Welcome to FrancoAmericanGravy, a family history and genealogy site filled with stories of families descended from my grandparents and great grandparents who lived in upstate New York in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The families and their locations are
Mylott and Glode from Whitehall, Waterford, Coopersville and Champlain – and towns along the Champlain Canal in New York.
Bissonnette and Beauvais from Cohoes, New York.
Rivet and Lacasse from Cohoes, New York.
Wills and Reed, originally from Cornwall, then Bolton in southern Quebec, Moriah, New York and North Pownal, Vermont. Their stories are here.
I know well some of the people and their places; others I only know through reading and researching. With one exception, Wills-Reed, the families in these stories emigrated from Old Regime, France to Canada and Acadia in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The people in these stories were from the third estate – commoners. In the 17th century, they were the pioneers of New France: tradesmen and traders, ‘filles du roi’ who married soldiers who became farmers, voyageurs, mariners, weavers and laborers. In the 18th century, many were deported from Acadia (present day Nova Scotia), shipped to New England where they lived as exiles and indentured servants. During the 19th century they followed the French speaking diaspora from Quebec to New York and New England, leaving farms to become dayworkers, Champlain canalers, miners, masons, iron workers, and factory textile laborers in the new industrialized American nation.
Contrary to the hopes and dreams of family members, there are no royal bloodlines. However, if you account for overcoming hardships and their endurance, there are certainly many noble women and men.
Currently, only the Wills Family site is online and is here. The Wills Family.
Some stories on this site began years ago on my blog.
Thank you for reading.
