Family Reunions at the Homestead, a Place of Our Hearts

This post is the tenth in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs.

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“The Homestead” a painting by Sean Paul Lambert, hanging in Megan St. Marie’s office

Recently, I travelled to northwestern Vermont for the annual family reunion on my father’s side of the family. This was the 51st year of the gathering, and it was held at the house where my father, Ray Lambert, and his twelve younger siblings were raised. Referred to as “the homestead,” the old farmhouse is now owned by an uncle whose late wife was my father’s younger sister, and I’ve often considered writing a biography of the place to document its history and reflect on all it means to me and to our family. Though I haven’t embarked on such a project yet, my brother, Sean Paul Lambert, is an artist, and a print of a painting he made of the homestead hangs in my office, with another copy at my house, and many more prints in the possession of the extended Lambert family.

Original journal entry of July 5, 2024 by Megan St. Marie’s father, Raymond A. Lambert, transcribed below

This year, our reunion at the homestead was smaller than usual, with “only” about 75 people in attendance. My siblings and some of my cousins couldn’t make the trip, as was the case for some teens and twenty-somethings in my children’s generation. This was also the first year my father was unable to attend, due to a brief illness that kept him home. But of course, Dad was at the reunion in all of our hearts, and a journal entry he wrote expresses that he was there with us in his heart, too. With his permission, I share his reflections on the “reasons and purposes” of family reunions below, in the same spirit that so many Modern Memoirs clients come to us in order to preserve and share their parents’ words of wisdom:

July 5, 2024, Fri. of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

(Daily Journal Entry by Raymond A. Lambert)

Family reunion has reasons and purposes. When thinking about our family reunion in Highgate, Center, Vermont at the Lambert/Chevalier homestead these reasons and purposes come to mind:

• Reunion: To reconnect the bonds of family, friendship, love and concern within and across generations.

• Refresh: To take in the atmosphere of hospitality with conversation and by partaking of shared food and drink.

• Relax: To be at ease with family members and friends invited to celebrate the whole family.

• Rejoice: Our French heritage has a certain “joie de vie,” a joy of life, in life, about life, so evident in the laughter of all at the reunion.

• Recall: To remember those who have passed and to share stories with each other about them and about their lives and ours.

• Resolve: To be firmly committed to family unity and continuity by supporting each other during the good times and in times of need.

• Return: To come to the annual family reunion as each one is able and to encourage every family member to attend, if possible.

“We also gather to Regale each other with entertainment…Rediscover the gifts that each person brings…And we Remind each other of who we are and where we come from”

I’ll add a few other words to Dad’s excellent list of reunion reasons and purposes. In our family, we also gather to Regale each other with entertainment at the annual talent show, during which children show off athletic feats or skills honed in dance and music lessons, and adults perform jokes, skits, and songs that inspire laughter, tears, and occasional groans from the audience. We Rediscover the gifts that each person brings, as family members present their latest knitting and sewing projects, invite us on local home and garden tours to see how a renovation or building project is going and to enjoy the bounty of their green thumbs, or they treat us to favorite recipes. And we Remind each other of who we are and where we come from, connected through love and a heritage we share, no matter how different we may feel from each other in some ways, or where our life paths have taken us.

There were several years I missed our family reunion when I was a teenager and in my young adulthood. I had all kinds of excuses for failing to prioritize the annual gathering, none of which hold water for me anymore, and all of which I now realize were grounded in a youthful sense of having plenty of time ahead of me for such events. Today I know better—not just because my own age in midlife tells me I likely have more time behind me than I do ahead of me, but also because as I see my father’s generation aging and continuing to give of themselves to our family, I truly recognize how precious all times of reunion with them are. Someday if I do write a biography of the homestead, there will be at least one chapter devoted to the Lambert family reunion, to record for future generations just how lucky we’ve been to have these gatherings in this very special place of our hearts.

The homestead in the early 20th century, before it belonged to the Lambert family, pictured on a postcard noting that it was the birthplace of U. S. Senator Warren R. Austin (1877–1962)

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Megan St. Marie, photo by Jason Lamb Photography

Megan St. Marie is president of Modern Memoirs, Inc.

A Modern Memoirs First: Publishing a Pair of Tête-bêche Books

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As lovers of books of all shapes, sizes, and types, the Modern Memoirs staff is always on the lookout for opportunities to push the limits of conventional book design. Recently, a repeat client wished to publish a bilingual, two-volume autobiography, with each volume containing the original Chinese text and its English translation. After exploring several out-of-the-box design possibilities, Modern Memoirs ended up creating an economical, very special pair of books with an uncommon binding method called tête-bêche.

“the tête-bêche technique is used to combine two books into one”

Tête-bêche roughly translates to “head-to-foot,” with the latter part of the term from an archaic French word for "double-ended." (The French phrase “un lit bêchevet” is a related term that refers to a bed with heads at either end, and etymology ultimately traces back to the Latin “biceps,” or two-headed.) In bookbinding, the tête-bêche technique is used to combine two books into one, as the second book is rotated 180 degrees so that it is upside down and begins at the back cover. The reader can choose either side of the book to begin from, and then flip it over to read the rest.

Though tête-bêche binding is very rarely used today, you may be familiar with it if you’ve read science fiction or mystery stories published by Ace Books in the 1950s–1970s. Earlier examples date back to Europe in the 19th century (and possibly beforehand), which combine religious texts—consider, for example, having the Old and New Testaments bound in this way. Today, tête-bêche binding is most commonly used in countries with two official languages, such as Canada. Since each text in a tête-bêche book gets its own front cover and place on the spine, the style presents both texts in the same way, without implying a hierarchy of one version or language as the primary one.

“The design’s effectiveness in affirming the equal value and importance of two languages was an excellent reason for us to use tête-bêche binding for our client’s two-volume, bilingual autobiography”

The design’s effectiveness in affirming the equal value and importance of two languages was an excellent reason for us to use tête-bêche binding for our client’s two-volume, bilingual autobiography. Once translation, editorial, and design phases were complete, we worked closely with our printer affiliate to pull off the resulting complex production process. We even shipped printed, tapebound galleys for the printer to use as hard-copy mockups to ensure all of the pages in the differently oriented parts of the two books were placed correctly, and that the two “front” covers on each book were properly positioned. We were all nervous when advance copies arrived at our office, and when we unboxed them we were relieved and delighted. The books came out beautifully! Our client received lots of praise, and we were gratified that we had been able to create custom books that fit all of our client’s wants and needs.

Now we find ourselves positively bursting with ideas for other uses of tête-bêche bindings. Imagine a tête-bêche memoir about a marriage, with one side by each partner; a memoir about one’s parents or grandparents; or a genealogy for both sides of the family. Once you start dreaming up possibilities, it’s hard to stop! Contact us today if any of these ideas spark your imagination, or if you’d like to explore other custom binding options to suit a special project of your own.

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Emma Solis is publishing associate for Modern Memoirs.

Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Nien-Tszr “Tom” Tsai

Nien-Tszr “Tom” Tsai published his two-volume, bilingual autobiography entitled Hiking on the Mountain and Start Your Engine! with Modern Memoirs in 2024, featuring the first-ever tête-bêche bindings that our company has produced. Tsai’s wife, Elizabeth Tan Tsai, who has published three books of her own with Modern Memoirs, spearheaded the project on behalf of her husband. This Assisted Memoir project, which included Modern Memoirs’ commissioned translation of the text from Chinese to English, took one year and four months from the day she first contacted us to the day books arrived on the Tsais’ doorstep. We asked the Tsais to reflect on the publication process and to comment on what it has meant to share his books with others.

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1. Tom, in Hiking on the Mountain, you write that you were born in China in 1937, and that your mother died when you were seven years old, the same year civil war broke out between the Communist Party and the Nationalist (KMT) government. In those troubled times, you grew close to your father, who raised you as a single parent. When you moved to California in the 1970s, he joined you and helped you and your wife, Elizabeth, take care of your two children. In honor of Father’s Day this month, please share a memory or value you learned from your father that you will always carry with you.

Tom Tsai: I remember that my father was always kind to other people. He was very generous to his friends. He was quiet, a man of few words. He lived simply, avoiding luxury. He exercised daily indoors and outdoors, doing tai chi beautifully, which I learned from him.

2. When you were twelve, your father joined the KMT army and moved the two of you from Mainland China to Taiwan. Later, you went to the United States to study, and it became your permanent home. You write, “Over time, my homesickness diminished while my affinity for my thriving homeland grew.” How were you able to maintain a connection with your homeland while building a new life in the U.S.?

Tom Tsai: I maintained connection by corresponding with relatives, classmates, and friends in Taiwan and Mainland China; reading books and newspapers about changes occurring there; watching Chinese cinema and opera; attending lectures by Chinese writers; helping Taiwan’s shipbuilding industry and the Mainland’s railway development; visiting Taiwan and the Mainland many times; singing with various Chinese choral groups in Taiwan and at Lincoln Center; and teaching driving to (and chatting with) Chinese visiting scholars and new immigrants.

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“Reading my writings transports me to yesteryears. This personal history shows how I have become what I am today.”

3. In Hiking on the Mountain, you write, “Ever since I attended a literary camp during my sophomore year in high school and began journaling, I have been fascinated with using writing to express my emotions and record my experiences.” What makes the writing process so rewarding for you?

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Tom Tsai: The writing process clarifies my thoughts and distills my experiences in precise words. These words become fixed in my mind. I can retrieve these words and relive my experiences. Reading my writings transports me to yesteryears. This personal history shows how I have become what I am today.

4. Your career was in mechanical engineering, but you also spent years as a driving instructor in the Washington, D.C. area, teaching 1,000 people—mainly international students and their parents—who ranged from sixteen to seventy-five years of age. Start Your Engine! shares letters from former students who describe you as energetic and kind, offering patient guidance that put them at ease and made them feel more self-assured. Many remember you encouraging them, even quite early in their lessons, to step on the accelerator and “Keep going!” How did this become your signature expression?

Tom Tsai: “Keep going” simplifies in two words the lesson I impart: You’ve begun, don’t be scared, maintain your speed, keep driving. It relaxes the students. It affirms that they’re doing well and should keep doing what they’re doing. It boosts their confidence. While this lesson is one that applies to driving, it can metaphorically extend to any area of life in which one must persevere.

5. In Start Your Engine!, you describe how everyday driving can offer broader philosophical insights. What is an example?

Tom Tsai: In my years of teaching driving, I have often drawn parallels between the rules of the road and the larger lessons of life. For instance, by following traffic rules, such as “keep to the right,” we automatically drive on the right side of the road. No one needs to remind us. Safe driving habits become a part of our life. The larger lesson is: Follow the rules and live safely.

6. Elizabeth, what inspired you to return to Modern Memoirs to publish your husband’s writings in this two-volume collection? What are your observations on the publication process—especially choosing the specialized tête-bêche binding? How have others responded to the books?

Elizabeth Tsai: The friendship and trust that I have developed with Modern Memoirs during the publication of my three books inspired me to return when Tom decided to publish his Chinese books in English and Chinese. MM arranged for their translation with a university translation center. After editing the translation, I turned the project back to MM, who suggested tête-bêche binding, where one can read the Chinese text and, turning the book head over tail, read the English text. The bilingual books arrived just in time for a family gathering for Mother’s Day. Our children and grandchildren did not leave empty handed! We are very pleased and happy with the books, which the Library of Congress has added to its collection, and our family and friends love them.

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Liz Sonnenberg is the staff Genealogist at Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Stephen Rostand

Stephen Rostand has published four books with Modern Memoirs. The first three—a photography collection in 2007, a department history in 2008 (reprinted in a second edition in 2019), and a family history in 2020—were featured in the January 2022 edition of “Reflections.” Rostand’s fourth publication, entitled It’s Okay to Play, was completed in 2024 and features another collection of his photography. Upon receiving his books, Rostand wrote to us, saying:

“The books are beautiful, even better than I expected. The paper has the right feel and texture, the photos are crisp, sharp and appear much better on paper than on the computer screen. In all, the real book is a work of art and everyone is to be congratulated for their contributions to what is so outstanding and masterfully done. You all have added sharpness, focus, and, as we photographers like to say, ‘snap’ to my ideas. You did a great job. I am overwhelmed.”

We followed up to ask the author to reflect on his art and his continued interest in the publication process.

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1. In 2022, you said that you published your first photography book, entitled Mostly Paris, in order to preserve the best of your images for family and friends. What motivated you to create this second collection? With whom do you intend to share it?

Stephen Rostand: Mostly Paris was published 17 years ago, and during that time I often thought about doing another book of photographs, but what photos to use and their purpose was unclear. During this timeframe a constant theme that kept appearing in news articles and in my professional journals was the problem of “work/life balance” and “burnout.” Having, at one time, experienced this phenomenon, I thought it would be interesting to do a book of photographs demonstrating what people do to fulfill their lives other than work. I call the book It’s Okay to Play. It tries to show photographically how childhood play transitions to adult pastimes. I am distributing this book to family, friends, and colleagues, but I realize many of them are in my geriatric age group. Although it is never too late to play, I will also be giving these books to many of my younger colleagues who are at the onset or in the middle of their careers.

2. In the first volume, every image was shot in black and white. In It’s Okay to Play, two-thirds of the images are in color. What accounts for that change?

Stephen Rostand: In the era of film photography, before computers and digital cameras, whether the photo was in black and white or color depended on what film you had in your camera at the time; most often it was black and white. For those reasons, in that era, photographers tended to see in black and white. I, as many others, felt black and white showed the essence of the photo without the distraction of color. In the present digital era, the photographer has the option of black and white or color, without concern for film. As a result, one has the opportunity of seeing in either mode and can make a choice. Although I still believe, in many instances color detracts from the essence of the image, it can also add warmth or feelings that might not be appreciated in a stark black-and-white print.

3. The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “Your first 1,000 photographs are your worst.” You have been photographing for sixty years. Do you agree with Cartier-Bresson? What is one of the key lessons you have learned about this art form in that time?

“When armed with a camera or a sketch pad, one’s surroundings take on greater dimensions. One tends to look in every direction, up, down, side to side, seeing people and places in greater detail, perhaps for the first time.”

Stephen Rostand: Cartier-Bresson is correct. A really good photograph is elusive. It takes a long time to know your equipment, to have the patience to see your surroundings, and to decide what would make a good photograph—its timing and its purpose. It means early on one can waste much film and time. Nevertheless, one can occasionally produce a good image. With more time and maturity, one’s images improve progressively until one can more readily discover the “decisive moment.” Thereafter, good photographs are produced more consistently. Time, practice, and patience are the secrets to success in any art form or, for that matter, in any field of endeavor.

4. In your recent book, you said that photography helps you to see things from different perspectives and gain insights into people, the world, art, and yourself. How is that so? Can you share an anecdote of when photography gave you such insights?

Stephen Rostand: Most people live their daily lives oblivious to their surroundings. Their focus is on work and their activities of daily living. When armed with a camera or a sketch pad, one’s surroundings take on greater dimensions. One tends to look in every direction, up, down, side to side, seeing people and places in greater detail, perhaps for the first time. One takes in the complete scene, is more aware of one’s surroundings, may be better able to anticipate what might be happening, see the humor or seriousness in the scene. Life becomes more interesting and richer. Some examples for me: seeing humor in the incongruous juxtaposition of a Sabrett’s hotdog stand next to the entrance of Harry Winston’s jewelry store on Fifth Avenue in New York; another is the deep spiritual response I had on seeing the blue-green ice of a calving Margaree Glacier on a cold, silent, overcast morning while virtually alone on a small boat on the inner passage of Alaska.

5. The American photographer Lois Greenfield once said, “My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only begin to imagine.” For you, how much of photography is about your intention, and how much is about the unforeseen?

Stephen Rostand: Greenfield’s more philosophical bent does not resonate with me. Unless one is a professional photographer carrying out specific assignments, most photographers may often only have a vague idea of what they are looking for. Perhaps they want to capture a particular place, be it urban or rural, a portrait, wildlife, or flowers. I like to photograph, when possible, the theater of life. I like to have people in my pictures. But having a general idea of what one wants does not mean one can always anticipate what one will encounter when arriving at the venue. One’s intention often comes after having looked at the finished photograph because much work in the dark room or with Photoshop creates the final image, and often the process of making that final image is when the photographer’s intention and/or philosophy is revealed. The final image reveals not only the scene but also the photographer who took it. The image and the photographer are the same.

Sabrett’s Peerage, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, May 1994
Photo by Stephen Rostand

Epiphany, Margaree Glacier, Inside Passage, Alaska, July 2015
Photo by Stephen Rostand

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Liz Sonnenberg is the staff Genealogist at Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Marian Leibold

Marian Leibold has published two collections of poetry with Modern Memoirs. Her first book, entitled Forever Now: The Interconnectedness of All Things, was published in 2020. The second book, entitled Bridges: Visible and Invisible, came out this year. We interviewed Leibold about her first project in the October 2022 edition of “Reflections” and caught up with her again this month—National Poetry Month—to find out more about her second one.

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“Poetry often functions as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious parts of ourselves, much the way a melody or song blends those same aspects of heart and mind.”

1. In one piece in your recent book, you say that “poetry is a tool for map-making.” What do you mean by that?

Marian Leibold: Poetry often functions as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious parts of ourselves, much the way a melody or song blends those same aspects of heart and mind. Maps can be records of lived experience, visual routes to offer to fellow travelers, aids to orient one in the world, encouragement to explore, companions in the unknown larger world, or some combination of all of these. I would hope poetry can similarly serve as a tool for “map-making” for our individual journeys through invisible, yet real, terrain.

2. Your second volume is organized around the theme of bridges, with different structural types and their symbolic meanings framing the several chapters. What inspired you to use bridges in this way?

Marian Leibold: I knew I wanted “bridges” as a theme because it seems that now, more than ever, our contentious world is calling for reconnection. Bridges, both visually and metaphorically, offer the invitation for people to think about how they might build and/or cross bridges in their own lives to gain greater understanding and compassion.

3. As you did with your first book, you placed a painting you created on the cover. Can you share a bit about the place you’ve depicted in the painting and your process generating it? In deep, rich colors, it portrays a brook in a forest, with wildflowers growing on both sides of the water, and a fallen log crossing over the brook to form a natural bridge. Which came first, the title Bridges, or the painting?

Marian Leibold: The painting on the cover represents a natural landscape in which a once living tree is repurposed into a bridge. I spend as much time as I can in the natural world and the image of two hillsides connected by a fallen tree carries within it a hidden message for us all. The painting preceded the book title. Perhaps on some level, they just found each other.

4. In one poem you write, “My grip on life is loosening / while my full participation grows.” How would you say this second book is a product of the age you are now?

Marian Leibold: My second book, Bridges, includes many poems involving discernment. As time is a limited natural resource for humans, one must choose wisely how to use it. As I grow older, I become “somewhat” more realistic about the fact that there are only twenty-four hours in a day and that Nature will have her way whether I sanction it or not. Choosing to comply with her teaching seems like a good idea now!

5. What was it about your experience of publishing the first volume that led you to publish a new volume?

Marian Leibold: I enjoyed working with Modern Memoirs, and holding the finished product in my hands was like being given the keys to a door I had always wanted to open. Poems are not meant to live between the pages of dusty journals or on scraps of paper folded in pockets. They are meant to breathe their life into the world, and publishing my first book made this evident.

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Liz Sonnenberg is genealogist for Modern Memoirs.

A Painting as Portal to People and Places of the Past

This post is the ninth in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs.

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A print of this painting of a white horse once hung in the Vermont farmhouse of Megan St. Marie’s great-grandparents Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert and Anastasie “Tazzie” Lambert, and now now hangs in her Modern Memoirs office. Read on for more information

Fred Lambert standing in front of his farmhouse in Highgate, Vermont with his Percheron workhorses, Dick (left) and Dan (right), c. 1950

Fred and Tazzy Lambert at their farm in Highgate, Vermont, 1937

Louis Raymond’s 1884 marriage license, listing his occupation as “Farmer”

An ancestry chart prepared by Modern Memoirs Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg for this piece, documenting some of Megan St. Marie’s paternal ancestry, including her 2x-great-grandfather Louis Homer Raymond, who died in 1903

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Obituary for Louis Homer Raymond (here referred to as H.L. Raymo) describing his sudden death after a routine appendectomy in 1903 when he was forty years old

A patrilineal line ancestry chart prepared by Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg showing Megan (Lambert) St. Marie’s patrilineal line, going back thirteen generations to her 11x-great-grandfather.

A plaque in L’Église St. Aubin listing the names of people who imigrated from Tourourve au Perche, France to Canada, including Megan St. Marie’s 8x great-grandfather Aubin Lambert dit Champagne

Megan St. Marie standing with her father, Raymond Alfred Lambert, in front of L’Église St. Aubin, April 2023. This is the church in Tourouvre au Perche, France where the first Lambert in their lineage to immigrate to French Canada was baptized in 1632

Ray Lambert standing with a local police officer outside of L’Église St. Aubin in Tourourve au Perche, France, April 2023

Fred Lambert’s barn in Highgate, Vermont, c. 1948. It was destroyed by fire in April 2024

Genealogy enthusiasts don’t have to explain to each other why we find poring over primary documents and family trees so compelling. We love getting lost in rabbit holes of research, and we rejoice in breaking through brick walls, wielding documentation like sledgehammers against uncertainty about our roots. Sharing our findings with others who don’t share our passion requires that we connect the dots between the names and dates and records we discover to present our ancestors in their full humanity, with storytelling and emotion fleshing out the bare bones of fact. Sometimes objects and heirlooms help in this process by tangibly bringing us closer to previous generations. My son and I snuggle under an afghan my grandmother made, and though he never met her, he can imagine her hands at work.

A print of a painting of a white horse that has been in my family for four generations inspires this piece of writing. It came to me from my father, Raymond Alfred Lambert, who grew up in a small farming village on the border of Vermont and Québec. He said it originally belonged to his grandfather, Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert (1882–1963). Though I never knew this great-grandfather because he died before I was born, my dad has shared many stories about him over the years. Some were about his team of white Percheron workhorses named Dick and Dan. As a child I thought my great-grandpa Lambert had actually hired someone to paint this picture as a tribute to them. I later realized the implausibility of such an act—commissioning a portrait of a workhorse would have been quite an indulgence for a Vermont oat farmer!

At one point my dad said it was likely his grandfather stumbled across the picture at a barn auction and bought it since it reminded him of his horses. I accepted that theory until I hung it in my office at Modern Memoirs and noticed that handwritten on the back are the words “Great-Grandpa Raymond’s horse ‘Alpha.’” In addition to being my dad’s first name, Raymond was the maiden name of Fred Lambert’s wife, my great-grandmother Anastasie “Tazzy” Raymond Lambert (1886–1971). Like Fred, she also died before my birth, and I never heard any stories about her family’s horses. But, her father, Louis Homer Raymond (1863–1903), who would’ve been “Great-Grandpa Raymond” to my dad and his generation, listed his occupation as “Farmer” on his 1884 marriage license, and it’s entirely possible that he owned a Percheron workhorse named Alpha.

I know very little about the life of this more distant ancestor, and the most compelling details I have are not about his farm animals or his work, but about his untimely, and rather gruesome death. Louis’s obituary states that he was at the hospital recovering from an appendectomy when he awoke from a nightmare and leapt out of bed. Apparently, this sudden movement opened the incision from his operation, and he never recovered from the ensuing complications. He died, leaving behind his wife, Delia Pelkey/Pelletier (1864–1935) and their six children. Compounding the tragedy was the fact that Delia was pregnant with their last child, Dorothy Edna Raymond (1903–1977), who was born just a month after Louis’s unexpected passing. He was only forty years old.

Tazzy, the eldest child in the family, was seventeen when her father died, so he wasn’t there a year and a half later when she married Fred Lambert in 1905. The Franco-American community in their area was closeknit, and I wonder if Fred had known his late father-in-law before he died, if they’d talked about horses and farming, if the elder Louis had told young Fred that Percherons were the best workhorses around. I don’t know the answers to these questions; but I do know that Fred ended up with Dick and Dan, Percherons like the one in the painting that was apparently owned by Great-Grandpa Lambert—and, it turns out, like generations of Franco farmers before them.

My dad’s genealogy research stretches back to mid-16th-century France as it traces the Lambert family name to his 10x-great-grandfather, Louis Lambert (not to be confused with the above-mentioned Louis Raymond), who is the earliest entry in the patrilineal line ancestry chart included here. We can’t confirm exactly where Louis Lambert lived in the 1500s, but we do know that his son Jean had a son named Audax Odoard Lambert dit Champagne (my dad’s 8x-great-grandfather), who was born in a small village called Tourouvre. It’s likely that Audax hailed from there, as well. This community is in the region of Perche, from which Percheron horses get their name. Did Fred Lambert know he descended from Percheron families when he brought Percheron horses Dick and Dan to his farmhouse in Vermont? Perhaps. But even if he didn’t, the small connection is thrilling to me as I think of him, knowingly or not, uniting with his ancestral homeland through the animals who helped him farm his land in Vermont to provide for next generations.

In 2023, my father and I travelled to France on a dream-come-true heritage trip, visiting many of the places where our ancestors lived. We spied several Percheron horses as we drove through Perche on our way to Tourouvre, and seeing them made us think of the horse painting that once hung in Fred and Tazzy Lambert’s farmhouse in Vermont. We were on our way to visit L’Église St. Aubin, the church in Tourouvre where the first Lambert in our lineage to immigrate to French Canada was baptized in 1632. He is my dad’s 7x great-grandfather and was the son of Audax, named Aubin Lambert dit Champagne in honor of the patron saint of the church.

Today L’Église St. Aubin is still a place of worship, but it also serves as something of a museum devoted to the Percheron migration to French Canada.[i] There we saw 19th-century stained-glass windows depicting the immigration and also the return of descendants who commissioned the windows.

We also saw a plaque with Aubin’s name inscribed, and Dad and I both lit candles in his honor and in honor of his Parisian wife, Élisabeth Aubert, who immigrated to Canada as “une fille du roi” (king’s daughter) in 1670. (A dramatization of their union was included in the 2017 CBC documentary “The Story of Us”, starting at about minute 21 in this clip.) In the midst of a trip filled with moments that exceeded all of my hopes, it was the very best day for me because I knew it was the most meaningful day for my dad, and on some level we shared this special day not only with each other, but with Aubin and Élisabeth, and with Louis, Fred and Tazzy, too.

When we returned from France, Dad and I wanted to share our experiences with others, and we were delighted when the Franco American Centre at the University of Maine-Orono agreed to host our online presentation entitled Dans les Pas de Nos Ancêtres (In the Steps of Our Ancestors): A Father-Daughter Trip to France.

Since then, we have shared stories and photos at our family reunion, and I’ve written a few brief pieces for the Modern Memoirs newsletter, while wanting to write even more. When I finally found the time to draft this piece, my staff helped me solve the mystery around the origins of Fred and Tazzy’s picture of the white horse. With thanks to Book Designer Nicole Miller, I now know that it is a magazine illustration from circa 1902 entitled Sunday Morning by Austrian artist Carl Kahler. Perhaps Louis Raymond saw this illustration in a magazine, just a year or so before he died, and it reminded him of his horse, so he kept it. Perhaps Tazzy then held onto the picture in memory of her father, displaying it in the home she shared with her husband, Fred, on a farm where they also kept Percheron horses. Though I can only speculate about this part of the story, it’s immensely satisfying to know more about the picture itself, which acts like a portal to people and places of the past in my family history.

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Postscript

I thought I had said all I wanted to about Kahler’s Sunday Morning painting and how it connects me to my family history, but then I sent a draft of this blog post to my dad so he could review it before I shared it. In response he told me with sadness that the barn Fred Lambert once owned, where he kept the Percheron horses Dick and Dan, was recently destroyed by fire. I felt a bittersweet sense of synchronicity at hearing this news since I started writing this piece on the very day the barn burned, not knowing of the fire’s occurrence. The following is a brief reflection my dad wrote about the loss, which I am honored to share below:

On April 2, 2024 at 4 a.m. the barn on route 78 between Highgate Center and East Highgate, Vermont, formerly part of the farm owned by my grandpa Fred Lambert and grandma Tazzy Lambert, was consumed by a fire of unknown origin.

The barn was a place of many fond memories for me. Grandpa stanchioned his herd of 21 dairy cows in it. A pen was the home of a prized bull available for breeding cows, mostly Jerseys, a few Brown Swiss, and some mixed breeds. Next to the bullpen was a pen for calves and heifers with their promise of much milk to come from them in the future. On the north end were two stalls for Grandpa’s white-coated Percheron workhorses.

In front of the stanchioned cows was an alleyway. Hay stored above in the hayloft would be tossed down one forkful at a time and placed in front of each cow. Corn silage from the silo on the south end of the barn was shoveled before each cow, and grain from the feed store, delivered in burlap bags, added to the hope of an abundance of milk from each cow milked in the early morning and late afternoon. A necessary part of the barn was a long gutter behind the cows to collect waste the cows dropped into it. Shoveling the smelly stuff into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it outside to the manure pile was, to put it bluntly, a stinky job. A large watering trough for the horses and separate water bowls next to each cow provided water from a driven well near the barn.

The old barn is gone, but memories of it remain burned in my mind. For me it was my grandpa’s temple, where he paid homage to the bovines and equines that were such a big part of his life as a farmer steeped in the ways of agriculture he learned as a boy in the late-19th century in northern Vermont.

Dad’s likening of the barn to a temple designates it as holy ground in his heart, on par with the holiness of the church we visited together in Perche. Reverence for places like these is integral to my passion for family history, making this work transcend bare facts or mere nostalgia to achieve a sense of the sacred. With his family history research, my father has given me, and everyone in our family, a tremendous gift. His genealogy website contains over 48,000 names of relatives he has documented, dating back centuries. In addition to gifting us this treasure trove of information about our roots, my dad has passed along many objects dear to him and his family, like the Sunday Morning picture in my office. When I look at it, I think of our ancestors, the places where they lived, and worshiped, and worked, and how their lives allowed me to come to the place I am today, grounded in my own family’s history as I help others publish books about theirs.

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[i] We were also delighted to discover that the official Musée de l'émigration française au canada is located just up the street from L’Église St. Aubin, and we paid it a visit after our time at the church.

Megan St. Marie, photo by Jason Lamb Photography

Megan St. Marie is president of Modern Memoirs, Inc.