#52 Ancestors 52 weeks : landed...

16 février 2022

Landed ?... Many miners from the North leave France to work in the United States ! Two women, mother and daughter, two destinies...

At the end of the nineteenth century, strikes raged in the mines of the North and Pas-de-Calais. The notorious protesters could no longer find work, so they left the continent and left for the New World. This is how Abraham DESCAMPS, his wife, Julia ZOUTE, and their two children, Narcisse and Renée, set foot on American soil in 1896. It is he who is the pillar of the emigration of the DESCAMPS of Liévin... He was therefore not present at the wedding of his sister, Maria, on July 10, 1897, in Liévin, with Jules Paul Joseph CARON. The couple had three children, Germaine Marianne, 11, René Jules, 9, and Jules Louis, 7, in 1909, when the Civil Court of Béthune pronounced the divorce decree... The scandal broke out !... You will understand what must have happened...

Maria DESCAMPS boarded the SS Finland on 12 August 1911. She made the trip, Antwerp-New York, with her son René. She leaves to join her brother Abraham.

On August 26 of the same year, in Marion, United States, she married Raymond Auguste THOBOIS. She is 35 years old, he has been 21 years old for two days... Raymond Auguste arrived in the United States on June 10, 1911, traveling aboard the SS Vaderland, from Antwerp to New York and welcomed by Abraham DESCAMPS !

It is likely that an affair between Maria and Raymond was the cause of the divorce. In addition, Raymond was a minor... Society could not see this relationship with a good eye! SO THE solution was to leave ! She resides in the United States with her three children and is fortunate to marry her two eldest. Jules Louis, the youngest died on November 23, 1930 in Albia.

Maria died on December 3, 1964 in Charita, and her husband joined her on December 10, 1968.

Germaine Marianne CARON joined her mother by embarking in Boulogne-sur-Mer, on August 10, 1912, aboard the New Amsterdam. She set foot on American soil on August 19.

She married on August 9, 1913 with Franck LEFEBVRE, who had traveled aboard the same boat as Maria DESCAMPS. The marriage was short-lived because the divorce was pronounced on March 5, 1914.

Germaine remarried, on November 7, 1914 in Knoxville, to Joseph VANCEUNEBROCK, 22, a native of Lens, in the Pas-de-Calais. The couple had five children:

Florence, born in 1916,
Joseph, born in 1918,
Germaine, born in 1920,
Wanuita, born in 1925,
Renée Jules, born in 1934, died in 1935.

Was Joseph sick ? Still, he registered his will on June 16, 1951, a will by which he bequeathed everything to his wife Germaine "Maria". He died on August 6 of the same year and is buried in Miller-Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery.