PLATTSBURGH — A comprehensive history of Catholics on the borderlands in this region didn’t exist, so Dr. Mark Richard spent eight years writing one into existence.
His forthcoming book, “Catholics Across Borders: Canadian Immigrants in the North Country, Plattsburgh, New York, 1850-1950” (SUNY Press, 2024), is a community study that examines the evolution of a French-speaking population in the northern borderlands of New York over a century of historical time, offering some fascinating contrasts with the more studied francophone textile mill centers of New England.”
The hardcover book is available for $99 from SUNY Press. https://sunypress.edu/Books/C/Catholics-across-Borders
INTERVIEW
RC: Why did you write this book?
MR: I’m a historian of French-Canadian migration to the United States and of the acculturation and immigration of Franco-Americans into U.S. society and most of the research has been done on industrial centers of New England. Very little on New York state and very little in the borderland regions of any of the northeastern states. About three decades ago, several people from the Capitol District made a presentation at the University of Maine where I was a graduate student in history and made the comment that New York’s history needs to be included in this broader history. I actually went on to work against that trend by publishing a couple of books on New England, and now that I’m here in Plattsburgh, NY, thought that I would extend my research and skills to this area as well. So, that was my motivation and inspiration.
There was a scholar who wrote on French-Canadians in Cohoes, NY and Susan Ouellette, who used to teach history at St. Michael’s College, had published a book of essays that had several essays on French-Canadians in the North. Other than that, that was it. But no one had written this comprehensive history that I’ve put together.
RC: What was your process?
MR: This one took about seven to eight years from start to finish, and actually it is one of the quicker books I’ve written. I have three other books published, and each of the others took at least 10 years from start to finish. It begins by poking around the local archives such as the Plattsburgh Public Library Local History Collection, and trying to figure out what kind of materials are available. Of course, I used the resources of Feinberg Library and the college campus. and then, I just started to follow the leads. It turned out for this project as with my last two academic books. One of my books was a social studies textbook. The other two are academic books. I found that Catholic repositories were a valuable source of information. So what I thought was going to be a local project ended up taking me to places like Ottawa, Ontario where the Sisters of Charity of Ottawa have their archives. It took me to Levis, Quebec where the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis, who used to run the school at Our Lady of Victory Parish has their archives, and then to Ossining, NY, where the Dominican Nuns have their archives.
What I thought was going to be a local project ended up taking me quite far away from Plattsburgh as I explored the repositories of Catholic archives. The Catholic Church is a good keeper of records, and I found a lot about the history of this area through the materials that the nuns and some of the priests kept as well as some of religious brothers who taught in Plattsburgh.
While I was doing the research, I kept track of photographs that I came across. Then I picked some that seemed to capture well some of the different people. So I have a picture of all the religious orders that I write extensively about and the prominent people like Dr. LaRocque, a French-Canadian doctor. In each archive, I’d come across a few and in the end I think I selected about oh, 15 or 16.
RC: Did you have any big surprises or discoveries?
MR: Probably the biggest finding and the biggest surprise to me is that in most communities of the Northeast there was a lot of tension and friction between Irish immigrants and French-Canadian ones. But here in Plattsburgh, there were more examples of cooperation rather than tension. That led to a different historical account. There are lots of similarities that I found here in Plattsburgh with the more populated centers of New England, but the biggest difference is that there were more instances of cooperation between those two ethnic groups here in the North Country than I’ve ever found in any other community. So, it lead to a different story.
RC: Did geography impact the relationships between the Irish and French-Canadian immigrants?
MR: This area is much closer to Montreal than most of those other areas. There was a lot of exchange with Montreal, especially with religious personnel like the Oblate Priests. There were the Brothers of Christian Instruction in La Prairie, which is just outside of Montreal. So that helped facilitate the movement of religious personnel here. But in terms of the remoteness not necessarily because the religious orders were able to get here, probably, a little more easier than some of the other places.
What seemed to make a differences was the ethnic composition of the orders. So the Oblate priests had Irish and French-Canadian and French members who lived in the rectory here in Plattsburgh. and they conducted the two parishes, the French-Canadian parish of the St. Pierre, formerly St. Peter’s because now it’s part of Holy Cross, and they also conducted St. John’s Church. So the Irish Oblate oversaw that church for a number of years, and that led to a different story here in Plattsburgh.
RC: Why did you choose the time frame 1850-1950 for your book?
MR: The French-Canadian community here in Plattsburgh coalesced in the 1850s with the construction of St. Pierre Church. So that was the starting point, and then the ending point, the 1950s was sort of the peak period for the Catholic institutions of Plattsburgh. While I could have kept going, I had so much material at that point that I had to come up with an ending point. But what I did is I wrote an epilogue that summarizes what happened from 1950 to the present.
RC: Will you develop a new course around your book?
MR: It could become a textbook. I need to think about that. I do share some of the stories that I learned in the course of my research with the students of my current classes. But I haven’t thought yet about whether or not to build a course specifically around this book because a lot of it is Catholic religious history.
RC: What is your next project?
MR: I’ve already started working on the next project, but not a book project. So I’m taking a break by doing some smaller pieces that will be journal articles rather than book length. I’ve written four books, so I will probably work on articles for a while yet. You can imagine when it takes eight to 10 years, it’s exhausting.