Edited interview with Jacqueline Bigelow, daughter of Mary Rose Deschenes; Edward Bigelow, Jacqueline's son; and June Rhodes, niece of Mary Rose Deschenes and Marion Deschenes. Interview conducted by Joe Manning (JM) on March 28, 2009.

JM: When were each of you born, and how are you folks related to Marion and Rose?

June: Aunt Rose and Aunt Marion were my father's sisters. My father was Joseph. I was born in 1925.

Jacqueline: Rose was my mother and Marion was my aunt. I was born in 1933.

Edward: I am Jacqueline's son, so Rose was my grandmother, and Marion was my great-aunt. I was born in 1964.

JM: Jacqueline, what did you think when you saw the picture of your mother? Did it surprise you?

Jacqueline: Yes, I had never heard about it.

JM: Did you recognize her?

Jacqueline: Yes, I looked like her at that age.

JM: Did you know that she had lived in Winchendon?

Jacqueline: No. But when I mentioned it my son, he said, ‘Oh yes, she lived there.'

JM: How did you know, Ed?

Edward: I knew it because I had something that Aunt Marion had written long ago about the family. So when you sent me the pictures, I found it. She was sort of the family historian back then. She wrote that my great-grandparents, Zoel and Amanda, were married in Greenville, New Hampshire in 1890. All of the children were born in Greenville. I have a record of Zoel working at the Columbian Mill in Greenville (Columbian Manufacturing Co.). The family moved to East Jaffrey in August of 1908, and then to Winchendon in September of 1910. Amanda had two sisters who had already moved there. Then they moved to Fitchburg in September of 1912.

June: I was surprised by the pictures. My reaction was that if my two aunts worked in the mill there, that my father must have also worked there, and perhaps some of the other children. When they went to Fitchburg, my father worked in the Parkhill Mill, which was owned by the same people who owned the mill in Winchendon. (Joseph N. White, owner of the two mills in Winchendon where Hine took his pictures, was on the board of directors of the Parkhill Manufacturing Company in Fitchburg.)

JM: They also owned several mills in Jaffrey. What do you think about the fact that the pictures were used to influence the passing of child labor laws? Do you feel sorry for them?

Jacqueline: I didn't realize that they worked that young. My mother never talked about it.

JM: When did Rose die?

Jacqueline: In 1976, in Fitchburg.

JM: Where had she been living then?

Jacqueline: On Franklin Road, in Fitchburg. They owned the house.

JM: Who did she marry?

Jacqueline: Edward Pinard.

JM: When?

Jacqueline: 1928.

Edward: My great-grandfather, who was Rose and Marion's father, had brothers that lived in Fitchburg, so that might have been the reason.

JM: Do you know when the family came to the US?

Edward: Between 1881 and 1890. Both my great-grandparents appear in the 1881 Canada census, and were married in New Hampshire in 1890.

JM: When the family moved to Fitchburg, where were they actually living?

Edward: On Clarendon Street, in the Upper Cleghorn section (Cleghorn was a French Canadian neighborhood).

JM: Would that have been near a factory?

June: Oh, probably a mile or two. They would have walked to work then.

JM: Jacqueline, where was the first house that your parents lived in after they got married?

Jacqueline: Probably the house on Clarendon Street where my grandparents lived.

JM: Was your father a mill worker?

Jacqueline: He was a steam fitter. He worked for Jennison for several years (Jennison Plumbing Company in Fitchburg).

JM: Did your mother work at the mill after she got married?

Jacqueline: Not that I know of. I don't think she worked when she started having the children. That was in 1929, when my sister Rita was born.

JM: Is Rita still alive?

Jacqueline: No. My mother had four children, all girls, and Janet is the only other one still living.

JM: Where was the next house your mother lived?

Edward: That would be on Franklin Road, a few minutes walk from the house on Clarendon Street.

Jacqueline: I think I was five years old when we moved there.

JM: Could you walk into downtown Fitchburg?

Jacqueline: No, that was quite a ways. We had to take a bus. We didn't have a car.

JM: What kind of house was it?

Jacqueline: A single family house. We had about six rooms.

JM: What was your mother like?

Jacqueline: She was a quiet woman. She had a nice, normal life.

JM: Did she have hobbies or special interests?

Jacqueline: My parents didn't have too many outside interests. She just brought up the children. She was a good cook.

JM: Was your mother in close contact with her brothers and sisters?

Jacqueline: We used to see them quite a bit, especially Aunt Yvonne and Aunt Marion. They were the closest sisters.

JM: Where did you go to church?

Jacqueline: St. Joseph's.

JM: Was that the French Catholic church?

Jacqueline: Yes. I also went to St. Joseph's School, through the eighth grade.

JM: What was your first job as an adult?

Jacqueline: After I graduated from high school, I was a secretary at Great American Plastics. I stayed there four years, and then I went to work for the state unemployment office. I worked there eight years, and then after I married, my husband and I moved to Albany (NY). He had been transferred there. We came back about 18 months later, and I stayed home with the children for 15 years. Then I went back to work, for New England Telephone. I worked in the office.

JM: How was your Aunt Marion different from your mother?

Jacqueline: Well, she never married. She lived with my Aunt Yvonne for several years. And when Yvonne got married, she continued to stay with her. Aunt Marion was a salesperson at Baylin's Fur Shop in Fitchburg.

June: She had a big clientele there, people who went only to her.

JM: Did she have any perks, such as getting to wear their furs?

Jacqueline: Yes, and she liked that.

JM: Was she fashionable?

Edward: Very, always dressed to the nines. Never saw her in pants. Always had her nails done, and she wore jewelry.

JM: Would any of those things describe your mother, Jacqueline?

Jacqueline: Well, she wore nice clothes.

JM: Do you remember your family being financially secure?

Jacqueline: Yes, most of the time.

JM: What was your relationship with Aunt Marion?

Jacqueline: She visited a lot, and we liked her.

JM: When did she die?

Edward: January 1988. She would have been 90 in a few months.

JM: Was she active in her last years?

Edward: Enough, I guess. She was not one to sit at home. She would go down to the little community center in her building a lot and visit with the other people. She never drove.

Jacqueline: My mother didn't drive either. They never had a car. My father didn't drive either.

JM: Did that make a difference to you that your parents didn't have a car?

Jacqueline: I never missed it, because we never had one.

JM: But didn't a lot of the parents of your friends have cars?

Jacqueline: No, not many.

June: I knew my Aunt Marion better, although I knew Aunt Rose very well, because I used to stay with my grandparents when I was young, and my mother and father both worked. They lived upstairs over my grandparents, so we were all pretty close. Aunt Marion was always dressed up. That was her thing. In fact, in the picture that you showed us, you could tell that she was fashionable even at that age. She's wearing pearls.

Edward: That got a lot of laughs when I showed the picture to my cousins, the fact that she was wearing a pearl necklace to a sweatshop.

JM: Actually, on that day, she was dressed for church. Hine took a lot of the photos in Winchendon on Sunday.

Jacqueline: There's a picture of her taken about 1945, and she's still got the pearls around her neck.

June: Aunt Rose was a real mother and homemaker, and Aunt Marion was a fashion person, but she mothered everybody in the family. My mother always said the Aunt Marion could never find a man that really suited her. She always found something wrong with whatever man she met.

JM: Maybe she could never find a man who could afford to buy her pearls.

Edward: That's really funny.

June: I don't think she was looking for that. She was just looking for the perfect man.