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Racine Families Association |
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Racine Families Association |
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EXTRACTS
FROM L'ENRACINÉ OUR REUNION IN THE CITY OF SAGUENAY
MANY HAPPY MEMORIES!
Some one hundred happy members
of the Racine family spent the glorious weekend of 4-6 August 2006 in the City
of Saguenay for the 19th Reunion of the Racine Families of North
America. With the theme “Let us be
proud of our roots”, the Organizing Committee pulled off a memorable
achievement, having bravely met great challenges of distance and time
management. The members of the Organizing
Committee were: -Gustave
Racine, President, -Jean-Louis
Racine, Vice- President -Louise
Racine, Treasurer -Céline B.
Racine, Secretary The members of the Local
Organizing Committee were: -Paul
Racine, President, assisted by Bernadette B. Racine (his spouse) -Dominique
Racine, Vice-President, assisted by France G. Racine (his spouse) On Friday afternoon at
approximately 4 pm the members of the Association’s Administrative Council,
the group travelling by bus, and other members of the family attended a
cocktail party at the Holiday Inn Saguenay.
The City of Saguenay and the Jonquière region had generously offered
the cocktail party. After dinner on Friday,
some thirty members attended the show “La fabuleuse histoire d’un
Royaume” at the Théâtre du Palais Municipal in the la Baie region. On Saturday morning the
Association’s Administrative Council held a meeting in Room Pierre-Paul
Asselin of the Holiday Inn. After the Saturday
morning meet & greet and the registration, the participants enjoyed a hot
buffet. Mr Réjean Laforest,
President of the Jonquière region, and his spouse, welcomed the group to the
City of Saguenay. During Saturday
afternoon, the group took a bus tour of the regions of Jonquière, la Baie and
Chicoutimi, followed by a visit to the museum “La Pulperie”. While
visiting the Cathedral, the group was warmly greeted by the Sisters of the
“Religieuses du Bon-Pasteur” order. Our members were invited to review the
many historical and genealogical exhibits in the Cathedral.
But, of special significance, the Racine Family Association rendered
special homage to Mgr Dominique Racine, first Bishop of Chicoutimi, by laying
a bouquet of 26 roses near the crypt containing the Bishop’s remains and
those of his successors. The 26
white roses were in recognition of the years that Mgr Racine dedicated to the
citizens of the Saguenay region. Saturday night’s
reunion evening was held at the Holiday Inn.
Members danced to disco music by disc jockey Mr
Yves Brassard and
the songs of Mr Mario Vézina, a well-known singer from the Saguenay region. On Sunday morning we
celebrated mass at the magnificent Saint-Dominique Church of Jonquière.
Father Daniel Jean celebrated the mass, assisted in the service by a strong
and vibrant group of parishioners. The
opening procession was especially moving.
Accompanied by a wonderful rendition of the song “Hymne du
Saguenay”, a special homage was paid to Mgrs Dominique and Antoine Racine.
The photos of these distinguished clerics, whose praise was later
lauded by Denis Racine, our Association’s genealogist, were displayed at the
base of the altar. The mass ended
with a wonderful interpretation of Frédéric Bérat’s “Ma Normandie”. The final event of the
weekend reunion was the banquet at the Holiday Inn.
At the end of the meal Gustave Racine, President of the Organizing
Committee, thanked all the members of his Organizing Committee. This was followed by the President of our Association,
Jean-Louis Racine, who thanked the Organizing Committee and everyone for
attending, and in particular, those who came from afar to attend the reunion.
Jean-Louis Racine then gave a presentation on the important people who were
founders of the Saguenay region, as well as its natural and cultural wonders.
The President then made the Young Racine of the Year presentation to
this year’s winner, Mathieu-Philippe Perras, who was unfortunately absent
for this event (the $100 prize was received on his behalf by his aunt Mrs
Denise Gratton of Embrun, Ontario. Mr Denis Racine, our
Association’s genealogist, spoke of the early pioneers in the region.
In a “call to the regions”, a traditional part of the annual
banquet, members stood in recognition of the various regions from whence they
came. We had representatives from
many regions of Québec and Ontario, in addition to people from the states of
New York, Ohio and Florida. The Racine Family flag
was then passed on to the organizers of the next reunion, to be held in
Salaberry-de-Valleyfield QC. The participants then
ended this year’s reunion to the tune of “Ce n’est qu’un Au revoir”
and everyone left with fond memories of this wonderful weekend spent in the
City of Saguenay. Gustave Racine October 2006 Racine
to Root: An American Odyssey Sometimes those family stories
you heard from your grandparents turn out to be true. In our case, the story told how our family name, Root, was
once Racine, and that the family moved back and forth between Quebec and New
England. Growing up in the
American South, where a name like Root fits nicely with names like Davis,
Smith and Jones, that story seemed like an exotic fairy tale. And if Grandfather occasionally said things like
“Pourquoi?” he was just being odd. A few hours on the
internet was enough to show that we should have asked more questions while the
old folks were still around. “Once
upon a time,” as it turns out, was around 1870, when Antoine Racine, his
wife Josephine and eight children immigrated from Dunham, in Missisquoi
County, QC, to the village of Winchendon, near Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
A combination of digging
through records and (mostly) tapping into work already done by others allowed
us to assemble the “genealogical facts” about this Racine family:
Antoine and Josephine (Josephte Chretien), born in 1831 and 1827,
married 1848. Children Olivier,
Emily, Adeline, Stella, Selina, Michael, Joseph, Thomas, born between 1849 and
1864. The census reports, the
vital records, the newspaper clippings, all build a skeleton of fact, but in
the end that process cannot show us the people whose lives are sketched.
To the greatest extent we can never really find them.
But we can go beyond the bare facts to ask questions, and use our
imaginations. Here is an attempt to
find the people of my family. Upon arriving in the
Yankee part of the New World, the family faced a basic question:
What is our name? On the
simplest level the problem was one of pronunciation. “Antoine” as heard from a French tongue, is not a sound
that comes easily to English lips, even with the best of intentions.
And of course, the people recording the names for posterity were not
concerned about the nuances of linguistic expression; they were census takers
and clerks, anxious to move on to the next house, the next person in line.
To that situation we add
the crazy-quilt pattern of English spelling rules to produce spectacularly odd
results for the Racines. Antoine’s
name was recorded as “Entuin”, “Anthone”, “Anton” and (this
author’s favorite) “Hawthorn.” Josephine
generally fared better, but her first census appearance was as “Josicib.” Apart from Olivier, the
children generally encountered fewer problems, as their names lent themselves
to Anglicization with little difficulty.
Émélie became Emily, Damase became Thomas, and Joseph had the least
trouble of all. Olivier presented
unique challenges to English-speakers, however, because, again, the sounds are
not common in English. He rose to
the occasion by adopting the nickname “Levi”, which captures the French
sound nicely. That reconstruction
is built on speculation, of course; he could have been called Levi back in
Dunham, as well. But it does fit
the needs, in any event, and in fact he never appears in a public record as
Olivier. In a nice
turnabout, he does succeed in confusing English-speakers who only see the
written record. They naturally
tend to pronounce “Levi” as rhyming with “knee-high,” producing
further confusion, until the name is spoken. The last name, Racine,
would seem to pose fewer problems. Here,
pronunciation would not trouble Yankees, and plenty of Racines had preceded
Antoine in Massachusetts, retaining the name.
For whatever reason, however, the family translated the name right from
the start. The first family
record, the 1870 census, shows “Root”, as does the next census record, in
1880 That development seems
simple and straightforward, but if we look closer we find a more complicated
story of a family that struggled with adaptation to a new environment and
culture, and who responded in several different ways.
The records, dry collections of names, dates and numbers, only give us
a bare outline, and none of the people are still with us, so we have to apply
some imagination, guided by basic knowledge of human nature, to paint as much
of the picture as we can recapture. One response was to jump
into the new culture without reservation.
Emily, the oldest daughter, is a good example of that.
She married the boy next door (literally), Peter Morlock, whose family
had come from New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and who started a small dairy farm
and built it into a prosperous milk business.
Their children’s names break out of the traditional mold, with
daughters Emma and Alice, sons Arthur and Charles.
One of their sons, George, achieved international recognition as an
official in the US State Department, becoming an assistant to several
secretaries of state and attending a number of international conferences in
the 1940’s and 50’s. Reading
the newspaper accounts of Emily’s 50th and 60th
wedding anniversaries, one gets a clear picture of a happy, successful and
very American family. Others chose to remain
in the traditional culture. Adeline,
Stella and Selina all married men born in Quebec (Fredette, Boucher and
Mercier) and the latter two families returned there.
A most interesting case is that of Thomas, the youngest son.
Antoine was ill for the last decade of his life, and was paralyzed for
the last several years, and Thomas lived with his parents, evidently
supporting them. He remained with
Josephine after Antoine died in 1894, and he seems to have waited to marry
until after she died. (This is a
bit of speculation, as we have not found Josephine’s death date yet, but it
does seem to fit the facts we know).
During this period, he continues to be shown on census and other
records as “Root.” Then an
interesting thing happens – he reverts to “Racine”.
He marries Carrie La Fortune (born in Quebec) in December 1902, and the
record shows him as “Racine.” Thereafter
the census shows him as Racine, and his children are born and remain Racines. The eldest son, Olivier
(Levi) followed a middle course. On
one hand, he married within the French community (Florence Leclaire), and his
children were named in the family pattern – Mary, Selina, George. But he did retain the Root name, as did his children. A final point about this
family is their sudden scattering, something shown particularly in the family
of Joseph, the ninth child. He
followed Emily’s lead and acculturated rapidly, marrying an Irish girl,
Bridget O’Toole (1886), becoming a mechanical worker at a local mill, and
participating in church and fraternal organizations.
He lived in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, only a few miles from where
Antoine had settled and within hailing distance of his siblings.
He and Bridget had four sons – Joseph, William, Allan and Paul and a
girl, Winifred. The striking
difference between this family and the others we have looked is that by 1920,
every one of the children was not just gone but also long gone. Joseph and Paul went south, to Virginia and Baltimore.
Allan had died in 1910. Winifred
started conventionally – marry local boy, have two children – but suddenly
she too had decamped, to St. Petersburg, Florida. The real traveler,
though, was William, known universally as Billy.
He served in WWI, and according to family story saw action in the
Argonne Forest battles. On
returning, however, he walked off the ship and kept right on going –
according to family legend, he never even went home.
He finally stopped in Fairbanks, Alaska, where he founded an “auto
stage” company, carrying miners out to “the creeks.”
He seems to have been something of a character, playing drums in the
jazz dance bands. One year in the
‘30’s he and a partner won $75,000 in the annual betting pools based on
the Tanana River ice breakup. But
he never came home again, and apart from some letters and pictures to his
brother Paul, he broke contact entirely. The outward movement
continued over the next two generations.
The Virginia branch of the family remained in place for one generation,
with two sons (Robert and yet another Joseph), but the migration resumed
thereafter. Of the six children
of that generation (Mary Roberta, daughter of Robert; and Joseph’s boys,
Robert, Michael, Thomas, Allan and the obligatory Joseph) only Mary Roberta
remains in Virginia. Three are in
the San Francisco Bay area and one in each of the Carolinas. In the end, we are left
with questions that we cannot answer, but the asking provides answers of its
own. Joseph E. Root October 2006 N.B. Mr Joseph E Root,
who lives in Montara California, is the great grandson of Antoine Racine and
Joséphine Chrétien, descendants of François Racine. |