Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 20

Sept. 3, 1978 Minneapolis Tribune 6B. French-American from Minnesota named Courteau. Did anyone re Today at the Fair Education Building 5 p.m.-The Cold Nose Five dog act, Natural Resources Park S-20 p.m. Jack D' Johns, Bandshell 0p.m.-SkipDe Vol, Bandshell 1:30 p.m.-Johnny Cash Show.

Grantf- 0-30 horse show, Coliseum; 9p.m.-Johnny Cash Show, Grandstand, long speech in French. "Yes, yes," he finally announced. "You can believe me. This is your cousin. I am happy to introduce you." We exchanged addresses, but little information.

But a letter was waiting when we returned from our trip. It included a carefully drawn history of the Yamaska branch of the Courteau family. "We are sorry we were not more hospitable when you arrived." our Yamaska cousins wrote. "The next time you call, we hope we will be better prepared. You must realize you were a great surprise.

We do not see many strangers here in Yamaska, and a relative from Minnesota was astounding. We did not want to tell you we didn't know where that was. So we waited and looked it up. after you left." At Quebec City, the Courteaus at least had heard of Minnesota. "Yes," said one, "our son played in a hockey tournament there in Duluth." But it was Jules who made the trip worthwhile.

He had a letter waiting for us on our return. "How about a get-together in the Twin Cities next summer?" he ended his note. "Sacre bleu!" as my grandfather always said when a fish escaped his usually sure hand and hook. Bring on the pea soup and the maple syrup. We're going to do it.

Old Time Fiddlers Day 8 a.m. Interdenominational church services. Crossroads Chapel 8 a.m. Western horse events (free), Coliseum I a.m Minnesota Dahlia Society State Fair show, Agriculture-Horticulture Building 9:30 a.m. Princess Kay butter sculpting, Dairy-Animal Products Building (through 4 p.m.) 10 a.m.

"The Old West," 4-H Park Players: Ramsey County, Machinery Park 10:40 a.m. Maury Finney The Reed-song Music Company, Bandshell II a.m. Light horse management demonstration. Education Building (through 4:30 p.m.) 11 a.m. Siberian husky breed history, conformation, grooming and care, Dog Exhibit Building 11 a.m.

Blaine, Singers, Baldwin Hall, Education Building 11:30 a.m. 4-H Share the Fun Show, 4-H Building 12 Noon "Your Best Buys in Meat," Twin Cities Home Economists in Home-making, Creative Activities Building 12:30 p.m. Western horse show, Coliseum I p.m.-'AMSOIL ASA late model stock car racing, Grandstand 1 p.m. Mariachi band, Mexican Village 1:15 p.m. Mall parade: Sundowners Drum Bugle Corps, Eau Claire, Wise.

2 p.m. Old Time Fiddlers Contest, Heritage Square 4:15 p.m. Square dancers, Baldwin Hall, Valleyf air amusement park" sold to Ohio company Valleyfair, the Shakopee amusement park, was sold last week to an Ohio company, according to David Para-, deau, Valleyfair director of marketing. Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio, which owns an amusement park and a chain of souvenir shops in Florida and Ohio, reached an agreement last week with the owners of Valleyfair to buy the park for an undisclosed amount of money, Paradeau said Saturday. Final details of the sale will be worked out this week, he said.

Relax in the nation's first and finest indoor garden courtyard member the name? The answer was nearly always the same. No, the name wasn't common in the area any longer. No, there was no one living in the village by that name. That was the first answer at Des-chaillons, about midway on our journey between Montreal and Quebec City along the south bank of the St. Lawrence.

But we paused to eat lunch in the little park in front of the Church of St. Jean. The church door was locked. The old French-Canadian churches are a trove of antique treasures, amassed during 300 years from the gifts of devoted churchgoers. Now the churches must be locked most of the time to prevent visitors, or worse, from taking everything as souvenirs.

My wife had been surprised in Montreal when my cousin's wife had cautioned her to take her purse with her when she took communion. Now I wandered through the small cemetery next to the church. It didn't take long. Such cemeteries are Lilliputian. To my regret, I learned upon my return to Minnesota that the Abbe Georges Hebert, until his death the pastor of the Church of St.

Louis de Lotbiniere, was buried there. Hebert and I had corresponded for years as he combed the Lotbiniere church records for me, and we linked the four branches of the family now in Minnesota. Finally, in a burst of admiration for my written French, he had admitted that we were distant cousins. I had never bothered to confess to him that all my French correspondence was the handiwork of still another cousin, Sister Mary Gabriel Walls, a retired French teacher at Visitation Convent, Mendota. The Deschaillons postoffice was across the street from the church.

Before departing I collected the day's batch of post cards and went in to buy some stamps. The elderly woman postmaster looked at the post cards and at me. "Courteau in Minnesota?" she exclaimed rather than asked. In French, naturally. "You are a Courteau? Well, well, so am And then we slowly pieced together the family line and story at Deschaillons.

The name had long disappeared there, one of the first places to be settled by the family. She was the last and married, her surname changed. At Yamaska I didn't expect to find anyone with the family name. We stopped because some great-great-great-grandparents had been married at St. Michel Church, and the family lived there before departing for Minnesota.

That church was not locked. My daughters, Jennifer, Gretchen and Kristin, lit a huge candle in the church in their grandparents' memory. Later, while the owner prepared a cup of coffee at the general store and cafe, I gave my little speech. "Wait," said an eavesdropper, "there is a Courteau here. Omer Courteau.

He is retired and should be home. I will take you there myself." My wife and children sat back resignedly as I departed in my self-appointed messenger's car. Another fifth cousin, I was to discover. He and his wife answered the door and stood as if frozen as my companion from the cafe described this voyageur from Minnesota, saving his punchline for the end of a Return Continued from page Still, I picked out those dozen names, and nearly all of them answered my letter. The answers were guarded, puzzled.

None knew of any cousins in the western United States. New Eng- land, yes. Western Canada, so they had heard. They were curious, but one got the feeling that they thought it might be a ploy by a house-to-; house salesman trying to get a snow- shoe in the door. French-Canadians are suspicious of anyone who could totally reject La Belle Province, and my ancestors left Quebec 130 years ago.

"But I persisted. I drew charts show-- ing the lines of descent. And finally the invitation came. Joseph Jules Victor Courteau, 72, was the cousin who welcomed my family to Montreal, escorted us to high mass at Notre Dame Cathedral, marshaled the parade of cars to a restaurant for a family luncheon banquet and directed a daylong procession from one Courteau home to the next. Jules ended the day with an extensive family history lesson and then seemingly tried to pile everything he owned into our car before we started the trip back to Minnesota.

But my cousin also had given me a difficult afternoon in the tiny Quebec village of Deschambault the day before, although he still doesn't know it. Deschambault is one of two villages facing each other across the St. Lawrence River. The Courteau family had lingered there for several hundred years after leaving Quebec City and nearby He d'Orleans. Lotbiniere, on the south side of the river, is the other.

I wanted to visit the former family farms. Jules sent the instructions by mail for reaching the family homestead near Deschambault. They were easy to understand. "Just ask anyone in town," he wrote. But finding that farmhouse had not been easy.

At Deschambault I could find no one who spoke English. A nun, Soeur Lucienne Bertrand, working in the convent flower garden near the Deschambault church, listened to my tale spoken in bedraggled French-Canadian and summoned an ancient sister from the convent. In a torrent of French that she repeated several times, she also tried lo help me. It was hopeless; I couldn't cope with that rush of French. Finally, Sister Lucienne smiled and gestured to me to follow her.

We walked to a neighboring house. She would go with me and show me the way, she said in French. But naturally this was not the United States we would need a chaper-one. The gray-haired matron who greeted us at the neighboring home agreed with vigorous thrusts of her head to be the chaperone. After traveling a few miles along the Rue Proulx by auto, we stopped again.

Monsieur and Mme. Joseph Mayrand joined our entourage. Yes, Mme. Mayrand was a Courteau. Well, her grandmother, really.

They would take us to the exact spot. Don't take offense, they said, but the Courteaus seemed a bit footloose. The Mayrands' farm had been in the family 300 years, since the beginning. The Courteaus had come and gone in less than 200 years. They had heard that some were living in Montreal.

Finally we were at the farm. Its present owner, Rosario Dufresne, was not home. Neither was anyone else. I could only walk about the Featuring year-round swimming, whirlpool even shuffleboard, enjoy ihe good food and fun of Ambassador's toy Caniino Room and the world's fine dining pleasures of its exolie Kashmiri Room. Or one of ihe 200 deluxe suites complete banquet and meeting facilities IB stone house, patting a rock here and there.

Mayrand, who had not uttered a sound up to that point, looked at me for a moment and pointed to nearby woods. "Come along," he said in French. We headed up an old trail. It was growing dark and there was little light in the woods. The mosquitoes were famished.

Well back from the main road, Mayrand pointed to a small depression, obviously losing a race to the close-crowding trees. "La premiere maison des Courteaux etait ici," he said slowly "The first Courteau house was here." Used as a shed and storehouse for many decades after the stone farmhouse was built, it had finally collapsed and was gone. I tried to think of something sentimental or monumental to say, but it was useless. I'd come 1,400 miles to stand next to a hole in the woods and get eaten by mosquitoes. I turned and wordlessly followed the old farmer from the woods.

The next day it was a somewhat different story when we traveled across the St. Lawrence to Lotbiniere. There I had a letter of introduction to Napoleon de Villiers, 92, and his daughter, Madeleine. Both spoke English, and Madeleine helped guide us about the village. A retired ship's pilot, with four sons who became ship's pilots, De Villiers liked to sit in front of his home overlooking the St.

Lawrence. If one of the ships passing was piloted by a son, its horn would sound again and again. De Villiers would ring a bell summoning Madeleine, only 62, and she would wave a huge flag to signal her brother. De Villiers didn't just keep his daughter on her toes. He surprised me, too.

"Do most of the French-Canadians in Minneapolis still live northeast around Our Lady of Lourdes?" he wanted to know. He laughed. "Yes, I worked in Minnesota one year," he said. "I lived Northeast with my grandparents. I think it was 1902.

I was 16. Big enough for the woods." Our first night in Montreal was the only night when anyone in the province ever embarrassed me about the fact I could not speak French well, and the embarrassment was strictly my male vanity. Everyone laughed and tried to help when I sputtered in French unless it was obvious that the person I was speaking to spoke only French. Then we both suffered. But the first night in Montreal we stayed at one of the largest hotels.

We had reservations, and as I dropped my credit card on the desk, the young woman glanced at my name and started to speak in French. I asked her to speak in English, explaining I was a Franco-American. They don't put unattractive women at front desks in Quebec. When she looked up at me, and gave me a very long look before slowly and disapprovingly saying, "But, Monsieur, you are French! How is it that you do not speak your own language?" I forgot I did speak my own language. When we arrived in Quebec we had abandoned the freeways and trav eled the older highways on both banks of the St.

Lawrence, halting at nearly every village. I eagerly anticipated the sight of each one. Most were memorials to at least one great-great-grandparent. In each of these small villages where once the family had lived, I gave a little speech that I'd carefully prepared in French to the first older bystander I could approach. I was a DINING TABLES "J1 if: i rv and the free parking and courtesy limosine service in the Greater Minneapolis shopping area.

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