The Chabot Family

            While interning in Michigan I processed a French-Canadian family’s papers from turn the turn of the 20^th century. The Chabot family immigrated to Lake Linden from Quebec in the 1890s. Once settled in, the family had five children. The collection was interesting because of the types of material that they kept, it seemed unusual. Besides French-Canadian newspapers from town, they kept booklets on how to raise squab.

            The Squab catalogue boasted that this type of profession was good for the elderly and feeble. There were various other publications on other types of poultry, but it just seemed strange to me, since there were no pictures of the family. They lived in Lake Linden, and were one of the few families that did not work for the copper mines, they worked in general and clothing stores. Lake Linden was and is still a small community populated by the French-Canadian decedents, which is also a farming community.

            It made more sense after I read the accession log. The family that moved into the Chabot house in the 1990s was cleaning out the attic and found these papers. The materials there were intentionally left behind, they were papers that were unimportant. It made me think, what conclusions people would draw from the materials that I left behind? Now when I start to process the collection, I think to myself, were these left behind on purpose?