My husband’s great-grandmother was Marie Anne (Corbin), the first wife of Antoine Saucier of Fort Kent. Her uncle Guillaume Corbin married Lucie Ringuette in 1843, which I point out only to illustrate what a small world it is.
The small world at the Franco-American Centre — located just across the road from Alfond Arena at the University of Maine, is counting its blessings this week after Tuesday’s dedication of the Adrien Lanthier Ringuette Library at the headquarters on the Orono campus.
Ringuette lived in Indiana, where he died four years ago. His family gave careful thought about what to do with his 2,100 books, 100 maps and thousands of pages of handwritten notes.
When I gave a talk on Franco-American resources a few months ago at the Franco-American Centre, several people were working hard to catalog and organize the materials, which they are rightly thrilled to have on campus. The Ringuette family drove the collection to Maine and returned for the dedication of the library.
Why Maine? One of Ringuette’s cousins is a longtime subscriber to the centre’s journal, Le Forum, which certainly helps document the good work the Franco-American Centre has been doing for decades.
There already are Franco-American resources in Fort Kent and Lewiston-Auburn, so the University of Maine is the perfect place to increase what is available in this area. There also are resources at Fogler Library on the Orono campus.
I am very much looking forward to visiting the Ringuette Library to see what is available. A photo on page B4 of the Sept. 16 issue of the Bangor Daily News intrigues me already, with a line of volumes labeled “Beauce Dorchester Frontenac.”
On my list of Franco-American resources, I have this one as “Recueil de Genealogies des comtes de Beauce, Dorchester and Frontenac” by Brother Eloi-Gerard Talbot, sometimes listed as just Brother Eloi Gerard.
If you look at a map of Quebec, you will see that these are three counties on the path to New England. Like many Franco-American resources, this series uses marriage records to take us from one generation to the next generation back. But it also groups the marriages of each set of siblings together so you can use the information to formulate families.
I have used these books at Maine State Library, so I will be pleased to be able to use them in Orono.
The Franco-American Centre is located in Crosland Hall. I’m hoping that the facility will add evening and weekend hours as circumstances permit. Here are some websites for the centre:
— Le Forum: http://umaine.edu/francoamerican/le-forum/
— Oral History: Francoamericanarchives.org
— Library: francolib.francoamerican.org
— Occasional Papers: http://umaine.edu/francoamerican/occasional-papers/
— Maine’s French Communities: http://www.francomaine.org/English/Pres/Pres_intro.html
This collection is a tremendous gift from the Ringuette family. I’m sure Mainers will use it well to benefit the Franco-American community and others.
For i nformation on researching family history in Maine, see Genealogy Resources under Family Ties at bangordailynews.com/browse/family-ties. Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402, or email familyti@bangordailynews.com.