Lamoine and the French Connection

This is a continuation in my series on Acadia history. We last visited the early settlement of Mt. Desert Island and touched briefly on the part played by  Marie Therese De La Mothe De Gregoire and how she was granted title to the eastern half of the island. Her timing was such that she was able to assist friends and family escaping from the atrocities of the French Revolution, setting them up with tracts of land. One of these compatriots was Madame Rosalie Bacler de la Val, who also became a land speculator. She joined forces with some of the other landholders and envisioned a French colony just across Frenchman Bay from Madame Gregoire’s Hulls Cove, in what is now Lamoine, sometime around 1790 (from the New England Magazine, August 1900):

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We can be fairly confident that in Lamoine, or as it was once known, Fontaine Laval, the early days were filled with as many bonjours as hellos. Madame La Val’s visions of a French cultural outpost may have crumbled with her fortunes–her business partners were said to be incompetent. But a scan of the graveyards and historical texts show a fair number of French names.  Louis des Isles emigrated from France to Lamoine about 1791, no doubt at Madame la Val’s invitation. He married Mary Googins, and both family names exist on Lamoine’s road signs.

As for Madame la Val, her misfortunes were only temporary. Sadly, she gave up on Maine but prospered in British Guiana, where she married the governor, owned several plantations, lived the high life and died wealthy.

So what about our town’s name? With Madame la Val’s exit went her name for our town and until the late 1800s we were known as Trenton, or rather included in the larger town of Trenton. In 1870 we broke off and chose the name Lamoine after an early settler, Andre LeMoyne, not coincidentally, a Frenchman. Lamoine’s French heritage is directly attributed to France’s help in the Revolutionary War. Without France, we would have been beaten at Yorktown. For a unique site about early Lamoine history check out Carolyn Holland’s www.intertwinedlove.wordpress.com.

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