Although worthwhile, researching a family tree is overwhelming. Each generation of ancestors spreads those branches further, to Ireland, Germany, France, Canada.

Which limb to explore next?

Let’s look to the north and remember Achille and Jane Plante.

Here they are on their wedding day in 1901. Both born in Canada, the shoemaker and his bride were 27 and 25 years old. They’d immigrated to the U.S. a few years earlier.

Here’s the fancy Certificate of Marriage they received a month after their wedding. (Note it is the “Gothic Edition.”)

Achille was born on October 21, 1874 in Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, a city in Quebec, Canada. He was just 19 when he immigrated to the United States.

His wife’s name differs, depending which document you check. Dad remembers her as Jennie. The above wedding certificate states her name as Anna Jean. Her obituary calls her Jane.

We’ll call her Jennie.

Dad’s maternal grandmother, Jennie, also grew up in Quebec, in Wolfestown. She was born on April 27, 1876. Miss Hurley immigrated to Maine in 1898 and married Achille on October 28, 1901.

They settled in Auburn, Maine, and had nine children. Grandma was their oldest, born in 1903. Then there were twins, born prematurely, who died on that same day. Six more children followed.

Here’s a recent Google Street View, showing where they lived, on South Main Street in Auburn, Maine. This beautiful cared-for house was built in 1900.

Great-grandpa Achille (pronounced ah-SHEEL) applied for American citizenship when he was 43.

Sadly, Achille passed away when he was only 51. The cause of death is listed as pneumonia and his obituary mentions he’d retired six years prior. Dad has a memory that his grandfather’s death was related to the influenza epidemic. We’d assumed that was a reference to the devastating worldwide flu pandemic in 1918-1919, but according to the Public Health Reports, there was another severe outbreak in 1926.

Oldest daughter Lucie (my grandma) stepped in to help with the younger children as her mom earned a living to support the household.

It was a hardscrabble existence.

Great-grandma Jennie remarried in 1933, to a widower named Charles Scott.

Dad remembers his grandma visiting them in Lowell when he was young. A “tiny, little thing,” she liked to walk briskly to church. One time she left the house well before he did. He was an altar boy and was scheduled to serve Mass that morning and really had to hustle to get to church before his grandma arrived.

A no-nonsense grandma, Jennie made sure to compliment her grandson on his willingness to help with chores, even as a four year old.

“She called me a ‘champion dishwiper,'” Dad recalls, with just a touch of pride in his voice. “I’d stand on a chair with a towel wrapped around my waist. Jennie would fuss at how shiny I could get the glassware.”

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