Protestant Evangelization of French Canadian Immigrants in 19th Century New England

William J. Cork, D.Min.

Between 1860 and 1920 nearly a million French Canadians migrated to the United States.¹ They were not the only immigrants to New England in this period, but they bore the brunt of xenophobic and anti-Catholic hostility. Commissioner Carroll D. Wright of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor scornfully derided them as "the Chinese of the Eastern States."² Some Protestants, however, argued that French Canadians could be successfully assimilated into New England--provided only that they be converted to Protestantism. Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists were most active in this endeavor, making use of missionary societies, newspapers, books, lectures, and schools in the effort to lure French Canadians from the Catholic faith.

One notable figure in this proselytizing campaign was Calvin Elijah Amaron, a Canadian Presbyterian pastor of Swiss descent. Unlike his associate and friend Charles Chiniquy, a former priest who wrote fanciful tabloid-like exposes seeking to confirm the worst Protestant nightmares about life in convents and seminaries (and who claimed the assassination of Lincoln was a Jesuit plot), Amaron sought to minister in a more positive direction, and for a decade focused his efforts on the French Canadian immigrants of New England. In 1885 he founded the French Protestant College in Lowell, MA (subsequently moved to Springfield, MA), for the express purpose of helping French Canadians assimilate--with conversion to Protestantism the cornerstone of the assimilation process. He laid out his program in a pamphlet, The Evangelization of the French Canadians (1885), republished in extended form as Your Heritage; or New England Threatened (Springfield, MA: French Protestant College, 1891). In the Introduction, Rev. Joshua Coit, Secretary of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society and one of Amaron's professors, stated the problem thus:

The importance of the French-Canadian problem in New England can hardly be overstated. The present number of French Canadians in New England (in Massachusetts one twelfth of the whole population); their certain increase, both by immigration and by propagation; the openly declared purposes of those who control the great mass of this people as no other class in our land is controlled:--all unite to make this problem a present and pressing one. The French already begin, not only to feel, but also to boast of the strength of their numbers. The Boston Herald of June 25 1891 in its very full report of the "Fête Nationale" held by the French Canadians in Pawtucket R.I. on St. Jean Baptiste's day, June 24, credits an ex-Mayor of Pawtucket with saying: "Mr. Thibault, in his address in French, made a remark that I have heard in English many times to-day. "Here are the future rulers of the country." This is because there is no other race more prolific than the French Canadian unless it be the Irish." These are significant words uttered by one, repeated by many and endorsed by a mayor of no mean city.

It may seem foolish to pay any heed to what should be looked upon simply as the idle boast of a Fête-day orator. But the same hope or expectation crops out in many ways and in many places. Formerly and until recently the order from the bishops and priests to this people was "Do not become citizens in the states, but return with your gains to your old homes in Canada". And the order was obeyed and the French were a shifting, restless class among us. But now the word has gone forth: "Become citizens" and this is obeyed. The French are buying farms and homes. Many have become voters already and very many more have taken out the first papers. This means that there is gathering among us a large mass of voters more pliant and obedient than ever the Irish were to be controlled by orders from their superiors. Great care is taken by the Romish priests, not only through the parochial schools but also from their pulpits, to keep these people well in hand. That they succeed so well is to be accounted for not simply by the ignorance of the people, though this is deplorable, but also by their piety, which is admirable. The danger to our land of this state of things among any considerable portion of the people is plain and will become plainer as the years go by. What risks are in store for our civil and religious liberties. What confusion between public and parochial schools. What conflicts at the ballot box.

This book assures us that the warfare has already begun and brings before the public an array of facts that should be considered by every lover of his country. Make what abatement you please on account of the enthusiasm of the author, there still remains uncontrovertible evidence of peril.

If New England is to maintain its high standing in our land as a home of intelligence, education and religion, she must recognize the changes that are taking place from year to year and awake to the danger of an imperium in imperio.

Let the French Canadians be truly Americanized and freed from subjection to a foreign power and by their industry and frugality they will add strength to our strength. But kept distinct in language and religion, told by those to whom they listen to remain French, they add weakness.

There is no better way to Americanize them than by the influence of Christian education. They seven French Protestant churches under Congregational auspices in Massachusetts, the missions under other denominations, the French Protestant newspaper and the French Protestant College are all in the way to do great service to the State by moulding the characters of those who, if the prophecy of the Pawtucket orator be true, are to be the future rulers of the country.³

Amaron's book is an elaboration of these themes. Unlike Commissioner Wright, he believed the French Canadians to be hard-working and industrious. He thought they could make important contributions to American life. He asked only one question, "Are they becoming Americans? This means, are they imbibing the spirit of your Protestant republican institutions, or are they remaining monarchical and priest-ridden? Are they creating a New France in your midst?" He then laid out his program of education, including establishment of schools and of publishing houses.

It is a mistake to think that the public schools will do it all, that the liberalizing influences which surround these foreigners, will alone and unaided, effect the desired change. These influences will certainly remove them in a very large measure from the old dogmatism that has held them so long but instead of making of them good, law-abiding citizens, will rather convert them into rank infidels, into French Revolution men. The only power that will save them is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which they know not. We must evangelize them. In this alone lies their happiness and prosperity, and the safety of the nation.⁴

The primary arena of Amaron's evangelizing experiment was the French Protestant College he founded in 1885; he served as its second president, from 1888 to 1893.  Despite his efforts to publicize it, despite the glowing vision he portrayed in his books, the school miserably failed in its intended goal. Amaron and his supporters gave many excuses for this failure. They first said the problem was the difficulty of fighting against Catholic indoctrination and control. Then they said the problem was the lack of English skills, or the general lack of preparation for college; they created a "preparatory school" or "academy" (a high school), but that didn't solve the problem.

The May 31, 1893, Annual Meeting⁵ of the Corporation and Board of Trustees touched on some of these issues.

The trustees have during the year studied with some care the field in which the college is called to labor and have endeavored to ascertain in what measure the institution is reaching the French Canadian population of New England. It is the opinion of the French members of the board that too much stress cannot be laid upon the preparatory department of the college, as doing a most important and essential foundation work, without which the regular collegiate work of the intuition cannot for some years to come be carried on. The large population from which this institution is to draw its material having been so singularly misled by the church which has controlled it in the past, in the direction of education, that in the case of thousands upon thousands the very taste and ambition for education is unknown and must be created.

The Trustees suggested the need to create a grade school,

not for the boys and girls of our converts who can and should go to public schools, but for hundreds of so-called French-Canadian Roman Catholic boys and girls who crowd the parochial schools and there receive an education which is worse than none in that the very purpose of it is to raise a barrier between the child and the general spirit, which we, as Protestant Americans, believe in and desire to see prevail.

Amaron urged the Trustees and supporters not to be discouraged. The mission was still going forward, even if the school seemed to be struggling. At that same 1893 meeting he said, “Our publication is doing a silent but radical work which the priests of Rome are powerless to prevent. How can they prevent the earnest seeker from reading Le Citoyen behind the door in his closet.”

Yet it seems some of the constituents were unconvinced. That year marked the end of Amaron's tenure as president, and in the years to come the problems of the school became more pronounced, and there was a gradual turning away from Amaron's vision. In 1894 the name was changed from French Protestant College to French American College; by 1902 it could no longer even pretend to be “French American”-- of the thirty-six students in its various programs in the fall of 1902, only three or four had French names.

The failure of the school to fulfill Amaron's vision in any way is apparent in a May 25, 1904, letter from the faculty to the Trustees. They affirmed the need for a school particularly focused on the needs of immigrants, since immigrants were then 63% of the Massachusetts population. But the school had too broad a reach and ridiculously meager resources. It was established as a college, but had then gone on to include high school and grade school students. It had too few students, too few professors, and poor equipment. The faculty placed hard facts before the Trustees: since 1885, only 21 students graduated; there were only five students in the college curriculum in 1904. How could it convince its high school students to stay for college, when it clearly couldn't compete with the scores of other schools in Massachusetts that were better equipped. “In 10 years $80.00 have been expended in chemicals and apparatus. Geology was taught with the use of four fossils.” And the school was six months behind in paying faculty salaries.

In meeting the crisis, the school took the final steps to divorce itself from its founding mission. Samuel H. Lee, president in 1904, wrote a letter to the Springfield Daily Republican on February 8, 1904, articulating the new understanding of the mission of the school that was developing. “As already implied," he acknowledged, "the name French-American no longer describes the institution.” But the need for an educational institution focused on the unique needs of immigrants remains. “Plainly," he said, "we have a race problem in the North as well as in the South.” The community itself and many schools in New England provided evidence of the racist attitudes against which immigrants from all nations had to struggle. “But these people are not to be despised,” he argued.

In 1905 the school changed its name to the one it bears today: American International College. In April 1909 it began publication of a new magazine, Immigration, on the realities of the day and  how to assist immigrants to adapt and to succeed. The first issue affirmed that mistakes had been made in the efforts at evangelization in previous decades. In the November 1909 issue, R. DeWitt Mallary, the president since 1908, adopted a more ecumenical posture, arguing that they should be more concerned with those immigrants who had left the Catholic church than with those who remained active and believing Catholics. He emphasized “the right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of h is conscience.” “Catholics and Protestants have too long emulated each other in the service of this Republic not to recognize the good points of each. It is a great mistake for Protestantism to conduct any propaganda against the faith of those who come to us from other lands, and to put its so-called ‘missions’ into the hands of a narrow uneducated and unlearned ministry.”

Though motivated largely by anti-Catholicism, Amaron's vision had some wisdom about it. Hostility to immigrants is misplaced. Native residents should open their arms to immigrants and assist them in the task of assimilation, so that they may quickly become contributing members of society, sharing their gifts and talents with their new homeland. This assimilation can be assisted through teaching of English, through support networks of older and newer immigrants, through vocational training and higher education, and through reaching out to immigrants to support their religious faith, which can be a point of stability in a time of personal and family upheaval.

Probably the main reason Amaron's efforts failed was due not to internal factors (though these were many) but to an external reality that he didn't expect and that he was powerless to counteract--French Canadians saw that their own church was providing all of the things that Amaron said they needed. Why should they go to a struggling Protestant school that had an anti-Catholic bias when the Church was itself placing an emphasis on erecting French-speaking Catholic schools which were affordable? By 1890, five years after Amaron's school was founded, there were fifty-three French parochial schools in New England serving 25,000 students. By 1910 this number had risen to 133, and constituted 41% of all parochial schools in New England. In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, 75% of all French-Canadian children were in parochial schools; in Holyoke, MA, it was 50%.⁶ The success of the Catholic Church's response to French Canadian immigration is a topic I'll look at more fully in a future issue.

¹Mark Alan Healey, "'The Eldorado to the South': French-Canadians in the U.S."

²Cited by Gerard J. Brault, The French-Canadian Heritage in New England (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986), p. 68.

³In Calvin E. Amaron, Your Heritage; or New England Threatened (Springfield, MA: French Protestant College, 1891), pp. vii-ix.

⁴Ibid., p. 3.

⁵These and subsequent documents from Special Collections, Shea Memorial Library, American International College, Springfield, MA.

⁶Dolores Liptak, Immigrants and Their Church (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1989), p. 166.