December 5, 'Happy Birthday Uncle Al', Joseph Albert Rivet

 Al's 35th Birthday Party on December 5th, 1954, Green Island, NY

Remembering "Uncle Al" Rivet and "Joe" Rivet, 1919-2002

 

In New York he was known as Al to everyone.

Like almost every French Canadian son, he was baptized with the standard first name of Joseph but never called by that name in school or the parish.  His father, his sister, his brother and friends all called him "Al".

 

Al waterskiing at Saratoga Lake NY, circa 1962, while visiting from California

Al visiting Montauk Lighthouse, Long Island, NY

In California he was "Joe" to everyone.

In southern California there was a new life, a new family and a new name.

At Laguna Beach

Sixty summers ago 3 men moved to southern California, 2 returned to New York and 1 remained....

Robert Wills, Arthur Mylott and Al Rivet left the Northeast for golden California, its promises and possibilities. They had many first impressions of southern California from the perspective of upstate New Yorkers who arrived in late June 1959.  They were accustomed to snow, lots of snow, in winter and moderate summers. It is no wonder Al was fascinated by the weather..by mid August Bob and Art returned to New York.  One with a prison record and the other without a driver's license and so for them there was no job.  Only Al remained in the sunshine state with a job at Hughes aircraft... here is one of Al's first letters to home.

Christmas Day in Fullerton, California 1961

Al Rivet, Sonny Yetto (Guertin) and Jim Laurent, all originally from upstate New York where the winter blows hard and cold, share a Christmas Day in California without shoveling snow and where the temperature is above is above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. They just cannot believe Harriet can walk barefooted on December 25th!!!

Acadian Tragedy, Rivet and Glode-Mylott Ancestors, The Pembroke and the St John's River

One again, I am returning to the story of The Pembroke.    In an earlier post (October 2010), I wrote  about the ancestors of Edith Mylott née Glode who in 1755 were exiled from Annapolis Royal aboard The Pembroke.  At that time, I didn't include the fact that an ancestor of Rivets, Prudent Robichaud, was also aboard that same vessel as well as others.  The story of The Pembroke is a true hardship story and probably one that historians will likely never know in detail.  The tragedy of The Pembroke was the basis of fiction by Mary L Weekes. 

A fictionalize story of The Pembroke can be read in Acadian Betrayal.  It use to be available on the internet.  If you cannot find a digital copy, it sometimes appears for sale on Ebay - but I suspect it wouldn't hold your interest for too long.  It is a typical melodrama.

The story of The Pembroke is a subplot in the tragedy of the Acadian people who were ousted, expelled, excised from the area around the Bay of Fundy from September through December 1755 by New England colonials under the authority of Governor Charles Lawrence and William Shirley, colonial governor of Massachusetts.  Over 7000 Acadian people were dispersed into small ships and sent to colonies along the North Atlantic seaboard and Haiti.  Some ships sank at sea, some were refused permission to dock and passengers remained without food and sanitary conditions in the ships while disease took over.  One ship, The Pembroke, was the exception. Its Acadian passengers overtook the crew and commandeered the ship across the Bay of Fundy to St John in present day New Brunswick.  On board that ship, were not only the Guilbault ancestors of Edith Glode and her sons, there also were the Robichaud, Melanson and Belliveau ancestors of Claire, Albert and Raymond Rivet of Cohoes, New York.  According to the article written by Paul Delaney on Acadian Ancestral Home, the probable leader of the Acadians on The Pembroke was Charles Belliveau. He is also the great great great great great grandfather of Claire, Al and Ray Rivet!!!

After bringing The Pembroke into the mouth of the St John's River, the Acadians were discovered by the English provoking an engagement, firing of arms, taking of English prisoners and ultimately burning The Pembroke so it could not be used against them.  Subsequently, the Acadians made their way to present day Fredericton, New Brunswick, then a French settlement called Saint Anne des Pays Bas where they wintered enduring malnutrition and exposure to the harsh environment.  The Rivet ancestor, Prudent Robichaud, quite elderly, died sometime during this struggle and somewhere along the Saint John River.  It is believed the Acadians including Charles Belliveau,  Charles Melanson, and their families made their way north via canoe on the St John's River through Grand Falls (Grand Sault) to present day Edmunston regions and then onto the Madawaska River to Lac Temiscouata (present day Quebec). The route continued from Lac Temiscouata overland and via waterways to Trois Pistoles on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River concluding in Ville Quebec.  

Unfortunately, Charles Belliveau and Charles Melanson, like many of the Guilbault family, are believed to have succumbed to smallpox in 1758 and 1757, respectively, after completing their harrowing escape.

Below, the St John River near Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far.  This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

Acadian Update 2016

Acadians, not Cajuns, in our Families

Acadians in the Mylott-Glode Family

Acadians in the Rivet Family

Acadians in the Wills & Beauvais Family

The Pembroke

Remembering Acadian Ancestors

New Acadia, St-Jacques-de-l'Achigan, Quebec

Images of St-Jacques-de-l'Achigan

Petite l'Acadie in St Jean

Teaching Children about Acadian Ancestors

On the Way to Acadian World Congress 2014

We are the same...

"almost an idiot"

Lord Family of St Jacques de l'Achigan

New Images of Albert and Claire Rivet Found

Recently a member of a Facebook group from Cohoes posted images from by gone days.   When I examined them closely I found Albert Rivet in a photo from St Marie's Boys Choir in 1931. Albert was about 12 years old. Can you spot him?

Then I spotted Claire Rivet  in the photo below, also from 1931. Claire would have been 13 at the time.

Three 8th Grade Graduations at St. Marie's, Cohoes, NY 1932, 1933 and 1936: Rivet, St Hilaire, Bissonnette and many more

A sincere "thank you" to Mr. Joe Carlin from Cohoes for these wonderful photos! 

1932 Marie Claire Rivet, below, seated on far right:

 1933 Joseph Albert Rivet, below, seated second from far right.  With Arthur Louis St Hilaire standing directly behind him:

1936 Raymond Dedace Rivet, below, standing in the third row back from the priests. He is the third student from the left.  Also in this photo is Therese Bissonnette in the front row, third from right.

"Uncle Al", Joseph Albert Rivet, would be 94 years old on December 5th, 2013

Al Rivet in family backyard, Cohoes, NY. He is about 18 years old in this photo.

Albert Rivet in US Army Corps of Engineers, World War II

Maybe he was your father, grandfather, godfather, brother, uncle, friend, coworker, church deacon, refrigeration repairman or maybe you never new him at all.  He was Joseph Albert Rivet, son of  Joseph Paul Emile Rivet and Marie Louise LaCasse, brother of Claire and Raymond Rivet.  Although his parents were born in Québec, he was born in Cohoes, NY in 1919 and died in California in 2002.

He easily soothed babies

Uncle Al never minded cooking supper and doing the cleanup too!

Uncle Al showing patience at Bennington, Vermont!

Uncle Al the Catholic deacon in California

Visiting his daughter, the cadet at West Point

Here's some things you may not know about Joseph Al Rivet's early life from notes I took when he told me about his experiences growing up in Cohoes and in the US Army and some stories from his sister, my Aunt Claire.

• He suffered from diphtheria when a young school boy and the local doctor thought he would not survive. His stepmother, Malvina Hamel, probably thought there was nothing left to try so on someone's advice she gave him sips of turpentine.  He recovered and his recovery ever after was attributed to the turpentine.
• Although his father did not want him to finish high school, he did and he "loved" it.
• He spent 2 years at Keveny Academy and 1 year at Cohoes High School.
• He passed the New York State Regents Exam in French.
• He studied 2 years of Latin.
• While going to school, he worked as a barber with his father cutting hair on Friday night and all day Saturday.
• His first job (other than working in his father's barber shop) was in Strasbourg (?) shirt factory where his sister Claire was already working.
• He switched jobs to another shirt factory, Barbery(?) and doubled his salary
• Then he got a job at General Electric Company in Schenectady and car pooled with a fellow named Norman
• He partied and drank, especially at the Polish Club on Van Schiak Island where he saw a special young lady named Rose.
• Sunday mornings, after a night of fun at the Polish Club, his sister would make certain he woke up to attend the French Catholic mass at Sacred Heart.  
• He was drafted into the army and World War II.
• He trained in Louisiana for three months 
• He was in the 346th Corps of Army Engineers
• He was sent to southern Wales in Britain and helped build landing sites for B-17 bombers. The landing sites were originally thin concrete that would crack when heavy planes landed. The corp poured ten plus inches of concrete to help withstand the weight.
• During that time in Wales, he and his fellow soldiers slept in tents and it was cold- especially compared to what they got use to in Louisiana.  He wore all the clothes he had, all of the time, because he was always cold.
• Local people wouldn't talk to you because they were afraid you were a German in a US soldier uniform "spying" on them.
• He continued with the corps doing this  "all over England" for three years.
• Ate a lot of mutton and drank a lot of cocoa while in England.
• He remembered someone got a ham mailed from the states and it was shared among buddies.  He always remembered the wonderful taste of that slice of salted meat on that day.
• He loved living in California. He didn't miss shoveling snow in upstate New York winters.
• and he never had regrets because he lived a life where he never needed to have any - ever!

Summit Street in Cohoes, NY

In the 1910 US census Paul Emile Rivet and his first wife Ida Mailloux are living in a house in the town of Guilderland. Ida Mailloux died in 1912 and it was probably soon afterwards, around the time of Emile's second marriage, that he bought the house at the top of Summit Street. This was the house Claire, Al and Raymond Rivet were born it and the house their mother, Marie Louise and their stepmother, Malvina Hamel died in.
The house was unremarkable except for its view from the backyard.  From the eastern edge of the yard, one could look over the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. At the time he bought the house, one would have been able to look over the Erie Canal, the Harmony Mills and its power canals below.   By the 1950s when I spent time there, those days were long gone.  There was just a ditch below. I never saw the canals it the heyday.  By the time I went to high school all the canals were polluted slimy waters filled with old tires and appliances.


The Front of the house....

The Johnson Mansion, 2-3 lots south of Emile Rivet's house.

The Top of Summit Street, looking north. The small pale yellow house,

 left of the brown 2 story, was the house of Emile Rivet.

David Lamarche and yours truly on Summit Street.

The Back of the House....

A very young Al Rivet standing in the backyard of Summit Street.

The backyard was the best part of the property.  This is the yard Claire, Al and Ray Rivet played in as children. The second generation of Rivets and Yettos played there too.  At the far end of the yard, a fence prevented children from falling down the embankment to the canal ditch.  Rhubarb grew in the backyard and my Uncle Al was always sure to gather some for me to dip into a sugar bowl and snack on later! 

View of the Valley from the Backyard on Summit Street 

Another view from the backyard with remains of the Erie Canal in the foreground