Alsatian Immigration to North America, 1850–1914
Jean Noël Grandhomme (Université de Lorraine à Nancy)
My main contribution to the study of Alsatians and Lorrainers in North America is the forthcoming publication of a series of either previously unpublished accounts or relatively unknown accounts last published more than a century ago, most often in very limited editions and therefore very little known. Each publication will include a critical introduction and a scholarly apparatus. The collection will be supplemented by accounts, correspondence, and diaries written by individuals from regions other than Alsace and Lorraine. Although each publication will have its own identity, the collection will form a coherent whole and serve as one of the lasting legacies of the TSMF partnership project.
As it stands, the collection features the following documents:
- The writings of Jean Gaire, an Alsatian priest who helped found communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the early twentieth century.
- The 1872 account by Henri de Lamothe, a Lorrainer, of his Canadian travels, titled Excursion au Canada et à la Rivière Rouge du Nord (a work subsidized by the Canadian government with the aim of attracting settlers to Manitoba).
- The war stories of Claudius Corneloup, an Alsatian, who enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force’s 22nd Battalion (French Canadian) during the First World War.
- The diary of Jules Chaumont, a nineteenth-century emigrant from Lorraine who settled in the United States.
