The House at 12 Washington Street

Abstract

The House at 12 Washington Street presents the two sides of the French Canadian immigrant story. In 1940, a female census taker meets the Jardiniers, an extended family with bonds stretching back to Canada. However, the younger generations have an eye on their future in the American industrial city, not the farm back home. It is the story of men, women, and youth transitioning from rural Canada to the urban United States, an experience shared by a million individuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.