The French Connection

During our recent furlough from Chile, my husband and I visited our firstborn daughter and her family at a wildlife refuge in the high desert of northern Nevada. In kind of a full circle way, her maternal grandfather spent part of his early childhood, nearly a century ago, in southern Nevada—in a wild life that was anything but a refuge. Following the trail of Rose Michaud leads us today to the Hoover Dam’s French connection.

Not that we managed to travel that far south this time. It’s a bucket list thing, along with the Grand Canyon. But the construction of the Hoover Dam, near Boulder City, Nevada, forms a parenthesis in the fictional Rose’s life. The French have been scattered throughout the world, but as immigrants, they blend in, quite unobtrusive, and after a generation or so become all but indistinguishable from the English population because in general they resemble the English physically.

Many French Huguenots, often highly skilled craftspeople, fled their mother country in a mass exodus following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (which had given them a measure of religious toleration). This cost France dearly as the Huguenots ended up investing their talents and resources in England, her colonies, and other enemies of France at the time. Paul Revere’s family was part of this French connection.

“How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?” –Charles de Gaulle

A later group of Acadian French refugees were expelled by the British from the Maritime Provinces of Canada in the deportations of 1755-1763. They settled throughout North America, mainly in Louisiana but also in cities such as Boston and Baltimore. I’ll share more on this appalling chapter of the French connection story in a separate post.

The Quebec Diaspora

After the century-plus of conflict between France and England, another vital segment of French immigration to the United States involves the so-called Quebec diaspora. From the 1840’s to approximately the 1930’s, nearly one million French Canadians moved overland from Quebec or across the St. John River from northern New Brunswick, fleeing general farm poverty and increasing economic downturn in Quebec. My paternal relatives make up part of this French connection.

Many of these first French-heritage migrants worked seasonally in the northern New England lumber industry and sometimes in the growing mining industry of the upper Great Lakes. (My son-in-law’s ancestors possibly drifted southwest from there.) Francophones made up a majority of the work force in some regions.

Early in the twentieth century, temporary migration to take advantage of work opportunities in the U. S. became almost a rite of passage, as it was for Rose Michaud. Factories provided employment for entire families, including the children. Many Quebecois young people, even girls, poured across the border into Maine every summer, picking up jobs in the blueberry barrens, summer “cottages,” and seaside carnival resorts. For them, it meant a chance to get ahead financially and learn self-reliance and independence away from family expectations.

“Far be it from a Frenchman to interfere with love.” –E. A. Bucchianeri

Eventually, this initial wave relocated permanently, mainly to the manufacturing cities and textile mill towns of New England and New York state. I was born in one of these French enclaves—Hartford, Connecticut. A few weeks later, my Downeaster mother headed home with me and my French papa—but by that point of the mid-twentieth century, Franco-Americans comprised 30% of Maine’s population!

New England’s Work Force

Along with the Irish and Italians, we French made up the work force—the poor white trash, if you will—of the Northeast. We became the brunt of whatever ethnic jokes were going around at the moment.

But there were, quietly, a lot of us, despite the fact that few immigrated directly from France. Historically, French Canadians have had among the highest birth rates in the world. My grandfather hailed from a family of 19 children.

Hence the neighborhoods. Like Little Italy, you know? Ours weren’t called Little France, though. Instead it was Little Canada.

The women, especially, sometimes tried to retain their cultural identity as Canadiennes. They might take a cheap railroad trip to visit the old homestead back in Quebec from time to time. But after 1960, the “Little Canada” French communities like the one in Hartford faded away.

“You are French to your fingertips…both artistic and pragmatic, with the spirit only a Frenchwoman could possess.” –Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

Much of the French connection in the U. S. disappeared too. In the 1930’s a few French newspapers existed, and of course French-language Catholic churches served their parishioners. But the World War II generation (and onward) avoided bilingual education for their children and insisted on speaking English themselves.

While my paternal grandparents spoke English with an accent, it was only English—to us kids. Dad might chat away in French occasionally—but only with a select group of old buddies. If we asked him to teach us French, he’d say, “Oui, oui, oui,” like the little pig “all the way home.”

By 1976, nine in ten Franco-Americans usually spoke English exclusively. Ethnic scholars considered that the younger generation had rejected their French heritage.

But back in the heyday…

Building the Hoover

My dad was born in Moscow—Moscow, Maine, that is—when his father worked building the Wyman Dam near there. In an ironic twist of fate, he died 66 years later while employed on a construction team renovating the same dam. Daddy had worked in the mills too, but preferred building with wood, as he had done with his papa as a kid.

When the Wyman job came to an end in the first punch of the Great Depression, my grandparents heard about the big project getting underway on the Nevada-Arizona border. Slated as one of the engineering wonders of the world, the Hoover Dam—sometimes at first called Boulder Dam—remained for most of its history the largest dam in the world. And Six Companies, Inc. was calling for laborers.

“The beaver told the rabbit as they stared at the Hoover Dam: No, I didn’t build it myself, but it’s based on an idea of mine.” –Charles Hard Townes

So they packed up their two little boys and drove from Maine to southern Nevada to catch the wave, as Rose’s fictional family did. In a short time, between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed people descended on Las Vegas, then just a small city of 5,000, 35 miles northwest of the dam.

When construction began in early 1931, the company hired large numbers of workers: More than 3,000 got onto the payroll by 1932. Employment peaked at over 5,000 men in July 1934. Obviously, the contractors couldn’t take everybody, but they weren’t very kind about it either.

Labor Force

My grandfather got work as a carpenter. Most of the employees came, like him, from disadvantaged white minorities. Hispanics, Asians, native Americans, and about 50 blacks were brought in for only the dirtiest and most dangerous of jobs, such as the Apache “high-scalers.” They labored for the lowest pay, too, and drank from separate water buckets.

So comparatively, I guess, Papy André didn’t have it as bad as some. The dam offered much-needed employment during difficult times–but at a high cost. The harsh working conditions included brutal heat in the summer and damp cold leading to frequent pneumonia in the winter.

The official number of fatalities involved in building the Hoover Dam is 96, but the estimate is considered low. These men died from drowning, blasting, falling rocks or slides, falls from the canyon walls, being struck by heavy equipment, carbon monoxide poisoning in the tunnels, truck accidents, etc. at the dam site. Classified as “industrial fatalities,” most probably could have been avoided with a modicum of real safety concern.

Periodically during the construction period, workers presented their demands for better hours and pay and threatened to strike. The company and its managers had little sympathy and described the labor leaders scathingly as “malcontents.” Once, as the entire work force was laid off, police intervention only just averted a violent confrontation. Tensions remained elevated for much of the time.

Home Fires

A government camp had been established for surveyors and other more “professional” personnel near the dam site early on in the project. This quickly mushroomed into a squatters’ camp known as McKeeversville. It became home to the new arrivals desperate for work, together with their families.

As part of their contract, Six Companies, Inc. was supposed to build Boulder City to house the workers. However, they were unable to fulfill on time when President Hoover ordered work to begin seven months ahead of the original schedule. So the company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, for the hundreds of single men. This became known as River Camp.

“One of these days the dam of God’s mercy will give way to his justice.” –Adrian Rogers

The many more men with families had to scramble to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed. Most lived in another camp, on flats along the Colorado River, officially named Williamsville. Its inhabitants called it Ragtown.

Camp conditions defied belief. I can’t imagine what Grammie Alice went through. Besides the utter squalor, she endured extremely torrid weather during the summer of 1931, with the daytime high averaging almost 120 °F. Plenty for anyone, let alone a Frenchwoman from northern Maine! Sixteen dam workers and other Ragtown residents died of heat prostration that July.

What Goes Around…

I don’t know at what point my grandparents and the rest of the French connection returned from their odyssey to the southwest, but the construction ended in 1935. Only a child then, my dad remembered very little about it. Just as well, probably, although I’m sure his folks told many stories.

And he trotted the continent during his Army days. His old trunk, papered with travel stickers from dozens of states, held secrets I never learned. I often wonder if he ever made it back to the Hoover Dam.

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” —George Moore

I wonder, too, if he ever longed for his roots deep in our country’s French connection. Today ethnic pride once again flourishes. In 2008, the state of Connecticut made June 24 Franco-American Day, recognizing French Canadians for their influence and cultural contribution to Connecticut. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have followed suit and now hold Franco-American festivals on that day.

And voilà, everything old is new again. C’est la vie.