File

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.