LEWISTON — Christmas was Beatrice Jean Mascone’s favorite holiday, and she treasured the Christmas cards relatives sent over the years.
After Beatrice died in 2009 in Maryland, her daughter, Patti Mascone, went through a box of cards and letters she found in a closet.
“Of all the mementos that my mom saved, it was Christmas cards written in French. A lot of them,” and they were saved in pristine condition, Mascone said, including a small card signed by a child named Normand.
Although Mascone knew her mother had a brother who died young, she never asked for the details and Beatrice talked about him just once. So when Mascone found the Christmas card she wondered about the little boy and whether Normand could have been a relative.
Knowing her maternal ancestors were all from Canada, Mascone searched the Canadian census and found references to her grandparents, Camille and Alice Jean. Using online records, she followed them to Lewiston where they settled to raise their family.
According to birth certificates and border-crossing records, Camille Jean was born in Canada. He married Alice Deveau (also spelled Devost), and the couple had a daughter in 1922 in the Matane district of Quebec. They named her Beatrice.
In May of that year, the Jeans moved to Lewiston, crossing into the United States at Island Pond in Vermont. They moved into an apartment on Oxford Street, and Camille went to work in the mills.
On Oct. 10, 1924, Edmond Normand Jean — the little boy who signed Beatrice’s Christmas card — was born to Camille and Alice. Nearly five years later he died of peritonitis, complicated by appendicitis.
What started as a task to identify the child who signed a Christmas card nearly a century ago has became a project of respect for Mascone, one that has made her feel more connected to her family.
Mascone is a technical health care writer who lives in Maryland. Her father, an Italian named Attilio Mascone, died shortly after Beatrice did, and he left Mascone some notes about her mother’s family. Mascone never met her maternal relatives, but had always been curious about her Franco heritage.
What she found out is that she’s related to the original settlers of Quebec through the King’s Daughters, a group of hundreds of women whom King Louis XIV moved to Canada between 1663 and 1673 to encourage male immigrants to settle there.
Her grandparents worshipped in the parish of St.-Leon-le-Grand in Quebec, and her mother’s godparents were Napoleon and Josephine Devost — an aunt and uncle.
During her genealogy search, she learned that her grandmother, Alice, died in 1936 after a monthlong sickness. She was 36 years old and died at Lewiston’s Ste. Marie’s General Hospital and was buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery. Beatrice and her siblings — Lionel, Fleur-Ange and Armand — then moved with Camille to Hartford, Conn. There, Camille filled out a World War II draft card when he was 47 years old.
Mascone’s great-grandparents were Azilda Dube and Charles Jean, and she just recently found out that her mother’s great-aunt and uncle, Adeline Jean and Alphonse Vaillancourt, also moved from Quebec to Lewiston, where they lived on River Street and had at least 15 children. Given that number of children, Mascone hopes she may have some relatives still living here.
Once Mascone found out about her relatives, after so many years of not knowing, she wanted to see for herself where they lived. So in September she traveled to Lewiston to find Holy Cross Church, the same church pictured in a Polaroid image of her mother’s graduation in 1936.
She walked around Oxford, Jeffrey and River streets, stood and admired the Great Falls and walked past the mills. Eventually, Mascone went to St. Peter’s Cemetery to see if she could find Normand and Alice Jean’s grave sites and “pay respect to my grandmother.”
She found the gravesites, but neither was marked. Mascone said she found the absence of gravemarkers “heartbreaking.”
During the Depression, and for some years afterward, many families could not afford gravestones to mark the plots. That is particularly evident in the Franco section, Mascone said, where she found her relatives’ plots based on cemetery records.
As soon as she saw the unmarked plots, Mascone said she felt compelled to mark them, to note her relatives’ existence. So she worked with the staff at St. Peter’s to design paver stones that fit the look of that area of the cemetery, something that would blend in with the stones already there, and hired Collette Monuments to craft a suitable French design.
The pavers are done and will be placed on the plots in the spring, which means Mascone will come back to Lewiston to see the pavers in place.
“I love the falls and want to see that again,” she said, suspecting that her family heard the falls all the time from their apartment on Oxford Street.
Mascone said she would also be interested in meeting any local relatives she can find.
“I wish I knew my grandmother,” Mascone said, “I wish I knew if I looked like her.”
Alice Jean was a short woman, as is Mascone, but that’s the only thing she knows they had in common.
The work to identify her relatives has become important to her, Mascone said, and she intends to pass along all the information she has found to other relatives.
“It helps you understand your parents and where you came from, and it makes you feel part of something.”
She encourages others to make the journey she did, to ask family members about their personal history and to get names and birthplaces of deceased relatives before that oral history is lost.
“They may not want to talk about it” if the history is painful, Mascone said, “but ask them to share what they would like to share.”
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
Some of the sites Patti Mascone used to trace her maternal relatives were:
Portland Diocese: http://portlanddiocese.net/cemeteries-and-funerals
Quebec-specific archives: www.yourfolks.com
Canadian Census: www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm
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- Camille and Alice Jean were married in Canada and moved to Lewiston in 1923. They never met their granddaughter, Patti Mascone, who recently traveled to Maine to learn more about her relatives.
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- Birth certificate for Edmond Normand Jean, born in Lewiston Oct. 10, 1924. Jean died in 1929 from peritonitis, complicated by appendicitis.
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- A diagram of single graves, marked and unmarked, at St. Peter’s Cemetery on Switzerland Road in Lewiston. Patti Mascone of Maryland has recently purchased two paver stones to mark the gravesites of her maternal relatives: Her grandmother, Alice Jean, who died in 1936, and uncle, Normand Jean, who died in 1923.
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- This Christmas card signed by Normand Jean sparked Patti Mascone to search for her maternal relatives who lived in Lewiston during the 1920s and 30s.
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- Part of a collection of Christmas cards sent to Beatrice Jean by relatives in Lewiston and Quebec.
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- This Christmas card, signed by Charles and Azilda Jean nearly a century ago, was part of a collection of cards and letters Patti Mascone found in her mother’s belongings in 2009.
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- A Mass card for Azilda Dube Jean, wife of Charles Jean and great-grandmother to Patti Mascone.
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- Patti Mascone of Maryland found a large collection of letters and Christmas cards written in French after her mother, Beatrice Jean, died in 2009.
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- Hugh LeMaster, left of Collette Monuments delivers a set of paver stones to St. Peters Cemetery Executive Director Gerry Raymond in early December. The stones will be set in place in the spring when the ground thaws at the Lewiston cemetery.
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- Camille Jean, who was born in St. Mathew, Quebec, was living in Hartford, Conn., when he signed his World War II draft card. He was 47 years old.
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