[letter from Allegra C. Vautier to her son Frank Vautier]

April 1961
Walla, Walla Wa
Sat eve

Dearest Joe
Do you wish a book on the Danish Language. I'll see if they are obtainable? I have never seen a textbook in Danish.  Have you? I have your books together and will send them. Say I didn't mean to speak as harshly about your forbears, (bears, yet).  Well to tell the actual facts, the O'Rouark family (the poop-in-the-bathtub bunch) will die out when Terence is no more.  So what?  

You know pop’s pop was a pretty keen old brain, to admit the truth.  His story is this as I have pieced it out over the years.  His mother (your great grandmother) was so Irish that she spoke Gaelic, named O’Neill, & his old man was a French Canuck.  They had a large family, and very tall & had to work hard.  They were poor French Canucks.  Now, they lived in Shigowack around the bay from Gaspé, Quebec where the Jessops (spelling is correct) lived.  The Jessops really thought they were some “punkins [sic]” because they weren’t poor French Canucks.  The Jessops were English & Scotch and thick-headed and seemed to be able to make more money than anyone else.  They had a large family, the men were big & bullies (except one short fat one named Thomas (like Pop) and the Jessop gals were strong-jawed and really knew their way around.  The eldest girl, no doubt the nicest, was Elly, your grandmother.  She was very pious in her youth, and sought to enter a convent, but was sent home as her mother had need of her (12 kids).  Her picture when she was young looks very like you remarkably so, a very sweet, guileless face.

So here comes the poor French Canuck [George, Sr.] a courting around the Jessup girls!  So the Jessop boys, who were bigger & bullies, as I said before, ganged him and really beat the stuffings out of him (broke bones).  “Go home Frenchie” says the proud (of what, brains?) Jessop boys.  Well Frenchie went home but left straightaway for the far West & fortune.  He never saw his own people again.  He was ashamed of them.  He hit the Michigan lumber camps at Alpina, MI for a year, and that was no easy snap.  If I had heard aright, 1881, his age was 20 years.

So in 1882 he reached Whatcom, Co. WN for a big boom, (later a bust), palled up with Vic Raeder, (later a big banker), in Bahm [Bellingham], WN & started a saloon & later a hotel which really prospered.  It was the old Ritz Hotel owned for so many years by Vic Raeder.  George, Sr. had no faculty to hold on to anything.  So, after a few years “Frenchie” went back to Gaspé & with $20,000 cash in the bank he took his pick of the Jessop gals.  Elly, by now was 33 and in those days that was the old maid age.  She wasn’t much on looks by then.  So he married her & the Jessop boys weren’t in the mood to beat $20,000 so Pat, who wasn’t Old Pat, then followed them out to Bellingham.

Actually I think George, Sr. only married her to get even & I think he despised her most heartily.  She went to fat and being naturally a lazy person, as all the Jessops were, she wasn’t a good housekeeper, dirty is one word for it.  She was smart enough and had enough self-assurance to set herself up as a Chiropractor.  The bust came in 1893 and old man George, broke, skipped out in 1898 going to Alaska on the gold rush & they didn’t see him again for 5 years and not much after that until he settled at Sequim on that stump ranch.

George, Sr. was much ahead of the Jessops intellectually & he got his fun out of it, no doubt.  But he was the biggest bull-conner in seven states. You couldn’t believe a word he said.  He despised George, Jr. completely.  I suppose George played dumb to get his attention rather than be overlooked.  Until the dumbness became a habit.  I think George, Jr. had a bright mind but he was much too lazy to make use of his ability.  George [Jr] had all the Jessop personality except the ability to make money.

George’s [Sr.?] aunt Elsa Nolan had 2 daughters, one Cecilia was a decent sort of person, one Kay, a high-class whore, much respected by George (Jr.’s) family for her money making abilities. None of the 2^nd generation Jessops (cousins of George, Jr.) had a vestige of religion.  Now pop’s dad was a fallen-away, maybe through their influence, one doesn’t know.  All I know is that I sent for the priest for him (by letter) & he died in the faith after all those years.  So that’s why I told you to be a bit careful of tying up with relatives about which you know nothing.  You might not be able to let them go and we want to be sure nothing derogatory to Dom’s reputation pop up.

Some of the 2^nd generation Jessops were petty crooks and cleaver gold-diggers. I’d sure leave them alone.  I think the Vautier family are good, sound stock.  I think George’s dad spent much time trying to get away from his family (children & wife).   He was a mocking person.  I think the mother held the family together, for until her death, there were no re-marriages, etc., etc. Rita was divorced from her first husband by then but had not remarried.  She had actually hit bottom but had seems to have come up again after the old man died.  He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in seeing them all go downhill.  He used to torment Rita into fits of hysteria so that she would fall down and froth at the mouth.  He was really devilish as I look back on it.  His last act on earth was to try to get poor little Jimmie put into Buckley, the feeble-minded school.  George, Jr. was completely and absolutely under his sway.  When the old man shuffled off, George, Jr. seemed to change, get a job & after various vicissitudes has kept it for a number of years.  George’s next younger brother was a small time crook, according to what pop tells.  He claims that he and his dad were hard put to it to buy him out of the pen.  Or course, that may be lies too.

Anyway, he at no time had regular employment except what women provided.  So that is me thing I hold against the old man, George, Sr.  George’s mother was too lazy to correct her children & too much taken up with her own affairs.  Actually, she supported them most of the time for many years.  Pop was still taking money off of her when he was 35 and 36 years old.  So wherein lies the blame?  How could a person be as vain as pop is & still let his dad actually boot him out of bed every morning.  I mean really boot him on the bottom.  I have never remembered pop ever correcting or council ling one of you kids.  Counseling entails some measure of responsibility and it just isn’t there.

So let us be ourselves and let the forbears (4 bears, yet?) lie as they fell.  We are a new family and will stand on our own feet.  Now, I can blame much on George’s mother who taught them that they were a cut above everyone, although they weren’t educated, or bright, or handsome, or wealthy, or even honest workmen.  And I can blame George’s dad who knew he was superior mentally & physically, and who, instead of helping them, enjoyed despising them and kicking them down-hill.

Well, such is life.  Relations!!!  You kids have brains born in you on both sides.  George’s dad & my dad, both extra smart in mathematics.  My pa’s family were educated for many generations.  Many were teachers so that in a day of ignorance & persecution, they were outstanding.  I think Gerald realized that more as he sees how smart you kids are.  And a certain refinement of mind that, perhaps, some in-laws of his do not have.  There is considerable difference between bright people who get good grades in school and intelligent people. Now Sharon is an example of a bright ambitious girl who will go far in a worldly way, but she has no depth of intelligence and would have only envy for a truly deep mind.  alas she would never let a man surpass her. 

Mrs. Willbanks has her old step-father there now and poor old Charlie is so thin now he hardly casts a shadow.  the wedding is to be on Friday next at the apt. with much pomp and circumstance and pictures in the paper. Oh Boy! she couldn't let Sharon get ahead of her.

the dogs in town are really in a bad way.  they will have e to be conditioned to incarceration.  the leash law is in effect and the cops just shoot any dog they meet running loose, honest to Pete.

Relations: (Vautiers)

Joseph J - married waiter named Catherine from Alaska.  she divorced him. married Charlotte (Lattie) Walder.  he is her 6th husband.

Edward J - married by archbishop Hanna, Frisco, Jessie Fenstermacher, he divorced her in Reno, Married Dorothy, she divorced him (2 children),  he married Ruth Snyder, lives in Frisco.

Rita - married Mark McKee in the church, one child, she divorced him, married Bill Otto, he died, married Anderson, divorced him, married Robert Porache, he died. 2 dead, 3 divorces. 

[last paragraph not included]