The Art of Good Business

The following story won 2nd prize in the first annual history contest sponsored by the Westbrook Historical Society:

The mills represent a large part of Westbrook’s history, but another part comprises the legacies of local businesses making good for its citizens.  During Westbrook’s earliest days, the businesses of lumbering and blacksmith helped to make the town more inhabitable. It was a time “everything was done by hand...here by honest and hard work, a competence was acquired”.  Local made products contributed to successful businesses in Westbrook, but a connection to the community was always a necessary ingredient.

The above image, courtesy of Maine Historical Society, shows two of Westbrook's early Main Street buildings:  the Presumpscot House and the Brigham Block.  This image is from 1880 but later the The Brigham Block would house Porell's and The Men's Shop.

A story about such a connection can be told by hearing about one of Westbrook’s successful, long-term businesses of the twentieth century.  In the 1926 Directory of Westbrook, Gorham and Windham, there amongst the residential listings is the name of a clothing business that was founded only a few years before: The Men’s Shop.  The three proprietors of the business were named as Hormidas Vincent, Auguste Albert, and Emile Thuotte along with its address as 874 Main Street.

The business would later lose a partner but my grandfather, Auguste “Gus” Albert, would remain at its heart and soul until his death in 1982.  Over the years, The Men’s Shop never lost its focus on quality products and personalized customer service.  Certainly, these characteristics held true for other long-term Westbrook businesses as well, such as McLellan's Department Store, or A. H. Benoit Co., where my grandfather worked as a clerk when he was a young boy. 

The legacy of Auguste Albert’s salesmanship and personal connection to his customers was carried on through his son Roland, and later through his grandson Peter.  Of course, there were other major players in the success of The Men’s Shop, but the Alberts may have been the key contributors for turning the business into a culture.  The business acumen of Auguste and Roland were extended to the community with their involvement and leadership in the Westbrook Chamber of Commerce.    Motivated by the pride I felt for my grandfather’s business and his standing in the community, I created a family history blog in his honor called August Legacy.

In May 2010, I was fortunate to sit down with Peter Albert at his home in Westbrook as he reflected on his twenty years of experience with the business.  Three themes that emerged from that conversation could easily be themes that relate the stories of other businesses in Westbrook that proved the test of time.  Quality products, knowing your customers, and adjusting to the changing local economy stood out as factors that led the Men's Shop to serve the residents of Westbrook for seventy-five years.  In describing how the business thrived in the heyday, Peter gave a picture of Westbrook as "a close-knit town, everybody knew everyone, the shops on Main Street were busy, and people supported the downtown businesses".

Sources:  

1. Karen Sherman Ketover (ed.), Fabius M. Ray's Story of Westbrook (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 1998), p. 184-185.

2. Portland Directory Company. Directory of Westbrook, Gorham and Windham (Maine). (Portland, Maine: Portland Directory Company/Fred L Tower Companies, 1926), p. 172.

Clarifying the Albert Line

In an earlier post (Connecting Canada to France), the Albert's earliest ancestor was known to be Pierre Albert based on a genealogy book written by Gabriel Drouin. I have since discovered that information is apparently a mistake. As I trace the ancestry back from Ferdinand Albert (Auguste Albert's father), I see the line to be represented in the following graphic:

The Albert book written by Mr. Drouin did not include sources so I cannot confirm the lineage that he suggested. What I have confirmed is that Gabriel Albert did have a son named Pierre but the Drouin book references another Pierre Albert who came from Lucon area of France. I have seen no linkage of this Pierre Albert to our Ferdinand Albert. The Pierre Albert line described and highlighted in the Drouin book derived from the Kamouraska area of Canada, but we know that our Albert ancestors (correct lineage shown above) came from Normandy in France and Caraquet in New Brunswick, Canada. What I believe is the spot in the Drouin book where the mistake begins is shown circled in red. What should be in the red circle are the correct parent names of Jean Baptiste who are Gabriel Albert and Genevieve Boothillier. Therese's parent names are Louis Lanteigne and Marguerite Chapadeau. (see source: The Alberts).

Source: Acadiensis, Vol VII, 1907, David Russell Jack, ed.

Gabriel Albert's first son was Pierre and they both were among the founding families of Caraquet who received land grants from the British government. The image above shows an early map of Caraquet with the Albert names among the founding families of the town. The map also shows Caraquet Island where Gabriel moved his family to after the turmoil of the Acadian expulsion in 1755. Gabriel's second son was Jean Baptiste (see green arrow below) whose descendants included Ferdinand, Auguste, myself and the other Albert readers of this blog.

Family Visit to Maine - Part 2

With the help of MaryAnn Albert, many pictures were taken during my recent trip to Maine of the former homes of the Albert and Gagnon ancestors in Westbrook.

These two families both moved to Westbrook from Canada in the early 1900's to work in the mills. Their residences were in close proximity to the mills for obvious reasons of having easy walking assess to their jobs.

Why did our ancestors emigrate to Maine?  The best answer to this question would have come from our great grandparents of course, but we hardly remember what they look like let alone what they ever said about their lives. To get a sense why French Canadian families left their homeland, I studied a document from a website on Quebec history. There I found a paper called "French Canadian Emigration to the United States1840-1930" written by Claude Bélanger. He points out that many families left a traditional rural society and "entered an industrial world, alien to them by virtue of its way of life, language and religion".

What pulled people to move away from their traditional roots were the chances of more prosperity than what they currently had. Their traditional ways of life and religion were not left behind. Besides a strong work ethic, French Canadian culture of Westbrook centered around the St. Hyacinth Catholic Church and most of the children attended the Catholic school across the street until grade eight (shown above). Classes were held in French in the mornings and English in the afternoons.

According to Mr. Belanger, the population of Quebec surged in the time period from 1784 and 1844 creating a deficit of farmland. Even before the population growth, agricultural success was limited by other factors such as a short growing season and distant access to major markets. Surely working class families, like the Gagnons of St. Malo, also must have experienced the same economic downturn causing them to look to the growing industrialism in the states.

Genealogy involves research and even though it was not a priority on my trip, I did get to search for records, pictures and newspaper articles with Mary Ann at the Walker library and at the Cumberland County Courthouse land records office. Here she is locating a map in the Plats room of a Pine Point property that Auguste and Bernadette Albert transferred to Jeanne and Ray Lebel in 1959. Auguste Albert had so many properties bought and sold over the years that we grew tired from writing a list of the transactions.

Picture Party in Westbrook - an Albert Family Gathering

On May 8, 2010, more than a third of the Albert cousins gathered at the home of Paul Albert in Westbrook, Maine to celebrate family history and mingle in a comfortable setting with great refeshments provided by Janet Albert and the Bernie's girls.  The cousins were well-represented from all families. Albert elders, Roland and Jeanne, were there to represent the oldest generation and Charles Albert (great grandson of Auguste Albert) was there to represent a younger generation. The picture below shows most everyone in attendance.

Front row: Becky Albert, Nancy Albert, Janet Albert, Claudia Gallant, Jeanne Lebel, Roland Albert.
Back row: Diane Bell, Peter Albert, Paul Albert, Paul Lebel, Susan Lebel Young, Craig Siulinski, MaryAnn Albert. Jim Siulinski is taking the photo.

Besides the obvious benefit of keeping in touch with family, an event like this one underscores the point that family history is not just about telling about the ones who lived before us. Family history is also about sharing stories and spending time with any and all family members regardless of age. What better way to generate stories than to take out old family pictures. Many of the pictures shared at the party were not dated or notated with details. Even without any picture details, we can tell that this formal picture of Ferdinand Albert, August Albert's father, is surely the oldest photo shown at the party. Upon further study, I will provide information regarding dress and culture of the time period in which Ferdinand lived. He came to maturity in the mid 1880's.

Of all  the pictures collected, I am particularly fascinated in images of Auguste Albert's generation and before. Nancy Albert offered this image of another fifth generation family member: Pierre Gagnon, the father of  Bernadette Gagnon Albert, shown here with Bernadette's sister, Josephine Gagnon Rocheleau. The picture was taken at a 1960 wedding at St. Hyacinth's Church in Westbrook, Maine.

Other photos scanned at the party were of Pine Point in the 1950's and Florida folks during winter visits. The experience of having family members gather to share and scan old pictures has spurred me on to create more blog posts to highlight certain pictures collected during the trip this month. By doing so, an opportunity will be provided for any family to offer feedback on the pictures by adding a comment at the end of the post or by sending an email directly to me. I look forward to sharing these photos with you all. Finally, a fun way to close my post is to show Diane's brush with fame:

Connecting Canada to France

If you want to know where in France the Alberts came from, then this is the post for you.
The Albert Family Book is a genealogy on Wilfrid Albert, but it also contains information on the area of France where the first Alberts came from. The book was written by Gabriel Drouin and delivered to Wilfrid Albert in March 1948. Gabriel Drouin was the son of Joseph Drouin, who founded the Drouin Genealogical Insitute (Institut genealogique Drouin) in 1899. The institute was for a while the most important company performing genealogical researches in Quebec.
The book was in the possession of Roland Albert but has since been lost or misplaced by next of kin. Fortunately, I had taken digital images of all the pages when I borrowed the book from Roland. With those digitized images, I traveled to Lincoln, Maine to the home of my friend, Margo Kelly, who kindly translated part of the book. At the time, Margo was teaching French at Lee Academy. Many thanks go to Margo for taking the time to translate this material during her vacation.

The genealogy of Wilfrid Albert is represented in the hand-written marriage records of the Albert ancestors. The above record shows the marriage of Ferdinand Albert and Georgiana Hebert, the parents of Auguste and Wilfrid Albert. Each marriage record in the book also shows the names of the bridegroom's parents and the bride's parents.
 

UPDATE NOTICE in January 2026: The information shown below is not our Albert lineage. We were descended not from Pierre Albert but from Jean Baptiste Albert. Pierre and Jean Baptiste were brothers of parents, Gabriel Albert and Genevieve Bouthhillier. The "Pierre Albert" shown below was from another Albert family bloodline. Suffice to say, this reportage from the Albert book constitutes yet another error. See my other blog post: Clarifying the Albert Line.

As you can see from page 29 of the book (shown below), the genealogy has been traced back to Pierre Albert with his marriage to Louise Grondin in 1702.  If you notice, the name Lucon has been underlined by Mr. Drouin because it represents the dioceses in France where Pierre comes from.

Upon a google search, I found numerous genealogical references to Pierre Albert including one that calls him the founder of the Albert family in New France. The Roy and Boucher Genealogy site gives his birth year as 1672 and his birth place as Poitou, an area in western France. Lucon is the parish and Poitou is the region. In my few years of genealogy research, this ancester is one of the earliest I have found - Pierre was born 132 years before Napolean became Emperor of France!

A map from the Albert book is shown above pointing out the exact location of Poitou in France. The family tree mentioned above tells about an even earlier ancestor, Rene Albert, born in the same town as Pierre in the year 1650.

Introducing the Ancestors - Ferdinand Albert (1864-1929)

Ferdinand Albert was the father of August ("Gus") Albert. He was born in Caraquet, New Brunswick (more information on Caraquet) and made his way to Westbrook to work in the mills like so many of our ancestors. In 1900, he was thirty-five living on Winslow Lane, and listed as a silk weaver on the federal census record.  He worked at the Haskell Silk Mill, one of the foremost silk manufacturers in New England.

The Falls located next to the Haskell Silk Mill

"The business began in a wooden building on the west side of Bridge St., very near the falls as this photograph shows.  The Haskell Silk Mill was the only silk mill in Maine and one of the oldest in New England. This was one of the industries that carried the name of Westbrook throughout the entire country and attracted an industrious population to the town." Quoted text and photo courtesy of Westbrook Historical Society.

    Ferdinand emigrated from Canada in 1887 and married a Hebert in 1895. On the Albert gravestone, she is listed as "Georgienne H".

In a taped interview in 1990, Memere reported that Georgienne died of breast cancer at the age of 42 when Pepere was just 11 years old. Many years later, Mr. Albert suffered a stroke. Memere and Pepere became his caretakers. They were living on a second floor apartment on Cole Street in Westbrook at the time. It had four little rooms and was located across the street from St. Hyacinth Church. As the family got larger, Memere and Pepere decided they needed more living space so they bought a lot nearby to have a house built. In December 1927, they moved into the new house on Bridge Street, and had a bathroom installed on the bottom level to accommodate Mr. Albert.                                                                                                               

  Soon after the move to their new residence, Memere and Pepere made arrangements for Mr. Albert to live at  the Marcotte Home in Lewiston, Maine, because it got to be too much to take care of him with four young children - Pauline, their last child, was born in September 1928. Mr. Albert enjoyed going to chapel and chatting with the other residents. He died a few months later of a heart attack having resided at Marcotte for six months. I am hoping some other pictures of Mr. Albert will eventually surface. 
Pictured above: The Albert family headstone at St Hyacinth Cemetary in Westbrook, Maine.

Sacred Ground

Last summer, Uncle Roland and I met to talk about family history of the Alberts. The topic of Pepere's business came up, I became very interested in the information that he was sharing with me.  That meeting motivated me to want to write a larger piece about "The Men's Shop".  Next time I am in Maine,  I am hoping I can capture Roland's attention again to get a fuller picture and history of this once great family business.

The image below was taken from the 1924-25 edition of the "Directory of Westbrook" (page 204). It lists the clothing businesses operating at that time. Benoit's is the business where Pepere started working as a fourteen year old boy.

I remember when my brothers and sisters used to visit Pepere at the Men's Shop. It was like we were entering sacred ground. Even though we were kids, he'd always greet us like we were VIP's, and was always happy to see us! There was a time I worked in the backroom folding clothes but I hated it just like Pepere did when he first started working at Benoits. Like him, I preferred to be interacting with people.

When I asked some of my students the other day what their earliest memory was, one girl said she remembered ushering as a little girl at her church. She must have viewed going to church as a special place because of the importance her family placed on its role. We viewed the Men's Shop in the same way - a special place where the magic of selling and cultivating customers was going on.
Pepere was president of the Westbrook Chamber of Commerce for a time and around 1960, he received one of the most distinguished recognitions in the clothing industry - the Brookfield Clothing Award. The article shown here came from one of my mother's scrapbooks. The source is most likely the Westbrook American.

Beach Memories

Most every Albert family member has distinct beach memories from many Sunday visits to Kinney Shores, Old Orchard Beach in Maine. Vicki described some of her memories when she commented on my last post:   "The slightly damp musty smell of the garage under the house with it's shower, workbench and shelves of pickles. The smell of the petunias over flowing the front window boxes by the stairs. The smell of the salt. Also the gritty feel of the sand as you descended the stairs to the beach". I do not currently have a picture of the beach house but I did find two pictures of Memere and Pepere on the beach shown below. The black and white picture may have been taken before they started their family. Here's a lesson: always date your pictures. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I have already collected for family history are undated.

Memere and Pepere ran a tight ship at the beach. Their primarily traditional roles were clearly defined. Memere took care of the cleaning and cooking and Pepere did the handy work mostly outside and in the cellar.  Who can forget Memere's warm tomato soup on a chilly day by the ocean? Another tight memory is Pepere's stash: a ready supply of bottled sodas in racks stored in the basement much to the delight of his constantly visiting grand kids. It's hard to imagine Memere and Pepere ever spending time alone because they so much loved their extended family.  
What are your beach stories from days gone by at Kinney Shores?  

NOTE:  If you have any pictures taken outside on the lawn from our many Sunday afternoon family get-togethers, please send them to me. Also, I am still looking for any pictures of Pepere's parents.  This blog is a great way to share memories but it's also a way to gather missing pictures. If I get enough pictures related to specific blog posts, I will post a link so they can be viewed from the blog.  Pictures can be sent (preferably in JPG format) directly to my email which is shown on my complete profile. Thanks to Diane for sharing her beach pictures.

Auguste 'Gus' Albert (1900-1982)

There has been no figure as respected and loved in my family than my grandfather, affectionately known as "Pepere". He was not only loved by his family but also by the community he created as the owner of a clothing store in Westbrook, Maine. He seems to have been born as a natural business man. Soon after his mother died at the age of eleven, he was knocking on the doors of local businesses on Main Street asking them if they needed any help. His mother's death forged a sense of independence and probably spurned a desire for connections with other people. During these early interactions with local businesses, he must have presented himself in a kind, genuine manner with an intense sociability which certainly carried into his adult life.  He was hired as a child to work as a clerk at Benoits which was a large clothing store at the time.  About ten years later in 1923, he and two other friends opened up their own store called The Men's Shop.