Dayton, Minn., revives its French-Canadian past

As the church's business manager, Patti Fodstad-Bouley is often mired in the financial numbers of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Dayton, Minn.

But one recent afternoon, she took a break to gaze at the 10 spectacular stained-glass windows filtering sunlight into the double-spired brick church built in 1904. The church stands on Dayton River Road at the northern tip of Hennepin County, tucked near the confluence of the Mississippi and Crow rivers.

In a fanciful, bright-red banner gracing one window, an inscription in French reads: "En Memoire de Marcel et Eleonore Boulay" in honor of one of the church's founders. Across the rows of pews on the other side of the church, another window includes a tribute to fellow founders Celestin and Delina Guimond.

Both couples are Patti's great-great-grandparents. She lives a few miles from the church on the same farmland where her great-grandparents, Georgianna and Louis Bouley, settled and raised 13 children after their 1891 wedding.

"It's a little overwhelming to think about," said Fodstad-Bouley, 60. "All the history hits me sometimes when I think about all the baptisms, weddings and wakes that happened here."

Dayton's rich French-Canadian roots will be the focus of an Oct. 16 presentation at the church. The 2 p.m. talk, sponsored by the French-American Heritage Foundation of Minnesota, will highlight the findings of a new 341-page book called "Dayton with a French Accent," which explores the area's French-Canadian past.

"The town was at times called French Town, and confessions at the church were heard in French into the 1950s," according to Patricia Ruffing from nearby Maple Grove, one of eight who compiled the new book.

Dayton was named after Lyman Dayton, a Connecticut-born railroad executive and land speculator who also had his name attached to Dayton's Bluff on St. Paul's East Side. He's not related to the department store clan or former Gov. Mark Dayton.

In a way, it's a shame a French-Canadian settlement dating to the early 1850s didn't wind up with a French name. After all, its early white settlers included folks named Godin, Desjarlais, Lavallee and Bibeau. Dr. Louis Bistedeau came to Dayton in 1855 and served as the town's only practicing physician for 37 years, according to the book.

When Dayton was formally organized on May 11, 1858 — the same day Minnesota became a state — not a single French-Canadian was elected to the initial board of supervisors.

"Apparently, they either did not vote, or none of them ran for office," according to the new book. "It is possible they may not have been able to speak English well enough to feel comfortable running for an elected office."

After considering the name Portland, favored by settlers relocating from Maine, "the money and influence of Lyman Dayton would win over," the book says.

Luckily, much of Dayton's often-forgotten French history lives on — including an eight-page autobiography that Georgianna Bouley wrote in 1965 when she was 93. She was born 150 years ago in St. Ignace, Quebec, on Nov. 25, 1872.

She died at 96 in 1969, leaving behind her 13 children, 57 grandchildren, 167 great-grandchildren and seven great-great grandchildren.

"She used to give me a nickel when I received A's on my report card," said Patti Fodstad-Bouley, one of those great-grandkids who was 7 when Georgianna died.

In her mini-autobiography, Georgianna recalls moving from Quebec to Minnesota as a 5-year-old in 1877. One of eight children, she recalled husking corn with her sister and "bringing our lunch to save steps, for those fall days were pretty frosty and cold sometimes."

They milked cows every morning and night, churned their own butter and lowered cream into the well in covered tin cans to keep it cool.

By 17, Georgianna was doing housework to earn money. She married at 18 on a January day at the old wooden church replaced 13 years later by the brick church that stands today.

Her husband-to-be, farmer Louis Bouley, had "purchased a new buggy a few weeks previous so on the morning of the wedding we drove to church for the ceremony in the new vehicle," she wrote.

She wore a brown dress — "white was not thought of too much then." She birthed eight girls; two of her seven boys died as babies.

"Like in everyone's life, there are sorrows and happiness and many anxious moments," she wrote, reflecting on the changes she witnessed from the 1870s into the 1960s.

"… From horse and buggy days to jet flying," she wrote, marveling at the advent of new inventions such as television. "Having entertainment in the home from a thousand miles away the instant the set is turned on."

She concludes by saying, "As I look back through these 93 years, even though there were hardships and grief, there were also many pleasant and happy days."

Patti Fodstad-Bouley has a framed photo of Georgianna and Louis, whose parents' names grace the stained-glass windows in the brick church in Dayton. Those windows were painstakingly restored in the 1990s — two decades after Georgianna died and 70 years after her father, Celestin, died in 1927. But his name lives on in the windows, reflecting back on the area's French-Canadian past.