Author Alfred Saulniers: New Bedford’s Franco-American ‘story needed to be told’

Originally published in The New Bedford Light

by Joanna McQuillan Weeks May 25, 2025

You could say that Alfred H. Saulniers has come full circle.

As a child growing up in Acushnet, he spoke French before learning English in grammar school. His career as an academic and professional economist took him from the University of Michigan to Peru, Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Kenya, Morocco, and Pakistan.

And in 2000, his path carried him back to New Bedford, where he has immersed himself in the history and culture of the city’s French speakers.

Saulniers originally embarked on the work that led to his book “The French of New Bedford, the Early Years,” in 2008. He then got diverted into another Spinner Publications project, as the lead writer for two volumes of “The Picture History of New Bedford.”

The COVID-19 pandemic gave Saulniers an opportunity to return to his deep dive into the history, culture, and contributions of Francophones in New Bedford from the 1600s to the 1930s. His years of research have culminated in “The French of New Bedford,” an encyclopedic 388-page book, richly illustrated with more than 300 archival photographs.

After receiving his diploma in 1963 with the first graduating class from Bishop Stang High School, Saulniers earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in economics.

That background gives him particular insight into the role of Franco-Americans in the commerce of New Bedford, from the whaling industry to their enormously important contribution to the textile mills, and to the businesses that catered to the French-speaking community. His skills as a genealogical researcher unearthed a rich trove of details that those tracing their family roots will treasure.

The author dedicated his book to the researchers of Franco-American history upon whose shoulders he stands: Professor Armand B. Chartier; Paul A. Cyr of the New Bedford Free Public Library; the Rev. Albert H. Ledoux; and Raymond Patnaude. He acknowledges his wife Suzanne’s critical role as a sounding board and editor.

Mel B. Yoken, Ph.D, UMass Dartmouth’s chancellor professor emeritus of French language and literature, praised the book, saying “Thank you, Dr. Saulniers, for such an illuminating, enriching and readable book. As a longtime student and inveterate scholar of the Franco-Americans, I garnered an enormous amount of information from this invaluable opus.”

In his conversation with The Light, Saulniers explained what motivated him to pursue this history project and shared some insights on current events through the lens of his professional experience.

New Bedford Light: What drives your passion for this work?

Alfred Saulniers: When I was in high school, I was at the Whaling Museum and saw all the stuff about the Yankee whalers, and a little bit about the Portuguese, and the tiniest beginnings of stuff about whalers of color. What about the French or French Canadians? I was told they never went whaling, they came to New Bedford to work in the mills.

When I finally moved back here in 2000, I went to the Whaling Museum. I got a docent who said “There were some (French whalers), you know, but they’re so few and far between.” So, I went to see Paul Cyr at the library. And he said, “In 30 years here, I’ve only ever come up with three.”

Now, my training is in economics. I worked as a professional economist for 30 years. I knew that if you had a lot of jobs in New Bedford and a lot of kids who either wanted adventure or couldn’t get very much land in Quebec, and they were an overnight train ride away, they had to be coming here. The question was, how to prove it?

Up in the genealogy room (at the library downtown), they had – still might, I don’t know – a card catalog of whalemen’s names. I knew that so many (French) names started with Le or La, that I went up there one Saturday morning with my laptop, and I pulled the first L drawer, and I started to go through it. When I finished that one, I started the second one.

Then I went over to see Paul and said, “Here’s what I’ve gotten so far.” And he then started coming over every five minutes, saying, “What have you got now? Have you got some more?” And I came up with about 150 that day, because I was asking a totally different question, rather than just waiting to come across them somehow.

I had a similar situation when I asked about French Civil War veterans. “No, they didn’t come here. They only came after the Civil War to work in the mills.” And I found a bunch of those. So, I felt the story wasn’t being told.

Yes, there were a couple of attempts to do that, the last one being a 38-page booklet that came out in the early ’90s. Before that, there was a chapter in one of the Spinner (publications) in the early ’80s … about the French Canadians.

I felt the story needed to be told, and that’s what drove me.

NBL: Reading your book opened my eyes to the diverse sources of the city’s Franco-Americans. I always had the impression that most of the immigrants to New Bedford were French Canadians. Can you talk a bit about that?

AS: The Irish from Quebec actually came up here in this room (at the Spinner Publications office).

We had a young student from the university who was working here, and he knew I could read French fluently, and he was doing his family genealogy, which ended up in Canada. He couldn’t read French. But the name was Tracey, an Irish name.

(In tracing his lineage), the family ended up at St. Patrick’s Church in Quebec. Before that, they’re going to the French churches. And when they came here, they went to Sacred Heart Church, and they married French Canadian women, and they spoke French, but the name was Irish.

I knew French (natives) likely came here. I was on the scholarship committee of the League of Franco-Americans, and we got requests for a scholarship from a young lady who had attached the photo of her grandfather in a French army uniform. He had left New Bedford to go back to France to fight in World War I. I knew people had gone to Quebec; I had no idea they had gone to the other side of the ocean. So then I started to research the Quebecers.

As an undergraduate, I spent a year in Belgium, and I still have a decided Belgian accent when I’m speaking French. I was surprised to find there are Belgians here. So, I reject the differences between the Flemish speakers and the French speakers. I got into that, and then I said, “Well, let me look at the Swiss, to make it more complete.” Now, the whaling French who came in, were often not French from Europe. The whaling French who came in tended to be from islands and were often people of color.

So, you have a totally different variety of French, French Canadians, the Belgians and the Swiss all coming together, along with the Acadians. My Saulniers background is Acadian. My ancestors were kicked out of Acadia (by the British) in 1755.

Two branches of the family were lost on ships that were sunk, having left Acadia (what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island). The family was dispersed. The place that you can find a lot of Saulniers in the U.S. is New England, because it was so close, and down in Louisiana.

When I was doing my own genealogical research, I found out they really suffered in Quebec, in 1757, after they had been kicked out. There were over 20 Saulniers who died in the refugee camp, during the winter, of smallpox.

The interesting thing once you got here is you had people who maintained the ties. You had some people who came down from New Brunswick, some people who came down from Nova Scotia, and they often would set up organizations that were Acadian only.

NBL: You seem to have such an affinity for history. How did you end up in economics?

AS: As an undergraduate, I majored in math with a minor in Russian.

Because I expected to be a university professor of mathematics, and because mathematical discoveries were being made either in the U.S. or the Soviet Union, I wanted to be able to read the journals without waiting for translations. So, the easiest thing to do is learn the (Russian) language, which I did.

And then, I always felt that French was important to who I was. I had to learn English to go to (grammar) school. Before that, I spoke French.

So, I decided to do a year in Belgium, and there I met some people, and decided, well, maybe I could apply the sort of quantitative skills that I’ve got to something that’s a little bit more touchy-feely, like economics. Going back for my senior year, I decided to do economics, and then went off to graduate school and got a Ph.D.

(During his various academic and international economics postings, he also pursued interests in family genealogy and ethnological history.)

NBL: Is there a particular part of the story of French speakers in New Bedford that most fascinates you?

AS: (To begin with) I had done whaling and the Civil War. I felt those were really things that I needed to set the record straight.

Then I wanted to look at everything else. I did up a little database of all different kinds of professions. I went through a number like every 10 years, or every 20 years of a city directory and the lists in the back of how many people were involved, and which of those had names that I would recognize as being French. If somebody was present in two or three of them, then I said, “OK, this is somebody who’s got a lasting presence in the city. I should be writing about that person.”

Then it was a question of using all the standard genealogical tools to look up about that person, find out information, see if there’s something interesting that happened. And that’s how the family vignettes came about.

NBL: You draw a parallel between Franco-American child migrants and today’s Dreamers. Can you expand on that?

AS: When I looked at the way the families came down (from Canada), families tended to come down with lots of kids, and the kids got jobs, and then later on, the kids became naturalized American citizens and productive members of their community.

I think it’s just really strange how child migrants are now being demonized and not given a chance to be productive members of the community in which they grow up.

It seems like we invest a lot of money in their education and then say, “OK, goodbye. Don’t contribute, even though we’ve contributed to your education.” It’s sad.

I think the way in which we treated young migrants earlier (in our history) acted to the betterment of society and should be looked at for its potential example for today’s political decisions.

NBL: What’s your favorite part, research or writing?

AS: I love research. You can dig up so many fascinating things in doing that. There are things that surprised me. I mean, the number of links between Fall River and New Bedford, because when I grew up, there was always this tension, this rivalry between the two. But to find out that people were going back and forth, “OK, let me find a wife over there, or let me move for a while and see what the job opportunities are.”

I’m continuing to look at things. One thing I forgot to put in was art. So, I’m going back now and doing artists, going back some of the earliest times.

NBL: And at the conclusion of the book, you do have that list of topics for further study. Were you suggesting those for other people?

AS: No, I’ll get to them at some point (chuckling).

NBL: You have been a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development, among many others. What do you think of the current state of affairs, regarding eliminating USAID?

AS: I worked for USAID in a couple of countries. My longest was in Morocco, where USAID had funded Harvard to come in and work on pricing liberalization.

I was in the economics part of the prime minister’s office, interacting every day with Moroccans. For some, I was the first American they had ever gotten to know. And so I was the soft view of American foreign policy. I think it made a difference in terms of changing people’s opinions.

I had one person whose son actually came to the U.S. to do an undergraduate degree, saying, “You changed my family’s view of the U.S.” He was from a fairly conservative family, and just the fact that we were interacting as peers every day (influenced his perspective). If he had questions, he could ask me; if I had questions, I could ask him. …

When I visited his hometown, his son was two months or three months older than our daughter, and so the kids were together when we were together. I think that’s totally lost today, the fact that USAID is doing things that might be different in terms of not having an immediate payback. It’s probably one of the things that’s behind (the move to eliminate the agency).

I suspect also that because you tend to have people with more advanced degrees and certainly far more knowledge of the countries that they’re dealing with doesn’t fit in with the glib, superficial notions of the world that tend to prevail in Washington right now. So, I think it’s a big mistake.

NBL: You say in your preface that you hope the book helps New Bedford’s Franco-Americans gain a greater sense of pride in their community and in the accomplishments of its members. Do you think that pride has been lost as the population has become more diffuse?

AS: I did have one person write to me that after reading the introduction, for the first time in her life — and she had just turned 80 — she actually felt pride in being French Canadian. …

People at Spinner tell me that book sales are very different from other publications that they have put out. Usually somebody will go in and buy a copy of one of the books. In this case, people are going in and buying multiple copies. Not only do they feel the pride of place, but they are trying to send it off to various family members.

At the book launch, the strangest (thing) was one person who had come in and asked for seven copies, and was able to get one, because by that time they were close to running out. So I think it’s doing a job in pride of place.

I had a person write me from Vermont who said I had mentioned things in the book about his grandfather that no one in the family knew (and he wanted to know) what were my sources of information, how could I justify what I said. He was able to get the information and said that he had learned to do research using the kinds of sources that he had never thought of using, that I had used in the book. So, yeah, I think pride of place is somehow coming back. 

Joanna McQuillan Weeks is a freelance writer and frequent correspondent for The New Bedford Light.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“The French of New Bedford, The Early Years” costs $40. In New Bedford, it is available from the Spinner Publications office, at the Whaling Museum and Salt and Sole; at EURO in Fairhaven; Davoll’s General Store in Dartmouth; and Partners Village Store in Westport. A Kindle e-book is available for $20 on Amazon.com.

https://newbedfordlight.org/author-alfred-saulniers-new-bedfords-franco-american-story-needed-to-be-told/