The French? In Indiana?

 

When thinking about migrating ancestors, one question I concern myself with is how they got from their old home to their new one. With this month's research focus on my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising, that was my big question. It might have made sense for a traveling family from Europe to cross the Atlantic, headed for a major port on the east coast—New York, Boston, maybe even to Philadelphia. But Indiana? 

One guideline with following ancestors from their homeland is the concept that residents from the same region often followed the path of those friends or family who crossed over before them. Thus, so many Irish ended up in Boston, for instance, or Dutch to New York, or Germans to Pennsylvania. But French? In Indiana?

If I had really thought through the history of the state, I might have recalled that I already know differently. Long before Indiana even became a state in 1816, the French were roaming over its territory—as early as 1679, in fact. French trappers and traders became familiar with the land, not only where Indiana now stands, but up and down the midwestern waterways from what is now Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. So why couldn't I imagine a French widow and her ten children deciding to leave their homeland in France—wherever it actually was—to travel straight to New Haven, Indiana?

It was a reasonable doubt on my part. After all, when Theresa Blaising appeared in her mother's household for the first time in the 1870 United States census, New Haven was a town of barely nine hundred people—hardly the size which could command international headlines. But apparently, the county in which New Haven is situated—Allen County—boasted from the start at least four different settlements which included French immigrants: the village of Maples, the town of Monroeville, Mary Blaising's home in New Haven, and a fascinating place called Besancon.

While at this point I don't know whether Mary Blaising ever settled in Besancon—I only have her residence listed for the 1870 census, though she and her family were said to have arrived in 1866—it may be helpful to learn more about the history of that nucleus of French life so far from home. We'll explore Besancon, Indiana, more tomorrow.