The Peru Gazette

Dr. Mark P. Richard, Professor of History and Canadian Studies, SUNY Plattsburgh

6:30 pm, Thursday, September 25, 2025

Clinton County Historical Association, 98 Ohio Road, Plattsburgh

Plattsburgh’s French-Canadian roots date back to the explorations of Samuel de Champlain in the early 1600s. But French speakers formed their own community in Plattsburgh largely in the mid-1800s. The existing scholarship on French-Canadian immigration in the United States has focused on industrial centers in New England, such as Manchester, New Hampshire, and Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Few studies have examined French-Canadian migration to New York State. This presentation will examine the migration of French Canadians to Plattsburgh, New York, as a community study. It will particularly explore their cooperation with Irish immigrants in creating a Catholic community in the Québec-New York borderlands region in the 1850s and 1860s. Drawing upon religious archives in Canada and the United States, U.S. census records, Plattsburgh parish and local history collections, this presentation will consider the role of men and women religious, such as the Oblate priests and the Sisters of Charity, in forging inter-ethnic cooperation in Plattsburgh in the mid-nineteenth century, as French Canadians formed a community of their own.  

Programs start at 6:30 pm with ground floor access to an elevator at the rear of the building.