Greenbush Twp, Mille Lacs County, MN
The French-speaking community in Greenbush- most from Franklin Co, NY & St Regis, Huntingdon Co, Quebec - donated land to establish this church, right next to their cemetery. The oldest headstone in the Greenbush Catholic Cemetery appears to be from 1872, the son of Alexander DeShaw . The church was razed in 1948, and all that is left of this small parish is the Greenbush Catholic Cemetery. The Church & cemetery records were lost when the old church was closed & the parishoners were transferred over to St Edwards, in Princeton.
Another Mille Lacs research & I have been working on recreating the records. Here are my records of folks buried in the Greenbush Catholic Cemetery.
Many of these early families migrated from the Hogansburg area, Franklin County, NY in the mid 1860s, although there was great variation in the spelling of the surnames. Here are a few: � Robideau, Robidou, Robideaux, Robidoux, Rabideau, Rubido � Blair, Belair; � Mailhot, Mallotte, Mallett � DesChamps, DeShaw, Shaw; � Grow, Gros, LeGros, Garrow, Garreau; � Jasmin, Jesmer . You can find them all at the Franklin, NY rootsweb site and the Franklin, NY usgennet site
Olive (Robideau) Anderson was one of the longest lived residents of the Princeton area. She was one of 16 children of Nels Robideau & Anna Grow. Nels was one of 14 children of Peter Robideau & Julia Jesmer, and brother to my Ggrandmother, Marguerite (Robideau) Mercier. . Peter & Julia were my GGgrandparents.
Olive died in 2003, at the age of 92. In an interview in 2002 she states that
"She became familiar with the Indian reservation in Mille Lacs County at an early age, Olive recalling at her home last Friday that she had made many trips to the reservation as a girl with her father. "He could talk Indian and he could talk French," Olive remembers. "My grandmother, my dad's mother, was 100 percent Chippewa Indian."
Olive states that Julia (Jesmer) Robideau was Native American, and could speak Chippewa/Ojibwa.
Julia's family tree is a well-researched French-Canadian family... but I believe Olive. Now I just have to figure out how this works.
Theory 1: Julia Jesmer was the daughter of Joseph Jasmin & Julia Plamondon. Joseph & Julia had 9 children. 8 baptismal records have been found. Julia's baptismal record has yet to be unearthed. The baptismal records were all at the St. Regis Catholic Church. The St. Regis Church was the local church, a mission church for the Akwesasne Mohawk people on the St. Regis reservation. Could Julia be a child of the Akwesasne Mohawk or Metis, adopted into a French-Canadian family, who then taught her son Nels to speak Mohawk, and her granddaughter Olive - raised in Mille Lacs near the Ojibwe peoples - accidentally merged these two peoples ?
Theory 2: Julia Plamondon's father was Ignace Plamondon. There were many Ignace Plamondons. The research states that Julia's father was the son of another Ignace Plamondon; Julia's father was born around 1784, died 1841. However, there was another Ignace Plamondon. He too was born around 1781, but he was born in Michigan of French & Native American parentage. As a young boy, he moved back to New York with his family, and continued his relationship with the St. Regis reservation. He died in 1879. Was Julia Plamondon the daughter of this Ignace Plamondon, part French, part Ojibwa? Did she learn Ojibwa from her father, to pass it along to her daughter Julia Jesmer, who then passed it to her son Nels Robideau?
Theory 3: Living amongst the Akwesasne Mohawk, Julia Jesmer must have surely picked up some of the language. Did Julia teach Mohawk to Nels, and was he able to communicate to the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwa with this language? This is the least likely theory. Notes from the internet: "Ojibwa is an Algonquian language, while Mohawk is an Iroquoian language. These languages are very different. *" "Where do the Chippewas (Ojibwa) live? The Chippewas are one of the largest American Indian groups in North America. There are nearly 150 different bands of Chippewa Indians living throughout their original home land in the northern United States (especially Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan)* ". This supports the theory that Ignace, born in Michigan, was Ojibwa.
I believe Olive when she states that her father communicated readily with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwa AND that her grandmother was Native American. The question is, did Nels learn to speak Ojibwa here? Or did he learn it at his mother's knee?
with matriarch Julia (Jesmer) Robideau.
My Ggrandmother, Marguerite, is just below & at Julia's right hand. Nels Robideau is the moustachioed gentleman, near the right side of the picture.
mercier_beaucoup at yahoo.com