The French Occupation of the Champlain Valley from 1609 to 1759

This book recounts the 150 years of French dominion over northern Vermont and New York. It is thus of importance for the earliest history of the two states as well as the Province of Quebec.

Wrote Guy Omeron Coolidge: “For many years the story of French dominion over lands now forming part of Vermont has remained hidden.  Occasionally a military engagement or vague discussion of a mist-shrouded seigneurial grant has received a paragraph or two in printed history; but the connected account of the plan, the struggle to realize that plan, the life stories of the persons who conceived and executed that plan, and the final tragic moments experienced by the French colonists under that plan, have never been adequately related. From an enormous mass of correspondence, and from a great number of isolated references in published works, I have tried to resurrect the story of one hundred and fifty years of effort—a struggle marked by frequent indifference on the part of the Mother-Country, constant discouragement through the pettiness and self-interest of the official world, but ennobled by deeds of shining glory and unselfish sacrifice [and] heroic courage in the face of overwhelming odds . . . It is the story of the attempt by a woefully small group of persevering patriots to establish their civilization in a wilderness, to erect an enduring structure representative of French culture in the New World.”

A Biographical Index has been added to Coolidge’s original work, published in 1938.  The index lists vital data for the person indexed: birth or baptismal date, date of marriage, name and ancestry spouse, date of death, etc., along with references to further events in the life of the person in question, making this a prime source for the genealogy of the French in North America.