HENRY JOSEPH QUIRION – A SILLY GRANDFATHER?

Have any of you seen a copy of this book?  The book is from the Postcard History Series – Waterville by Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.  Well if you are a descendant of Henry Joseph Quirion then you are missing out on a picture of him in his early years.  Today this is what this story is about.

Henry Joseph (“Honore” in Quebec) Quirion was born on the 22^nd of April in 1894 in what was then called St. Francois-d’Assisi in the County of Beauce, of the Province of Quebec in the Country of Canada.  He was the son of Sylvain Quirion and his second wife Lucie Thibodeau.  Now in French speaking Quebec they kept the ways of their ancestors and the wives stayed with their maiden names even after marriage.  But that is for another story.

Henry was a twin, his sister Marie Alphonsine died at 16 months old, but he had four other sisters to dote on him from this marriage.  There were also four brothers and two sisters from the first marriage as well, that I have found so far.  Henry’s mother was 20 years younger than his father and it was a loveless marriage.  She was brought in mostly to raise his children as well as to produce more.  Large families were needed back then to keep the farms going so the families could survive.  This led to many problems.

In 1901 Henry (age 7), his mother and four sisters were driven by horse and buggy by their father and brought down the Canada Road with their belongings and dropped off in Waterville, Maine with the father returning to Quebec.  You see being Catholic you couldn’t get a divorce and the only alternative was one of them had to leave, they couldn’t live in the same area and I guess the same country.  The oldest sister Philomene was 18, Rosanna 16, Josephine 14, Amanda 12 and of course Henry was 7.  Lucie was suddenly a single mom at 51 in a strange town and country.  Lucie and the older girls sought out work and Amanda was left home to care for Henry.  They were living in the French part of Waterville nicknamed the South End.

Henry was allowed to go to school which made it easier on Amanda who cared for the home.  He was a typical boy of the time period, and had plenty of French friends.  They like to play games – stick ball, go fishing by the river, find scraps and make things; whatever they could do to pass the time.  One of the things he took an interest in which brings us back to the book was a type of acting.  This picture which appears on page 127 of the book was taken before he married Eda Marie Landry on the 24^th of July in 1916.  She knew of his “escapades” as she called it because she was going to “knock that silliness right out of him once they got married” as she told me when she gave me the picture.

Years later in 2013 when the book came out and I was looking at it at someone’s house lo and behold there was that picture.  It states under the picture “This real-photo postcard mailed from Waterville in 1913 provides no clues as to who these costumed individuals were or why they sat together before the camera in a photographer’s studio.  Where they attending a costume party, players in a local theatrical performance, or just preparing for Halloween night?”

Well I immediately wrote to Mr. Shettleworth whom I had met on several occasions in my genealogy quest.  He was the Maine State Historian and Director of the Maine Historic Commission and just had to let him know what I knew about this picture.  That the gentleman in the back row with the large X over his head was my paternal grandfather Henry Joseph Quirion and that picture was taken at the Waterville Opera House when he was in a play.  I even told him what my grandmother said what she was going to do about it once they got married.  He emailed me back said he was happy to finally know something about the picture, the only one in the book he didn’t have anything about.

Months later, Mr. Shettleworth came to Waterville to speak at the Opera House and of course I had to be there since he would be talking about his book.  Front row seats and on the stage a very large screen as he talked and produced many of the pictures from the book.  Then at the very end he started to tell everyone about this one picture in the book he didn’t know anything about until someone wrote to him and told him the story behind it and he looked over and saw me sitting there.  Like he said 100 years ago that group probably sat on that very stage and had that photograph taken and there it was big and bold for the world (Waterville at least) to see it and my (and yours) grandfather up there in the lights once again!