The Doucette's

Now we go to the other side of the family. This is a picture of my mother’s mother and her step father, Pauline Duguay and Jerome Doucette. My mother’s father died when my mother was very young, maybe when she was two or three years old. I think his name was Pierre Landre’. My grandmother had a brother Peter Duguay, living in Washburn and he wrote to her and told her that he knew a French Canadian man in Washburn who had six children, had lost his wife and was looking for a new wife. So my grandmother came to Washburn with her two small children and married Jerome. Several of his children were old enough to be on their own and my mother was raised with two step sisters, Lil and Pearl, and her brother, Uncle Joe, and a half sister, the only child that Pauline and Jerome had together. My Aunt Mae is the only surviving member. She’s about 88 and lives in Rice Lake.

Grandpa Doucette earned a living by working in the box factory which was located near the flowing well. He died in 1966 or 67 think. My mother always felt that he was good to his step children and regarded him as her father. My Uncle Joe and Aunt Leah moved in with him after my grandmother died and took care of him the rest of his life. He and Pauline generally spoke French to each other, but after her death he was pretty much limited to English, sometime with funny results. After he finished building a row boat, we laughed when he asked us to go down to the lake with him to lynch the boat.
A funny thing about my grandmother is that she was bald. The story was that her head was scalded and she lost all her hair except a few whisps around the temples. She always wore a wig with a bun on top and tucked in the few strands of hair that were her own. This technique held the wig in place and helped to give a more natural look. A short time after her death In 1938, I saw a couple of candy boxes on her dresser. I expected to find some sweet treats and was disappointed to discover that the candy boxes were where she stored her extra wigs.