Julia Bissonnette, a child of the loom

The name "Julia" is a very traditional female name is our family line.  Among the nine Wills siblings, Julia Ann was the second oldest born in 1908.  She was named after her maternal aunt in the previous generation, Julia Bissonnette who this story is about.  Julia Bissonnette was named after her paternal grandmother, Julia Kagle who married Moise Bissonnette on 24 October 1842 in Iberville, Québec and emigrated to Cohoes, NY.  Julia Kagle was named after her mother, Julia Sylvestre born in 1804 in Québec. Before Julia Sylvestre, the previous Julia isn't clear but if you are in the Wills-Bissonnette family and are looking for a traditional name for your soon to be born girl, consider Julia.  The name "Julia" has been in the family for over two hundred years!

Julia Bissonnette was the older sister of my grandmother, Elizabeth "Libby" Bissonnette and oldest child of Joseph Bissonnette (Bisnett) and Celena Beauvais (Bova).  She never married but she did have a boyfriend who was in the US Army and fought in 'Indian Wars" in the west.  As you can see she was very fashionable.

The handwriting on the back of the photo is my mother's.  She believed Julia's romantic interest fought in a battle with Sitting Bull who was notable for his victory over Custer's 7th Calvary regiment at the Battle of Little Bighorn. That battle was on June 25th, 1876.  Julia would only have been  seven years old so I doubt her "beau" fought at that battle.  Maybe her beau was involved in the later skirmishes in the west....

Anyway, according to records at St Joseph's Church, Julia was born in Cohoes on March 24, 1869 and baptised on March 28th. She died in 1915 when she was just 45 years old.  I do not have much information about Julia but it is clear she was a "child of the loom" because in the 1880 census, she is just eleven years old and working in the "Woolen Mills".  Click on the image below to read the census:

Don't be mislead by the spelling of the family name...Bissonnette and Bisnette were both used and although this particular record states Julia was born in New York, other census records state she was born in Vermont.

It is hard to imagine a girl of eleven years working in the textile mills, but we know it was very common. According to Daniel J. Walkowitz, author of Worker City, Company Town:Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York,1855-84. Published by University of Illinois Press 1978: "The typical unskilled cotton hand in 1880 was probably a young and unmarried Irish or French-Canadian woman.  Conversely, the Irish or French-Canadian girl growing up in Cohoes probably once worked, or would shortly work, in the Harmony Mills.  She started work at an earlier age in 1880 than she would have in 1860, especially if she was of French-Canadian extraction".

His footnote goes on to state that the percentage of female workers under fifteen increased from 6.6% in 1860 to 19.7% in 1880.  Undoubtedly, Julia Bissonnete, 11 years old, was one of the statistics captured in the 1880 census who contributed to the increase in child laborers.  Walkowitz makes other statements about the child laborers that are clearly evident in the census record for the Bisnette family.  When he writes "children worked the exhausting seventy-two-hour week at absurdly low salaries; but this meager income enabled their mothers to stay home with their youngest offspring" he may have been considering Julia Bissonnette and the benefits her younger siblings reaped from her labor.  In the census record above, Celena "keeps house" and is at home with Moses, 4 years old, and  Libby who is just six weeks old.

Moses Bissonnette would die in childhood. He lived until he was 7 years old, dying three years after this census data was taken.

Walking and Remembering Tour: The Erie Canal in Cohoes and the Ghosts of Child Laborers

On a lovely Friday evening in August, the Spindle City Historical Society sponsored a walking tour of the ruins of the Erie Canal in Cohoes.  Our knowledgeable guide took us down pathways hidden to me when I was a child. The paths were there in the 1950s and 1960s but I never saw them and never realized their significance.  Of course in the 1960s,  the main basins and many other areas of the canal were just cesspools filled with algae and discarded appliances.  Today Cohoes has cleaned up and filled in the channel downtown, excavated around the Harmony Mills and erected signs to help us remember. Walk and remember, walk and remember....that is all that exists today...a walk and a remembrance of those before us whether they were French Canadians, Irish, Polish, Eastern Europeans.

Our guide explained how, when the original canal was widened and rerouted, the original beds became the "power canals" to run the looms inside the textile mills. Inside the mills, mainly children, teens, and young women worked the looms. Cohoes was full of young children enumerated on census records and working in the mills.  If you were from Cohoes, there is a good chance at least one of your ancestors was a child laborer in the textile mills.  Even after the heyday of the Harmony Mills, child laborers continued to work in the garment factories.  My mother left grammar school when she was 12 years old during "The Great Depression" to sew collars on shirts.  She never completed the 8th grade and was always over compensating for that fact in her life.

If you are ever interested in learning more about the children working in the textile factories, you can read Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop.  This book is intended for young readers, but adults will relish it if they are interested in the history of child labor in textile manufacturing.  Also, for readers with Cohoes-Hoosick Falls-Pownal, VT connections, there is Joe Manning's search for the heroine in the book's cover photo, detailed in six chapters on Mr Manning's website, starting at Search for Addie


There are many Ghosts of Cohoes and they are mainly children.

Our guide to the ruins of the Erie Canal with the towpath and filled in canal behind her.

Another area of the original canal in the vicinity of Lock #16, now filled and mowed.

The canal along Harmony Street

Soon the tour becomes a capsule history lesson about the Erie canal, the textile mills, and how this small landscape fueled the Industrial Revolution, the economic growth of a small nation, and the westward expansion of the United States....

The original Harmony Mill built in 1837 by Peter Harmon

Another view of the original Harmony Mill

Remains of Lock #16

Interior of Lock #17

Stonework

These individuals standing inside the basin help to understand the size of the Lock #17.

A section of Lock #18 which is directly across from the new Cohoes Falls Overlook Park

At the end of the evening walk we could check out the new Cohoes Falls Park and enjoy the views

A view of Cataract Street

The Spindle City Historic Society has pamphlets for self guided walking tours of the Erie Canal in Cohoes and the Harmony Mills Historic District available in their museum downstairs in the Cohoes Music Hall on Remsen Street.  It is worth checking out the exhibits if you are fortunate enough to visit when they are open.