When the Winter Wolves Howled Around Their Doors

 

Long before my father-in-law's immigrant grandmother Theresa Blaising settled in her childhood home in Indiana, a group of several immigrants from her homeland discovered a wilderness swamp in Indiana and decided to claim it as their new home. That beginning was hardly promising; an early history of the Fort Wayne area mentioned that Jefferson Township—location of that swamp land where these French immigrants built their first homes—was in the 1840s a place where "the winter wolves howled around their doors at night."

Though those French immigrants first arrived in Allen County, Indiana, around 1840, it wasn't until 1851 that their settlement established its first Catholic church there. That church, called Saint Louis Besancon Catholic Parish, is still in existence today, including its several buildings alongside the historic Lincoln Highway—which road, incidentally, post-dated the immigrants' arrival by several decades. Those buildings now form a historic district, and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That settlement, originally called New France, was renamed Besancon upon the arrival of the church's new pastor, Father Adam, who was said to have been a French refugee—a "political refugee," as one other local history article represented him (see page 3). That such turmoil in France caused his ejection from his homeland in 1870 resonates with the puzzling stories we've found on Theresa Blaising's own (possible) father from that same time period.

Besancon, the French immigrant settlement in Allen County, Indiana, was not necessarily a place easily found in online information. For one thing, it was never incorporated as a separate entity, geo-politically. Even looking at the usual Wikipedia entries for American counties, which generally include mention of both incorporated cities and towns and unincorporated "census designated places" and communities, there is no mention of Besancon. Even though the Allen County entry at Wikipedia includes a listing of six "extinct" communities, Besancon is not included at all.

Despite little mention of the location, Besancon eventually boasted its own Historical Society which, at least through the 1990s, was busy working to preserve the settlement's history. Though the organization, despite desperate pleas for help, apparently did eventually close its doors, thankfully its members opted to pass on their research and findings to the Allen County Public Library, which provides access to that material, much of it accessible online. 

It is the roots of that village and parish which most piqued my interest, though, for the reason the parishioners opted to change the name of their settlement was a hat tip to the place in France where the first members of that community originated: a place in France also known as Besancon. We'll see what we can find about that community connection tomorrow.