Marie Rosa Angeline Lemay alias Adeline

My mother was born on a farm in the parish of Ste. Emmelie, County of Lotbiniere in the Province of Quebec, Canada on May 13, 1913. She was named Adeline and was known by that name until the day she and her future husband, my father, reported to the local priest to obtain their marriage license. Her birth record showed that based on the date of birth, she was in fact named Marie Rosa Angeline, and that the name Marie Adeline had been the name given to her sister born the year before her who had died shortly after her birth.

This was a bit of a shock!. What should they do now? Should she continue to use the name, Adeline, when she was legally Rosa? Her priest suggested that she do just that but that she would have to sign all legal documents Marie Rosa Angeline alias Adeline. That seemed totally absurd to her, so they decided that they had only one alternative and that was, that she abandon the name she had used for 21 years and from now on be known as Rosa. Dominique had courted Adeline and was now going to marry Rosa. And Rosa she was for the rest of her life.

I tell this story about her name because it was a good example of how my mother handled things. It was a bit of a nuisance but she could live with it and figured everyone else would get used to it too.

In April 1935, Adeline Lemay, newly named Rosa Angeline married Dominique Demers in their parish church of

Ste. Emmelie, a small village on the St. Lawrence about 50 miles southwest of Quebec City. They partied for three days with their families and friends as was the custom and then drove to Montreal in Dominique’s black Ford sedan with trunks tied onto a platform on the back of the car. How romantic was this for her! Here she was, a simple country farm girl, married to her handsome, fun-loving Dominique, eight years her senior, a man of the world (after all, he had visited and worked in New York City) and she was now on her way to live in the United States.

She remembered the first time he had paid any attention to her, at “une veillee” at a neighbor’s house; he had asked her to dance. She was a good dancer and she swept him off his feet. They had a long distance courtship as he was working for Finch Pruyn in the Adirondack Mountains and would only come home four or five times a year. Farm life was all she knew but she was confident that Dominique would take care of everything; she could depend on him. He had a reputation for being a responsible and caring son and there was no doubt that he would be a wonderful husband.

Their plan was to stay at her brother, Marcel’s, for a while in Montreal to do some sightseeing (this was her first time in the big city). Dominique would then return to his lumbering job in the Adirondacks by himself and Rosa would stay with her brother’s family until June. They had made arrangements for her to meet with Antoinette Lacaire, the bride of another French Canadian lumberman who worked with Dominique, and they would take the train together from Montreal to Tupper Lake where they would be met by their husbands. Again I imagine how daring they were to do this—two naïve country girls understanding not a word of English and heading out together on this great adventure. Why didn’t Rosa go with Dominique when he returned to the US? We can only guess that he was on a temporary work visa and couldn’t bring a spouse into the country.

Well, the young ladies never got any farther than customs; they didn’t have the proper papers to gain admission to the U.S. They must have been trying to enter illegally because they were both penalized; they would not be able to enter the country for two years, not even to visit. Back they went to Montreal. Imagine how surprised Dominique and Etienne Lacaire were when the train arrived in Tupper Lake with no wives aboard and how discouraged the girls must have been. They were on their own to make a decision about what to do next. Was Rosa’s confidence in Dominique at all diminished? Maybe a little but she never spoke of it that way; it was just a disappointing way to start this new chapter in her life.

Rosa returned to her brother’s in Montreal and then decided to return to the farm to live with her parents. That was a decision she often regretted. She found it boring; the only socializing that was allowed as a married woman was to go to meetings of “Les Bonnes Fermieres” (The Good Farmers’ Wives), a grange-type women’s organization. Two years of waiting dragged on. They wrote romantic letters. She would copy poems in a fancy handwriting on paper she decorated with pictures of flowers cut out from magazines to mail to him. Dominique came home as often as he could during the slow lumbering seasons. She realized then that if she had stayed in Montreal, she could have gotten a job and

been closer to Dominique. Time would have passed faster.

Finally the two years were up. Dominique had established residency and had gotten a job critical to preparing for war in the iron mines of Port Henry, NY. Rosa obtained her green card and was admitted to the U.S. on April 20, 1937 five months pregnant. Their first child, my sister Angele, would be American as would their other four children. Dominique received his naturalization papers on September 26, 1938, but my mother never did. When my father died in 1955, many of her family felt she would return to Canada, but she never seriously considered that option. This was her children’s country and hers. Her green card didn’t indicate it and she never was able to conquer the English language, but when she passed away, she considered herself American.

My mother’s attitude toward life greatly influenced the five of us, her children, as we watched her cope with the death of an infant, her continuous battle with diabetes, the accidental death of our father when she was 42 and the financial situation in which she found herself. She somehow was able to help us all through college or trade school, and then as we all moved away, she managed to become self-sufficient enough to live alone for many years. When the winters in North Creek got too long and lonely for her, she would close up the house and move in with one of us. But when spring came, she was always anxious to go back to her house, get her garden started and work on whatever projects she had that kept her busy.

When it became evident that she should give up the house altogether, she got right into the business of distributing her household items, selling or giving away the things no one wanted and prepared herself to move in with me and my family. More than anything else, she was determined to be useful and productive so she took on certain household jobs and made them her responsibility. Because of the continuing deterioration of her eyesight, she had given up her favorite pastime, sewing, and spent her leisure time weaving rugs on a simple loom that she had built herself. Watching “General Hospital” was the only “idle” activity she allowed herself.

On Wednesday morning, November 23, 1994, the day before Thanksgiving, she passed away in her sleep. A month or so before, she had finished her last rug and had labeled it, “Mon dernier tapis, le 15 octobre, 1994.” On Tuesday, she had made several “tourtieres”, French Canadian meat pies, for Thanksgiving and for the families to take home. All her affairs were settled; her work was finished. Her whole family would be in Saratoga Springs to celebrate Thanksgiving together, so maybe it was a good time to go

Whenever I think of my mother, I remember her first of all as someone who accepted life as it was, made the best of whatever was handed to her, looked at any obstacle or curve in the road as an inconvenience that might require a few more steps and a bit more work to get around, but you just did what you had to do and you looked ahead to the better things that would come in life, with good spirit, a laugh, many a song and a rhythmic tap of her feet. With a little help from Jesus and a lot of help from Mary via her rosary, she overcame a multitude of hurdles in her life and the lives of her children and grandchildren.

Rita Carozza

March, 2003