Josephine Parent took in boarders at 42 Boothby Street for almost thirty years.  Between 1910 - 1940 she rented rooms to French Canadians coming to Augusta to work in the cotton mill.  Her specialty was those just here - immigrants looking for a friendly place to stay and take meals while they saved money for larger and more private lodging.  The mill was a short walk from Boothby Street, making one aspect of life easy for Josephine’s boarders.  She took in both men and women, generally two to a room.  At one point, board cost $2.50 a week, with clean sheets and a towel included.  For a little extra, meals and a lunch to take to the mill were provided.  For a little beyond that, she would do a boarder’s personal laundry.  Josephine had space for up to six guests, but family members often took the rooms.  She ran a tight ship with strict rules for her house: 

          NO smoking or chewing tobacco upstairs - only in the kitchen,

         NO alcoholic beverages,

         Lights out and the door locked at 9 PM.

A gathering room in the house provided a space for the boarders to entertain themselves telling stories, playing cards, and making music.  Josephine cooked on a wood stove, which also heated the house and all the hot water.  Laundry dried on backyard lines.  Josephine’s business was an informal one - a service to meet the needs of the larger Franco-American community.  In 1920 her business was not listed in the Resident and Business Directory of Kennebec County Maine as one of the nine boarding houses for Augusta.  How many similar informal houses existed is difficult to determine, but “boarding out” was a common living arrangement.  Every year for the Fourth of July Josephine took a trip back home to Madawaska (with a son in his Buick touring car), staying the week and leaving the borders to fend for themselves.  This was her only break from her usual 16-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week business.  Josephine lived to be almost 97.  Her husband, Joseph, worked in the woods cutting trees with an ax and a one-man bucksaw.  He was often away for long periods of time.  Josephine’s grandson Laurent Pare provided details of his maternal grandmother’s life.  Laurent has very fond memories of this kind and loving woman who made him special mittens and gave him two oranges and a banana ever Christmas throughout his childhood.

 

Site #34.1 Sources:

	Paré, Laurent. Interview (telephone) by Phyllis vonHerrlich, 20 March 2001, Augusta, Maine.
	Resident and Business Directory of Kennebec County, Maine: Including Cities of Augusta, Gardiner, Hallowell, and Waterville, 1919/1920.