Our Story
THE ELLIOT-VILLENEUVE FAMILY
The picture, above, is that of my grandmother, great-grandparents and Grandma’s siblings in approximately 1908 - at least two children had died, and three more would come in soon (until 1912). Great-Grandma Louise may even be pregnant in this picture with the next child. My grandmother is the one in the upper back left, behind her father.....Marie Elsie Cecilia Elliot.
The family at this moment in time is in the upper peninsula of Michigan - in the Keweenaw peninsula specifically, in the small town of Calumet, in Houghton County. Immigrating between 1877 and 1880, Edward had come from Ste. Ursule, Maskinongé, Québec to the upper peninsula for work as the economic troubles of Canada had created many challenges for the family. Edward Elliot was a carpenter, making sturdy furniture for the busy mining families, mine owners and surrounding community that was in the midst of the copper and iron ore trade of the Keweenaw. He had been in a farming family, part of the reason for the move as the farmers of Québec were going through significant hardships. Great-grandmother Louise was already in the upper peninsula as her family had moved there between 1872 and 1873. The 1900 Census gives some information about the family before this picture was taken - at that point, only eight children had been born with only six surviving. By the 1910 Census, we have a family of eleven children, with fourteen born to mother Louise, married 20 years to husband Edward. Six children born in ten years - truly an old-fashioned Catholic family in this French-Canadian, Finnish and English community.
It was some time in the 1920s that the family moved south, as the mines were closing, the community was increasingly challenged with economic woes and the automobile industry in/around Detroit was thriving. Some of the family moved west into Wisconsin and Illinois, while others moved south to Detroit and its suburbs. Elsie Elliot married Waino Sutinen in the upper peninsula and the family began to grow. That’s how I came to be here as mom, Dolores Eleanor Sutinen was born in 1928 in Detroit.
