People who Preserved the Past

 

It's a snap that I wouldn't have known how to answer my own question about the Blaising family's emigration from France to, of all places, Indiana if it hadn't been for people who made it their mission to preserve their ancestral story—in essence, to preserve their own family's past. In this case, it is mostly thanks to a small band of volunteers who formed the Besancon Historical Society and, in particular, one writer by the name of Ralph Violette, who edited the organization's collective findings in their quarterly newsletter and spearheaded the assembling of a database of genealogical information from Society members' collective stories.

It is one article written by this Ralph Violette which simultaneously provided me with so many answers yet made me wish I could barrage him with so many other questions. His article appeared in the December, 1996, edition of the Besancon Indiana Chronicles, beginning on page four, exploring "From France to Indiana." Exactly what I was questioning.

In pursuing that question, I found so many other online search results which referred to a writer with the same surname—Aurele Violette—and I wondered about the connection. Perhaps Ralph was son of Aurele? Though the older Violette might not still be alive, perhaps the son could explain more of this other researcher's discoveries.

I set out to find an answer to my question about the Violettes, not withstanding the possibility that this might simply be a case of surname coincidence. But searching for a name like Aurele Violette—or "Aurelle" as I had first found it online—yielded very little online. Digging deeper into the Internet—that marvel of modern research possibilities—I discovered scattered signs of his existence. A notice on college letterhead of an upcoming faculty election and subsequent confirmation of selected representatives clearly linked Aurele Violette to the history department of the branch of Purdue University at Indiana University in Fort Wayne. Online articles had mentioned his forthcoming publication, and a search led me to a 1996 book, Peopling Indiana—thankfully reprinted in 2010 by the Indiana Historical Society Press—which contained an article on French immigration there by the same history professor.

Moving forward with my search, my disappointing discovery was to find that one document which all genealogists seek for our ancestors: the Violette obituary. Sadly, Aurele Joseph Violette passed away only a couple years ago. In that discovery, I received my answer to my second search: that Aurele and Ralph Violette are one and the same person. Aurele often went by the nickname Ralph.

Small wonder. I can see why a given name like Aurele might cause a man some difficulties in current American culture, despite the fact that, as an Acadian descendant born in Maine, he was named after his own father, who likely carried that name from generations before him. I have a brother-in-law with a similar name—another ethnic variant of a name which surely was inspired by the Roman Emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius—who, when golfing with visiting Asian businessmen, says, "Just call me Jack."

This Historical Society, in existence for over twenty years, was peopled by descendants of the original settlers to the Besancon farming community outside New Haven, Indiana, who worked hard to preserve their settlement's history. In the end, though, they too needed to make those final plans upon the realization that there was no one left to whom they could pass the baton. In their Winter 2019 issue of The Chronicles, one speaker at their meeting made the plea for a practical way to preserve all the hard work the organization had done to preserve those family stories.

In that plea (on page five), the author made one point clear which may be one faced by a multitude of other local historical or genealogical societies:

Here is a problem we have. Stories of Besancon might be told, but they were sketchy. The old immigrants were not story tellers, they were survivors. Their children were survivors doubly: they had to survive not only the fast-changing pace of American society, but also the hard-bitten life patterns of their immigrant parents, which often offered at best half-solutions for their own lives. Assimilation affected not only those branches of Besancon families who left the land. Those who stayed, within a generation or two, also became similar in almost all respects to any other small town farm settlement in America. French names were Anglicized in pronunciation, if not spelling. French language disappeared from households, as did devotion to French saints. The basic immigration story was either forgotten or more often simplified: one's grandparents simply came from "France" or even "Paris." Too little of the story has been preserved. Nevertheless, a clear shadow of the old immigrant community yet remains in this little area around Saint Louis Besancon Church today.

Generic responses: "They came from Paris." Reticence to share stories of their past in detail: "They were sketchy." They "were not story tellers" because of "the hard-bitten life patterns" of their forebears, who likely had been through much. These are likely the type of situational disappointments some of us face whether trying to coax out stories from the distant past, or merely of the World Wars from our own parents or grandparents; the trauma of the experience left them wanting to say little.

The work the Society did to try to piece together the story from what fragments of memory they could glean from members' family histories was further put at risk when the Society itself had to close its doors. Fortunately, the Society formed a constructive partnership with a nearby friend of such pursuits: the Allen County Public Library in nearby Fort Wayne, Indiana.

That institution—thankfully—has a reputation as the largest public repository of genealogical information in North America, and has made the assembled publications of the Besancon Historical Society freely available online. If it were not for that generosity, I likely would never have gotten close to any answer about my own connection to the Blaising family, the roots of my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising, who arrived in Allen County as a small child, moving there with her family.

Still, the Besancon story is not necessarily the story of the Blaising family. What that discovery does do, however, is show me that it was possible for a French immigrant family to find their way directly to a small town in Indiana. The next task, however, is to see if I can find any records showing me just how they got here.