Dayton With A French Accent

The new 473 page book, Dayton With a French Accent, is very recent, and high quality.  Disclosure, I’m one of the volunteer founders of the organization which published the book, though I had retired from active involvement before the project was envisioned and began three years ago.  I have no financial interest in the publication.  I purchased eight copies a few weeks ago, which I recently gave to all of my siblings (we’re all 50% French-Canadian) and my own four kids (who are one-fourth French-Canadian).  I’ve spent a lot of time with the book, which is a legacy document which will live on long after we are gone.  It is a treasure.

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“Dayton With a French Accent”,  hi-lites over 100 families with roots in French Canada  who, beginning in the 1850s, ultimately settled in Dayton MN area.  Today, Dayton & surrounding are northwest Minneapolis suburbs.

I highly recommend the book for anyone, particularly those with French-Canadian ancestry and/or roots in  town and township of Dayton MN and vicinity.  One of those persons is myself.  Ordering information is here.  (For the moment, my review is this writing.  I didn’t purchase the book through Amazon, and apparently this disqualifies me from writing a review there.)

CONTEXT:  Since the 1990s, I’ve known that the family of Simon and Adelaide Blondeau had come to what is now Dayton MN in the first half of the 1850s, and that they were my ancestors – the parents of my great grandmother Clotilde Collette, in turn the mother of my grandmother Josephine (Collette) Bernard.  I also knew that the younger brother of my great grandfather Octave Collette, Ephrem (Alfred) Collette had married at Dayton, and after a few years in North Dakota moved back to Dayton for the rest of his life.

I learned about the Blondeau link from John Garney, a man I’d never met, whose ancestor was the younger sister of my ancestor, Clotilde.  John somehow found out about me.  This is how this family history fraternity works.

Before meeting John, I knew very little about Blondeau’s.  That changed over time, including learning the present day address of what was once their land claim, 15521 Dayton River Road,  Dayton MN. (See note at end of this post)

Portion of Dayton MN 1873 Plat, from p. 24 of book, Dayton With A French Accent.

Clotilde Blondeau and Octave Collette wedding St Anthony MN 1868.  Clotilde was about 6, second youngest in a large family, when her family arrived in Minnesota about 1854.  Octave was about 16, also one of a large family, when he and his family arrived in Minnesota about 1864.  Clotilde was born in Pierrefonds, Quebec, Octave in St. Henri Quebec.  Both families arrived before the railroad reached Minnesota (ca 1867).  St. Anthony Catholic Church, near St. Anthony Falls, quite likely was the common ground which led to their families becoming acquainted.

I have worked on family history for over 45 years, more than half my life.  Family history is rarely easy, particularly when the subjects are ordinary people, and in a society which is male-centric (the woman at marriage takes the man’s surname, becomes “Mrs”,  and societal rules favor males).

In a real sense, this book levels the playing field.  There are about 100 families identified, including their children.

To the extent possible, the lineage of both husband and wife are identified through the great-grandparents of each, including things like date and place of birth and marriage and death.

In my Blondeau branch, for example, my great grandmother’s parents, grandparents and great grandparents are identified – numerous family lines for husband and wife.  Not listed is my own grandmother, their daughter.  My father and, of course, myself, and my own kids – thus eight generations in all. Multiply this by 2 and then by 100 and you get some idea of the richness of the lineage identified within the book (all the families are neatly identified in Chapter 3).

In my review of the book, I found that the neighbor of Simon Blondeau, Jules LaCroix, was actually Adelaide Blondeau’s younger brother. I learned that another pioneer, Alexis Cloutier, witness when Blondeau took his land claim, was married to a sister of Adelaide!  The three siblings were all born in Pierrefonds Quebec, part of greater Montreal today.  I didn’t know any of this before exploring the book.

In the book there are well over one hundred photos provided by the 100 families and many others which give context; plus text which further helps to give life to the ordinary people of the community, and to the community itself.

How did the book benefit me?  In strictly my own example, I started with two family units in the community, about whom I had relatively little knowledge.  So far, the book has fleshed out four additional families I had little information about.  And I’ve only begun my search.

And I’m only one in a very large pool of potential readers, some of whom will be very glad they found this resource.  Help them become aware of this.

Cover of the new book.  The organizations website is here.

NOTE: Within the last few days I accessed the google map of the Blondeau claim, 15521 River Road, at the Mississippi River, two miles from today’s  St. John the Baptist Catholic Church whose address is 18380 Columbus Street Dayton MN. Here is the link.)  There is a bonus here: zero in on the Mississippi River and note the jet plane and its contrails, as captured by the satellite in space.  Amazing.  The plane. was probably beginning its approach to Twin Cities International Airport about 30 miles ahead when the satellite took its photo.  The photo is undated.  I hope the image with the plane is still there when you look.