Difference between revisions of "Onesime Gagnon (1892)"

Revision as of 10:40, 22 February 2015

Onesime Gagnon
Nationality:	American
Born:	March 26, 1892 Soldiers Pond, Maine
Died:	January 8, 1968 Livermore Falls, Maine
Father:	Alexandre Gagnon
Mother:	Sophia Labbé
Spouse:	Rosa Yvonne Michaud
Married:	June 27, 1916 Van Buren, Maine
Children:	Wilfred "Bill" Gagnon Cecile Rosa Gagnon Blanche Alice Gagnon Jeanette Gagnon Joseph Albert Adelard Gagnon Rita Lumina Gagnon Norman Raymond Gagnon Robert Ronald Gagnon
Religion:	Roman Catholic
Residence:	Soldiers Pond, Maine Livermore Falls, Maine
Profession:	Paper mill worker

Onesime and Rosa

Rosa and Onesime met in April, 1916, when Onesime was 24. He worked at Brown Lumber Mill as a shingle buncher. At the time, mill work was seasonal. In the fall and winter the river would freeze, stopping all log traffic on the river. The mill would shut down until the spring when the ice would melt and release all the logs. But the spring drive of logs was a busy time.

A few months after meeting, on June 26, 1916, they were married at St. Remi church in Keegan, Maine, by Father St. Martin. They made their home in Keegan, but in the fall of 1916 when the mill shut down, Rosa and Onesime went to Wallagrass for the winter.

Rosa’s parents, who had moved to the northern part of Maine in 1914, never liked “up country”, so they had decided to return to Chisholm. Her father was soon able to get a job in the paper mill in town. In February 1917, Rosa’s father spoke to the foreman of the finishing room about the possibility of a job for Onesime. Fortunately, the mill was hiring, and the foreman said yes, tell him to come, he has a job. Onesime worked in the J.P. paper mill from then until his retirement on March 31, 1957, at the age of 65 years.

In April 6, 1917, war was declared war with Germany. Onesime was lucky that he was not called up for war. Two days later, Rosa delivered their first baby, a son named Joseph Onesime Wilfred. The following year Marie Rose Cecilia was born on May 6, 1918. Other babies arrived shortly thereafter. Marie Blanche Alice on July 7, 1919, Marie Yvonne Jeannette on April 5, 1921 (who died 25 days later), Joseph Albert Adelard on August 3, 1922, Marie Rita Lumina on May 30, 1924.

In the summer of 1926, Rosa and Onesime bought a house down on Shuy Flat. This allowed them to be near Rosa’s parents. Rosa’a father was sick in bed with cancer, and her mother needed assistance caring for him. At the time, the children in the family were: Bill, 9, Cecile, 8, Blanche, 7, Albert, 4, and Rita, 2.

On January 26, 1927 at 5:30 in the morning, their house burned down. Onesime was able to wake all the children, and get them out. He threw Albert down the stairs in the excitement, and grabbed Rita, who was a baby, by her arm. He ran down the stairs as they were collapsing, falling to the floor at the last several steps. They lost everything in the house, and were left homeless with five children. Luckily, there was a little insurance, so in a week they were able to move to a place in Chisholm and started housekeeping again.

On February 12, 1927, Rosa’s father died at the age of 58 years, still a young man. Sometime later, Rosa’s mother married Pierre Bolduc, who had sold them the house in town. Sometime in 1927, Albert was out playing, when he was run over by a truck. He was injured and lay in bed for several days, having difficulty regaining consciousness. He later recovered fully.

Then on April 8, 1927, Onesime’s only sister Odelie died at the age of 32 years, less than two years after her husband passed away. By then, she had been crippled and living in a wheel chair seven years. When Odelie died, Onesime’s parents, who had gone to live with her to help, came back and lived in Chisholm.

Not long after, Onesime’s mother became ill with cancer of the liver. At one point, it was thought that she had died. The custom at the time was to lay out the body of a family member in the house, where friends and other family members would visit, pray and grieve. Common people could not afford to have a funeral home provide services, and this meant that bodies were often not embalmed. Albert remembered the time his grandmother was laid out in the house, and the wake being in progress. His grandmother, however, was not dead, but only in a coma. She abruptly sat up and wanted to know why everyone was there. The children ran from the house, thinking they had seen a ghost. It certainly caused quite a commotion. She did eventually die on January 26, 1928 in Onesime’s home.

A few months later, in June of 1928, Onesime’s father wanted to go back up country. As Onesime was the only child left, he encouraged Onesime to move back with his family to a new town in the Northern part of Maine called Madawaska. The Frazer’s had built a paper mill there – it was a small town then, but didn’t take very much time later to boom into a big city.

There was tension between Rosa, Onesime and Onesime’s father, and they didn’t get along very well. Even so, Onesime and Rosa packed up and moved back to nearby Keegan, where they had been married.