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This subseries covers over fifty years of correspondence between Louis-Joseph Papineau and his sister Marie-Rosalie Papineau Dessaulles, illustrating their strong attachment to each other. These letters chronicle the major milestones in their respective personal lives, from youth to the birth of Marie-Rosalie's grandchildren. Although Louis-Joseph Papineau occasionally refers to his professional activities at court, in the militia (he served during the War of 1812), and his time in the Parliament of Lower Canada, the correspondence as a whole focusses on family matters.
From 1811 to 1814, when Papineau and his sister were young adults, various weddings were often a primary topic. He was sometimes sharply critical, as in this passage from a letter dated December 9, 1811: "In the final days before Advent[,] Miss Adelaide St-Germain and Mr. Laviolette wed, untying the knot of virginity. They have but a thin soup, their tender love, as their only sustenance. To excuse them and forgive them for getting married without having two cents to rub together, wagging tongues are saying it is a shotgun marriage, for the usual good reason. I would not write you such vicious slander but the trees are the only ones who can hear your babbling and they are silent as death." He often contrasts the solitude of his sister, who, before her marriage, lived in the peaceful family seigneury of Petite-Nation, with the chaos of society: "You have no idea of the current state of society. Everyone uses espionage, intrigue, and lies as weapons to hurt one another and their internal discontent is compounded by the fear of external evils." His letter of May 15, 1816, discusses his sister's marriage to Jean Dessaulles, with whom he served in the Assembly. He informs Marie-Rosalie, in a letter dated February 5, 1818, of his own upcoming nuptials with Julie Bruneau at the end of the parliamentary session. In September 1833, he sends his son Lactance to his sister when the boy is going to enter Collège de Saint-Hyacinthe. Several months later, in a missive dated April 2, 1834, he thanks her for taking such good care of his son and expresses his happiness at the growing friendship between Lactance and his cousin Louis. In a letter from July 29, 1834, he explains that his son Ernest has died of cholera. A letter, with an annotation dated spring 1838, alludes to Papineau's exile to the United States, where he found refuge in 1837. He is saddened because he must not communicate with the members of his family in order to prevent them from suffering future harm or persecution.
Language: The documents are in French.
Last update: August 30, 2017
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This project is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Azrieli Foundation and Canadian Heritage.