March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Van Buren’s history captured in photos

As 74-year-old Pauline Doucette looked at a photograph of Emile LeBrun’s store in Van Buren, memories of her girlhood on High Street flooded back.

The photograph was one of more than 70 pictures of turn-of-the-century Van Buren that have been matted, framed and hung on the walls of one wing of Borderview Manor by owners John and Noreen Pelletier. The photos are only part of the massive collection of Martine Pelletier, John Pelletier’s aunt.

“It was heaven to me,” Doucette recalled of her youth in Van Buren. “We were all happy. We didn’t have to lock our doors. We didn’t have to lock our windows. … All the people worked hard. When one of us was sick, the whole neighborhood was there. There was no money involved. If a family was burnt out, the whole town helped out.”

Doucette was the third of the 13 children in the Jacques family and later had 10 children of her own.

The LeBruns gave Doucette one of her first paying jobs at a hotel and dining room that they also operated in Van Buren. She earned $1 for three to four hours of washing dishes, making salads and “whatever else needed to be done.” In spite of the time’s strict moral guidelines, Doucette confided, the hotel sometimes was used for trysts by out-of-towners.

“I saved every little penny I made,” she said, to buy paper, pencils and books for school. “We even paid for our catechism,” she said. Nylons were a luxury to be savored and taken off right after school.

“I loved school,” she said, so much that she insisted on finishing after taking time off to care for her ill mother. “I would have graduated in 1938,” she said, but had to delay that by a year.

The photos not only bring back memories for local elders, they also offer young people a look at the town’s past.

“People my age … have no other way of knowing what Van Buren was like then,” said Jason Parent, who handles the home’s public relations.

Most of the photos on display at Borderview were taken by Joseph Michael Bouchard, born in Quebec in 1869. After moving to Van Buren, he became a prominent early 20th-century photographer and shared a building with U.S. Customs. A few others were taken by C.C. Caron, another Van Buren photographer of the same era.

After retiring, Bouchard gave most of his glass plates to Thomas Michaud, but while the plates were in Michaud’s possession, most of them were damaged by fire and water. Martine Pelletier obtained the undamaged plates from Michaud’s son and daughter-in-law.

It was while sifting through Martine’s belongings that John Pelletier came across the photographs.

“It would have been a sin to leave them in albums,” he said. Matting and framing ended only after he cleaned out most area Wal-Mart stores of matching wooden frames.

Martine Pelletier, who never married, was the daughter of an attorney and lived most of her life in the Main Street house in Van Buren where she was born. She devoted her life to teaching others, and taught first and second grades at Sacred Heart School and St. John School, both closed now, for 40 years. She also served as one of the town’s first librarians, volunteering for many years.

Martine Pelletier, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, is a patient at the nursing home. Before she fell ill, people from all over the country came to her in search of their roots. It was not unusual to see strange cars with out-of-state plates in her driveway.

“Her house was open to everyone,” her nephew said. “She treated these people like her family.”

Whenever the town office or local Catholic parish got requests for genealogical or historical information, they’d pass them on to Martine, who dated each inquirer’s envelope as the request was fulfilled.

“Her record keeping was meticulous,” he said. “Martine saved everything.” Her family has spent over a year sifting through her collections and has yet to finish. It has taken them on a journey into Van Buren’s past.

Among the things she hoarded were church bulletins spanning almost four decades; resident directories; wedding invitations and funeral cards from as long ago as 1910; miniatures and stamps, fans and antique jewelry; electrical fixtures; books as much as 100 years old; postcards; and newspaper accounts of local events. She’d buy three copies of the local weekly — one for clipping, one to save and one to have bound at the year’s end.

Martine kept the deed papers her father used in his law office and stored them in a custom-made cabinet spanning a whole wall in the family home. She kept clothing worn by her parents and an aunt, gloves and wire-rimmed glasses and thousands of place mats, many brought home from trips taken by family members. She filled five rooms on her home’s top floor, most of the ground floor and part of the garage.

In the mid 1970s, she fulfilled one of her dreams and helped to found the Acadian Village, a complex of nearly 20 old homesteads, barns and businesses.

Another contribution was her three books on Van Buren’s past. Her photo collection led to “People and Places of Van Buren in the Early 1900s” in 1976. In 1979, she wrote “Van Buren History: A Folkloric History of Van Buren’s Settlers” with her cousin Monica Ferretti. When Van Buren marked its centennial in 1981, Martine compiled a mix of photos and text for a special publication.

The photos at Borderview include scenes from the potato harvest when it was done with horse-drawn diggers; shots from Van Buren’s heyday as a lumber boomtown; depictions of the town’s earliest schools, bands and athletic teams; its old hotels and businesses; and religious heritage.

An inscription accompanying the photos reads: “They hang on these walls as a tribute to Martine’s preservation of our rich heritage.”

The photo collection can be viewed during visiting hours at the nursing home, daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.


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