I have always felt connected in a way I can’t really explain to my Irish great-grandmother Margaret Carroll – ever since my Aunt Rose showed me a photograph of her when I was 11 or 12. It was her wedding photo, maybe the only photo that exists of her. She wasn’t smiling, typical for photos of that era, but her eyes seemed completely alive and they spoke to my heart.
I don’t know a lot about her life, but what I do know leads me to believe it was not easy. She lived in Quebec and then crossed the border to work in the textile mills in Lewiston, Maine.
Lewiston’s population boomed in the 19th century. During the Civil War, high demand for textiles provided Lewiston with a strong industrial base. Starting in the 1870s, railroad connections to Canada brought an influx of French-Canadian millworkers, replacing the former “yankee millgirls”, and the city’s population has been largely Franco-American since. The Franco-Americans settled in an area downtown that became known as “Little Canada”.
It was there that she met and married my French-Canadian great-grandfather. They eventually moved back to Quebec and then out to Saskatchewan only to endure The Great Depression, having to abandon their farm during the dust bowl years.
I remember her today and I am deeply grateful to her for all the hardship she endured so that I could live the wonderful life I have today.
