back to Family Stories, Fall 2021

by Andrea Genualdi 

Through traditional genealogical research, I have discovered more about my great grandfather, Hector Bouchard on my maternal side. Hector Bouchard was born on 6 July 1899 in Dartmouth Massachusetts to Victor Bouchard (1862-1910) and Marie Gendron (1872-unknown). His parents were both born in Quebec Canada and of French Canadian descent. Hector was raised in Fall River, Massachusetts, with his siblings Emma, Aurore, Clara, Wilfred, Eva, Denise, and Rejone Bouchard. 

Hector married Imelda Guimond (1901-1993) in 1929 and together they had my grandfather Ronald Bouchard (1930-2020) and his brother Raymond Bouchard. Hector lived with his family in Fall River Massachusetts. According to my grandmother (Ronald Bouchard’s wife), Hector never completed elementary school as he did not have higher than a fifth grade education. However, this is a particularly interesting part of his life considering that he was completely self taught and eventually got a job at a textile mill. He worked in the textile industry for his entire career where he moved to multiple mills. 

Hector eventually worked his way up from working as a weaver in the textile mills to eventually becoming a supervisor of mills in Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Rhode Island. According to census records, the 1930 census states that his occupation was “loomfixer” in Fall River, MA, but the 1940s census states that his occupation had changed to an “overseer of the weave room” in Aiken, SC. Therefore, he had moved his family from New England to South Carolina because of his promotion to supervisor of a mill there. 

Through the detailed records that Hector kept, I have been able to discover that in the late 1940s, Hector and his family returned to Massachusetts for him to fulfill another supervisor position at a textile mill while taking another job. According to my family, Hector was a very meticulous and thorough person who liked to document everything. While I was conducting research on him, I discovered that my family still has a record keeping book where Hector had tracked all of the income and living expenses for every member of his family from 1948-1990. My mother had received letters from him when she was younger and she had told me that his spelling and handwriting truly reflected that of a fifth grader. Therefore, Hector typed this entire financial record book, documenting all the finances for each year. One page from 1948 shows that Hector had two jobs at one point: a “second hand at Arkwright Corp.” and supervisor position as “overseer of weaving, slashing, warping and all preparation from spinning to clothroom” at Richard Borden Mills. 

The final textile mill that he supervised for 10 years before its closing in 1957 was Wauregan Mills, in Wauregan CT. Hector retired in 1968. According to my family, he took pride in his career and was a very hard working individual to have made it to the positions he did with such limited education. Before starting my search, I knew little about my great grandfather and was unaware that my family had kept the detailed documentation that we have about his life. It was so interesting to look through it all to catch a glimpse of what life was like at that time and especially interesting to learn about an inspiring ancestor. I plan on continuing my search about his life and hope to find more interesting information!