part of several different countries for about forty years during the late 18th century. The French colony was taken by the Spanish, regained by the French, then sold to the young United States during the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. With each change in borders, people of various nationalities migrated through the area to escape political, cultural, and social changes. French colonists tried to escape British colonies, while Native Americans from the East fled West. The Austin family, who later founded Austin, TX, briefly lived in Ste. Geneviève because of the lead mines. Throughout the influx of different peoples, French culture remained dominant until the mid-19th century, when German immigration shifted the demographics of the town.
Casey used buildings in Ste. Geneviève to demonstrate the distinctiveness of French-Canadian culture in Missouri. The Green Tree Tavern, now operated by NPS, claims the title of oldest home in Ste. Geneviève. (Perhaps dendrochronology will confirm this claim!) Around 1740, the Janis family built the cabin with significant assistance from fifteen enslaved people. The private residence also served as a tavern and inn, along with a community gathering. Vertical logs in the front of the building are hallmarks of the French cabin style, called poteaux-sur-sol or post-on-sill. One of the enslaved people, Clarisse Ribault, may have come from Virginia. She became free by 1836 and bought a home down the road. By this time, the Ziegler family from Germany became the owners of the house. The Ziegler family practiced Catholicism and likely came from a region of Germany that bordered France. The Ribeau and Ziegler families appear later in the town’s history due to unfortunate circumstances.
By the early 20th century, with the abolition of slavery in the United States as discussed during last week’s talk with Reconstruction Era National Park, African Americans from the South came to work in the lime industry. Unlike long-time Black residents of Ste. Geneviève, who were Catholic like their French neighbors and relatives, the new Black residents were Protestant. With the rise of Jim Crow and the start of the Great Depression came conflict over limited jobs. The 1930 Race Expulsion in Ste. Geneviève began when the White community accused a pair of Black Protestant men of murdering a pair of White Catholic men during a robbery, while the accused claimed they had shot in self-defense. A mob of armed White men threatened Black families regardless of how long they had lived in town, forcing the families to flee. The town sheriff, Louis Ziegler, called the National Guard. The mob kidnapped Louis Ribault, grandson of Clarisse Ribault, but he fled to St. Louis. Amazingly, once the National Guard restored order, most of the Black Catholic families returned to town, although these families have since left the area.
Schnetzer finished the talk by describing an event highlighted by the Museum of Work & Culture. Upon opening in 1924, Monut Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, RI, was and still is a private school run by the Catholic Church. French families and donors hoped children would learn in their native language. However, Reverand William Augustine Hickey, the ordained Irish Catholic bishop of the Providence diocese, decided children would learn in English with French taught only as a foreign language. The French community rebelled against the church, with Elphege J. Daignault leading the charge by publishing a newspaper, La Sentinelle, to generate a media sensation. The Sentinelle Affair culminated with Daignault sending a letter to the Vatican and receiving a reply that the French must defer to their bishop. Unsatisfied by this answer, Daignault and his followers brought the issue to court, which threw out the case by citing separation of church and state, and Bishop Hickey excommunicated them. The group soon recanted and returned to the church.
During the Q&A, Casey spoke briefly about Missouri French or Pawpaw French, named for the southern fruit, an endangered dialect spoken in parts of Missouri and Illinois. Native speakers lived in Ste. Geneviève until the 1990s. Casey described other historical sites in Ste. Geneviève, including Bauvais-Amoureux House and Jean Baptiste Vallé House, which are maintained by NPS and open for guided tours when not undergoing renovation. The park partners with other venues in town and will add bilingual waysides in the future.
As always, this Parked at Home talk was highly informative, quick paced, and fun. I enjoyed the maps and photographs presented by the rangers, along with an opportunity to learn more about a part of the country that I previously knew little about. I appreciated the refresher on Franco-American history in New England, especially in comparison to French culture in other parts of the United States.