In addition to missing photos, I am also looking for missing letters. I photocopied letters that had been in my Grandmother’s possession. Here is a copy of one of the letters and a translation.
Note: Odilon Archambault was a Senate messenger. He worked in this position for approximately 30 years from 1862 to 1892. He became a permanent messenger on May 5, 1882. (Unpublished Source: 23 August 1977 letter from H.J. Smith, Public Affairs Section, Manuscript Division of the Public Archives Canada)
21 January 2012
The world was just as chaotic for the fur trader and buffalo hunter in Montana in the late 1870s as it has been for workers seeking employment during the last few years. Like the workers who suddenly found their world void of work and in need of a new direction or a new set of skills, the trader and the hunter could no longer depend on the buffalo or a familiar way of life.
By 1879, the Métis in Montana were being forced to make a decision. They needed to settle somewhere. For my ancestors that choice was Spring Creek. They were thrown into a situation that they may or may not have wanted, but they took with them their best assets.
Among those resources were strong relationships. They had lived, worshiped and worked together for many years. In difficult times, relationships that have been built and nurtured through time have staying power.
They had skills. According to Ben Kline, they knew how to build a trading post, take it down and re-establish it somewhere else. Just by the fact that they lived long enough to produce another generation means that they knew what it took to endure the bitter cold in the winter and the prairie fires in the summer.
Great-great-grandfather Janeaux knew how to read and understood the basics of business. He knew how to negotiate, when to speak up when prices charged were too high and when to keep quiet and listen intently when it was to his best interest.
Janeaux also knew how to move forward. By the summer of 1879 the Métis had arrived in the Judith Basin. It was not until late September that our family arrived at Spring Creek from Fort Benton. While in Fort Benton, Janeaux signed several important legal documents. On September 22 of that year, he contracted with T.C Power for the supplies he needed to begin a trading establishment. He waited a couple of additional days for what may have actually been the most important legal document he signed that week.
On September 24, 1879, Janeaux officially declared his intention to become a United States citizen. All the years that he worked along the Missouri and Milk Rivers, Janeaux had been a Canadian subject of Queen Victoria. This one decision, a declaration of intent to become a citizen, coupled with the rules of the Homestead Act of 1862, eventually led to the founding of Lewistown.
The 150th Anniversary of the Homestead Act is this year. What a fortunate opportunity for our great-great-grandfather.
It may be difficult for the mind of this century to understand the relationship between our parents who were married in the early years of the 1950s. They met on the Air Force base where my father was a staff sergeant. My mother worked as a civilian on base. Daddy claimed it was love at first sight and that he had already informed the family back home that he had met the girl that he was going to marry. Only after that announcement did he ask Mama on a date.
Daddy eventually left the Air Force to enter the business world. Mama took a job as a legal secretary for a little while. By the time the third daughter arrived in 1960, they made a mutual decision. Three children did not make it cost effective for Mama to work outside the home. She turned her office skills into home organizational skills. She also became the family accountant.
The monetary relationship was simple. Daddy would bring home his pay check at the end of the week. He gave it to Mama to distribute the proceeds according to the needs of the family. It wasn’t that Daddy was incapable of handling the money; he simply learned that she was very good at the job and decided to delegate. They communicated on a regular basis about needs, wants and line item caps. That sometimes made it difficult to surprise Mama when the Christmas budget was discussed.
In one particular year Daddy informed Mama that he was going to save money by making her present. Weeks went by and the project had not been started. Five days remained until Christmas and nothing seemed to be happening. The hand-made gift was part of quick, over the fence conversations that sprang up as the ladies in the neighborhood hung the laundry to freeze-dry on the line.
The morning of Christmas Eve arrived and Daddy announced it was time to begin the project. He enlisted the help of a neighbor and excitement began to build as paper was taped over the door to the utility room so that curious family members and neighbors would not get a peek at the creation. First the sound of hammer to nail was heard. Then muffled conversation came through the wall that connected the bathroom to the utility space. Then silence.
The door opened and a request was sent to have a pot of fresh coffee put on the stove. The family was instructed not to bring the cups of coffee to the work station, as was the routine for coffee service in the household. Instead, someone would return in a few minutes. The door closed again and the whirring of a drill started and stopped. Started and stopped. Started and stopped.
As planned, the courier arrived at the backdoor and coffee was served. He moved quickly between the warmth of the kitchen and the unheated work space. The door shut and the muffled conversation continued. The extended break included a second cup of coffee. Finally, the door closed and the drilling resumed.
Unable to determine what was being created, Mama gave up trying to figure it out, but not before quipping, “Whatever it is, it’s going to have a lot of holes in it.”
By afternoon, the gift emerged. It was such an odd shape that it could not be wrapped as a proper package. Instead it had been placed in a box and wrapped in funny paper. Dagwood & Blondie and the Family Circus crew stood out among the snowmen and Santa Clauses adorning other packages under the Christmas tree. Everyone was cautioned not to touch the box, especially the top, since the wrapping was fragile.
The next morning we paused to watch Mama open her gift. Less than two-feet tall, sixteen inches to be exact, the Little Money Tree was the strangest sight we had ever seen on the 25th of December. It had sprouted to its ultimate size less than 24 hours before; but the seed of the unusual tree had been planted in autumn.
We listened as Daddy’s story unfolded. He wanted to do something special for Mama, an ultimate surprise. Many weeks before Christmas he began holding on to some of his weekly “lunch money”, which Mama would distribute on Sunday evening or Monday morning. He counted his savings the week before Christmas and took the money to the bank where he asked the teller to exchange the amount for brand new $1.00 bills. He had already determined that the crisp bills would fit better into the holes on the trunk of the tree. He finished the tale by reminding Mama that the money was to be spent on something for herself and not to be put back into the family budget.
She struggled with that request until she finally admitted that she had secretly wanted a dress coat. She was particularly fond of the Chesterfield-style coat for ladies. The fun continued after Christmas as she perused the papers for the best sales. Christmas didn’t end that year until Mama modeled her brand-new coat.
1 December 2011
We were seated on bar stools waiting to meet my uncle. He arrived with a yellow mailer, the kind that is used when the contents are too thick to send in a standard business envelope or when the items to be mailed are not meant to be folded. He had driven in from Wyoming to meet us, but I didn’t know he was bringing with him a bit of family history.
Inside the envelope were several small photographs. They were labeled with names and dates. We were told to have copies made and to send them back to him. I don’t recall how we brought them home, whether I carried the envelope on the plane or packed it in one of our suitcases.
When we arrived home, the most pressing problem was where to make copies. Where else would you go for such a quest in the 1970s, but the mall? (I can almost hear the muffled gasps of archivists and genealogists.) Yet it was the only option we knew. Standing at the J.C. Penney photo counter, we filled
Dr. L.A. Lapalme and Mr. F. A. Janeaux
Francis Avila Janeaux
We waited.
The original photos and the 5×7 copies arrived safe and sound for a grand total of $8.25. The time had come to return the originals to my uncle.
Before entrusting them to the U.S. Mail, I took the photos with me to campus, the only place nearby to find a copy machine. Exact change was required and there was no guarantee that the copier would function properly. I arrived home with my Xerox copy and the originals.
I wondered if I would ever see them again. That was almost 35 years ago and I don’t know where they ended up. But don’t blame the post office.
I was standing in front of my father when he made the phone call. Yes, my uncle confirmed that the photos had arrived. Then a quizzical look came over my father’s face. I knew better than to interrupt
Odilon Janeaux
My uncle died many years ago. Daddy passed away in 2004. I’ve searched the Internet for the whereabouts of his other siblings only to discover the passing of a generation. The location of the photos is only one of many questions I would ask of them today. Those other questions would be more profound.
Virginia Paul - wife of Odilon Janeaux
I hope the pictures ended up in a museum or a collection available for the public to view. So I have decided to scan my 5×7 glossies and hope that some archivist or librarian may recognize them. Or perhaps a distant family member may spot a familiar face and be willing to answer some of those other questions.
13 November 2011
My grandmother told me that Janeaux had changed his name from Archambault, but she did not know why or when. It had always been a great family mystery, one that had led to all types of speculation when the subject of Janeaux was discussed. Was he hiding from something? Was he in some type of witness protection program of the 1900s? Did his French-Canadian family have a dit (A.K.A.) name? The speculation, when carried out, may be the seed of a fiction work.
The spelling of his last name varies in newspaper clippings and census reports, but it is always consistent in legal documents. Janeaux was his preferred spelling and the answer to the mystery was found in the documents of the North Dakota Historical Society and the Montana Historical Society.
In 1870, Ferdinand A.Van Ostrand, a young man from Marion, New York, was working for Durfee and Peck at Fort Berthold. The post was less than 20 miles from Fort Stevenson where Janeaux was working for the same company. That November, Van Ostrand received word that he was urgently needed back home. On his way, Van Ostrand stopped at Fort Stevenson were he discovered and helped an injured Avila Janeaux at the beginning of his very bad year. [1]
Van Ostrand began keeping a journal chronicling his trip east and his return to Fort Berthold. It is in his journal that the spelling Janeaux first appears. I have decided to step out on the proverbial limb and claim that great-great-grandfather must have seen the spelling, liked it and used it as his official name.
The mystery of when the name was changed had been solved. The answer to why proved more difficult until I read the writings of a parish priest.
I was revisiting the Ben Kline interview by Oscar O. Mueller and decided it was time to request a copy of a slightly earlier interview with Mr. Kline. I had hoped to find some additional information on the second meeting between Kline and Janeaux.
The interview was conducted by Father van den Broeck, who served at St. Leo’s during the early 1900s. The puzzle was solved by two words, placed in parenthesis beside the name Janeaux – “called Jambeau”. [2]
Jambeau appears to be a corruption of the name Archambault
2 Ben Kline reminiscences 1925-1931 as told to Victor Van den Broeck (1925); Montana Historical Society Research Center 225 N. Roberts Street, Helena MT 59620.
Fort Union was an early fur trading post along the Missouri River.
