Aunt Judy

Before the filles du roi...Desperate to escape her past, Jeanne, a poor widow, accompanies a rich woman to Quebec. The sea voyage is long, one of privation and danger. In 1640, the decision to emigrate takes raw courage, but the struggling colony of Quebec, so far a collection of rough soldiers and fur traders, needs French women if it is ever to take firm root in the wilderness.

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My Aunt, as she was in the 1930's

Hope you don't mind coming along with me for a little family history. And history it now is,  sorry to say. We're all inescapably riding Time's Arrow...

Below is an excerpt from my aunt's obituary. I am her namesake. On the day this blog is published, she would have begun her 98th year. The day following, I will be attending her memorial service. At this time, I will reconnect with members of the family--cousins, and their children and grandchildren. Some, I haven't seen in twenty years, others I have never met in the flesh, only via pictures. 

      

Juliet “Judy” W. (Liddle) Hennessy died Jan. 10, 2025, at home in Yellow Springs. She was 97 years old. She was born March 28, 1927, in Rockville Centre, New York, to Dr. Albert W. and Ruth P. Liddle and joined two sisters, Dorothy and Jean. At the time, her father taught English literature, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and others at New York University. He was recruited by Arthur Morgan to come to Yellow Springs and teach at Antioch College.

Shortly after Judy’s birth, the young family moved to Yellow Springs in a 1925 Model T Ford, arriving and camping in a tent in Glen Helen near the Birch Creek Cascades for several weeks, until lodging was available. When Mrs. Lucy Morgan came to welcome the family to Yellow Springs and Antioch, she left her calling card in the tent flap, as they were out and about.

Somehow or other, I have come the oldest living member of my grandparents' descendants.

My Aunt had all her wits about her when she died, something you can't always say about such old people. When I was born, World War II was still in progress, both in Europe and in the Pacific. My Dad was in Burma. My Uncle Richard, married to sister Jean, was in Europe. Judy was not married yet, because her beaus were away at war. Judy worked at Wright Field (Wright Patterson)  in those days. 

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L to R: Aunt Judy, my Mother, Dorothy, & Aunt Jean

The three sisters, Judy, her sister Jean, and my mother, Dorothy, were all still living in their parents' house, a big four square with an enormous maple which shaded the brick patio behind the kitchen. There was an astonishing garden, too, filled with roses, spring bulbs and many other flowers and also--long before our time--native plants, such as Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Ferns, Trillium, Dutchman's Britches, May apples, Trout Lilies and Dog-Tooth violets. Grandpa also grew grapes on arbors, raspberries, rhubarb as well as lettuce and huge, delicious tomatoes. There was a pear tree and cherry trees, too, all benefiting from horse manure from my mother's much loved mare. 

My earliest memories are of moonlight coming through the leaves on that old tree and making patterns on the crib sheet where I was dozing. From the room next door, a large bathroom, I could hear the women of the house talking and bathing. This was a safe place then, and it remains so in memory. 

Here are some B&W pictures from the late 40's and 50's. That's me, the flower girl at Judy's wedding, wondering what the heck the grown-ups are doing? I could tell it was some kind of adult in-joke, and somehow I felt a little embarrassed by this undignified, giggly moment. However, it was clearly the time of breaking into that delicious cake, so of course I was intrigued, especially if this odd behavior meant there's soon be cake for me! 

The groom is my Uncle Leo, a great guy she'd met at Antioch College where she was working, and where he was studying chemistry on the GI bill after tours of duty in the navy, where he served in both WW II and in Korea. He was a favorite uncle, with a legendarily dry wit, and a taste for jazz, both cool and hot. He and my father sometimes went stag to jazz clubs in Dayton. In those days Dayton was a big melting pot, still bustling with factories and employing hosts of workers. Leo became a brilliant chemist, and he had a successful career. 

Homecoming Court picture

At Ohio State, my aunt was on homecoming court as the independent representative, sponsored by the returning war veterans. She graduated with degrees in Sociology and Home Economics, but all she truly ever wanted to be was to be a wife and mother. She worked for some years, however, at Wright Field (Wright Patterson Airforce Base) in Springfield, and at Antioch College, until my cousins began arriving.

This picture is of my first bus trip--off to a department store for shopping and lunch. I remember being lectured by my mother about being a good girl and not causing any trouble, which probably accounts for my anxious expression. However, once I was away with Aunt Judy, there was no worry at all. We had lunch in a tea room at the department store, and I remember feeling rather grown-up. 

My Aunt was very special to me. One memory I have is of staying overnight with Judy and Leo when they lived in a tiny apartment. I have memories of sleeping overnight in a space that might have been a deep closet shelf, proceeded by many cautions not to fall off, but I remember this as a grand adventure. Judy and Leo always made things fun. 

Those happy days when our family lived together in that unique little college town eventually came to an end. My parents were the first to leave, heading to the Finger Lakes area in New York, near Syracuse, where my Dad worked in the then nascent industrial air-conditioning business.  Here's a picture of me, my 6 month old Cousin Kevin and my  Aunt in an upstairs bedroom when they came to visit us. 

~~Juliet Waldron

Quebec - Strife During the Early Years

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European fishermen had long traveled to the west chasing the codfish, which were in high demand in Catholic Europe, especially during Lent. In the course of these sea voyages, they'd long been in contact with the Iroquoian speaking people of Maritime Canada, such as the Mi'Kmaq, and the Wendat, more familiarly called "Huron," or Algonquin. These people lived from the mouth of the St. Lawrence  westward, and, in those days, around the shores of the Great Lakes. These voyaging fishermen--Basques, Portuguese, English-- soon realized that great stores of high quality furs could obtained here, and fur--especially beaver, almost extinct in Europe--quickly became more important than their original  quarry. 

In the 16th Century, when Jacques Cartier sailed down the St. Lawrence, he saw many thriving Huron palisaded villages. By the time of Champlain, these sites had been abandoned and the plains beside the river were empty, except for the seasonal hunting of neighboring tribes and war parties. Perhaps the long war between the Algonquin the Iroquois was the reason that these sites were abandoned, but I believe the real reason was smallpox and the other "new" infectious diseases contact with Europeans brought, which were fatal to these town-dwelling Indians. Cartier treated the native people brutally, even kidnapping prominent members of the same tribes that had had peaceful dealings with him and carrying them back to France. None of these men survived to return. 

Champlain was a wiser man who managed to plant permanent French settlements along the river and to make treaties with the people of Huronia. "Champlain's Dream,"a biography by noted historian David Hackett Fischer, builds a case for this explorer's decent reputation. He, almost alone among "Discoverers,"believed that the native peoples and the French could live together in peace in this land.

His original aim was defeated by practical politics. In order for the French settlers to survive, they were forced to make alliances with his closest neighbors--the Huron and Algonquin. This immediately put him in conflict with the Iroquois, their southern neighbors, and he, and his new weapons became part of ongoing war between these tribes. 

As with all early European settlements, Champlain's ability to supply his colonies was constantly thwarted by the turbulence of European politics. First, there was the Counter-Reformation, which pitted Catholics against Protestants--in this case French Huguenots, who would be massacred and driven out. Second, there was the vicious struggle for power and over royal succession that had wracked the French Court for hundreds years. 

The funding problem accelerated after Henry IV, a believer in religious tolerence and Champlain's patron, was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. No sooner would a few settlers arrive in this hostile place, too cold for most familiar European crops, than funding and supplies would again dry up, leaving the settlers left to struggle through best they could, all while in the midst of a neverending Indian war.  

Next, another European war got underway. It would take pages to describe who, what, where, and why, but the English tried to seize the St. Lawrence valley and the fisheries on what are now called Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, islands just beyond the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. 

When Quebec was attacked in 1629 by English privateers named Kirke (licensed to do so by Charles I) the colony, already beleaguered and depending upon friendly Indians for food, was forced to surrender. Champlain got the best terms possible for the citizens of Quebec, but had neither the food nor the gunpowder, shot, and fuses needed to defend the town. (I call these Englishmen privateers, but they behaved like pirates, allowing their men to torture and kill a family of farmers (and their animals!) they found at Cape Tourmente, and to destroy every other small undefended settlement they saw along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.)  

In the end, this English conquest didn't last long as peace was declared between England and France. It took months for the news to reach the New World, but, in the end, Champlain managed to free himself from his captors. He returned in 1633 with three ships and 150 settlers. The year after, four ships with 200 colonists arrived, and in 1635, three hundred immigrants came, although eventually almost half of them returned to France. Still, some of these new Habitants stayed, increased and multiplied, and those determined families are the foundation of French Canada. 

Champlain died in Quebec that winter, on Christmas day in the aftermath of a stroke, but the colony continued to hang on and against all odds--Indian wars, and more periods of dire neglect by the French. Despite everything, Quebec survived. There would be many more twists and turns in the fortunes of French Canada, but the English would not make their final return until the end of the Seven Years War (aka The French & Indian War) in 1763.  

~~Juliet Waldron

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St. Lawrence River--a world changes forever

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While researching a new historical bride story for Quebec, I realized that once again I have bumped up against a landscape which has totally changed since my childhood. My parents and I lived for a time on Skanaeateles Lake in New York State, when the midstate area was still a bustling industrial region. Post war, people looking for work came down Route 20 past our house. In 1953, many of these travelers were aiming to turn north and head to Massena, New York, where ground on the long debated seaway (since before World War I) had at last been broken. 

This project was first proposed in the 1890's, as a way to open the vast interiors of Canada and the U.S. to maritime trade. Miles of rapids would be eliminated, rapids which the first travelers into the Northwest territories had navigated by portage, and, later, in the 19th century, by a series of canals. The canals were too and narrow to accomodate large modern ships, so there was a trans-shipping industry with much loading and unloading, in which smaller ships carried ores, coal and grain from Canada and the American midwest, to the nearest deep water port. Of course, the largest visual cue for anyone airborne surveying the territory between the Atlantic and Lake Eire was the magnificent drop at Niagara Falls.  

When I was very small, my parents took me through upstate New York, way up past my family's homestead near Schuylerville, NY to the shores of the St. Lawrence. From the American side, I saw many lovely islands dotting the river, some with "castles" built upon them. There were also terrifying rapids, and, in between small boats, some fishermen, some sightseers, out for a day's work or pleasure on the river. My mother told me stories about  one of her great-aunts who had spent her summers working as a cook on one of those pretty touring vessels. 

Eisenhower was president when the project began; he was still president when, in 1959, the seaway was, with much fanfare, completed. Young Queen Elizabeth arrived on HMY Britannia to do some official ribbon-cutting and sail on a small section of the newly completed Seaway. At last the interior of both Canada and the U.S. were open, cutting costs for the shippers and making the Great Lakes, and all the rich commodities both north and south of the border, available to ocean going ships.

Well, fanfare of trumpets for Progress, which was the watch-word for the optimistic 1950's! 

I don't want to omit, though, that there were also many severe individual losses, as old family farmlands, small historic river towns, and even some of those "thousand islands" were demolished, as grand mansions, fertile fields and fecund wetlands alike vanished beneath the water. A long established way of life beside this great river was forever lost. Generations of families who had lived tranquil, seasonal lives here, lost their land and homes through Eminent Domain.

One group who probably lost more than anyone to modernization were The People of the Flint, a group of Iroquoian (Six Nation's) people. Most of the those on Kahnawake reservation now are Mohawk, but others once belonged to their southern brothers, the Caughnawagas. Still others were refugees, fleeing the European take-over of their heritary lands.

Forty thousand three hundred and twenty acres were originally granted to the Iroquois. Today, thirteen thousand acres remain. The rest has been taken by non-native encroachment and abetted by mismanagement by the same government officials who were entrusted with the job of enforcing the original treaty. They were aided by surveyors who modified old maps at the expense of the Kahnawake people. Modern cessations were also forced upon the tribe to make way for a railway, hydro-electric dams, highways, bridges, and, finally, the Seaway. This has permanently severed the ancient relationship with the land and the river enjoyed by these original inhabitants. The people have suffered in many ways as their old seasonal continuities, energetic, subsistence lifestyle, and food ways were lost along with access to the river.

Moreover, it didn't take long for the unintended consequences to appear. Invasive, destructive new species arrived in the Great Lakes and in the St. Lawrence. Now, Zebra and Quagga mussels clog freshwater intake pipes for the large midwestern cities that ring the lakes. Sea lamprey kill many sport (and regional food staple) fish. They have also been known to attach themselves to swimmers. The Round Goby, arriving in Black Sea bilgewater from Eurasia, poisons river bottoms with botulism, which then infects the environment and kills native diving birds. The Goby also has a nasty habit of chowing down on juvenile native species of the prized sportfish and on that original First Nation's staple, the once-plentiful White Fish.  A reedy invasive, Phragmites (Phragmites australis ssp australis) look pretty, but these now grow in thick mats and smother native plants--including the smaller native Phragmite species--upsetting the wetland food chain necessary for many North American foundation species of plants, fish and animals. 

This great Seaway, built at an (estimated) cost of 5 1/2 Billion dollars of today's money, has proved, like many past public works, a blessing for some and a curse for others. Capital wealth has been generated, certainly. The pay-off has been huge for the company owners, for stockholders as well as the workers who, (before our heavy manufacturing base collapsed) benefited with high standards of living in midwestern cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toledo and Sarnia. 

Once again, the old adage, "Man proposes; God disposes" has proved both true and apt.

~~Juliet Waldron  

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By 20px|link=User:Kcida10|Kcida10 Kcida10 (talk) (Uploads). - https://www.transportation.gov/fastlane/new-years-eve-ends-seaway-navigation-season, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47277919