Franco-American Lewiston Walking Tour Preview

When immigrating to a new place, a bit of home can be very comforting. Familiar food, language, and customs can ease the challenges of being in a new country. Oxford street, which you are now walking down, became an oasis for the Franco community. Here they recreated the comforts of their French-Canadian home culture. But why this street? Several reasons. After 1874, the Grand Trunk railway station, located a block away, on the corner of Lincoln St. and Beech St., connected the town to the Grand Trunk or Canadian National Railway. This direct line from Montreal, Canada to Lewiston, Maine made it easy for French Canadians to immigrate.

While work in textile and later paper mills brought Francos to the area, they did not all stay in those factory jobs. Many branched out into other business endeavors after their arrival. These local entrepreneurs created businesses to serve not only their fellow Francos, but the rest of Lewiston. One of these was Francois Regis (F.R.) Lepage. Lepage immigrated from Quebec in 1885 and started working as a foreman at Dupont Bakery. In 1903, thanks to a loan from his former boss and fellow Franco, Philippe Dupont, Lepage opened Lepage Bakeries, later known as Country Kitchen, on this spot.

One of the unifying cultural connectors between Franco-Americans, besides their French language, is their Catholic faith. The French-Canadians who immigrated to Lewiston to work in the textile mills founded St. Peter and Paul parish, and built this, the second largest church in New England. It is also the oldest French speaking Catholic parish in the Diocese of Portland.

Take a stroll through the park. When it was first created, in 1868, it was called City Park. In classic style for the time, its design is very regimented. The rectangle that is the park is cut into four squares by walking paths and then cut again by another set of paths that cut those squares in half.

The park includes one of the first civil war monuments erected in the state. Its 1881 bandstand, restored in 2015, has seen its share of political rallies and musical performances. In fact, John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic to be elected president in the United States, spoke here on a chilly November night during his presidential campaign. After his death in 1963, the park was renamed Kennedy Park in his honor.

What you’re looking at now was a powerhouse of industry in Lewiston and a major draw for French-Canadian immigrants to this area. The Bates Mill was built in 1850, just downstream from the Lewiston Falls, which powered the mill. It was part of Benjamin Bates’ grand scheme for Lewiston. Bates was a well-to-do Massachusetts businessman who had made a fortune in wholesale and retail. He brought his fortune to Lewiston and created the Bates Manufacturing Company, causing the town to grow rapidly. Much of the money Benjamin Bates generated from the Bates Mill went into funding Bates College.

Of major importance to Franco-Americans is their language, French, which they kept alive as a community through their churches, schools, and newspapers. Even as recently as 1940, out of all the New England states Maine had the second largest number of people whose mother tongue was French. Lewiston’s Franco community started publishing the French language newspaper, Le Messager, in 1880. An early office of the newspaper was located here at 175 Lincoln St.