And thank the gods for Google Translate. In any event, wanted to take a look at some of New Hampshire's ethnic composition today. In all honesty, before moving to New England, I had never known anyone actually named "Smith" before. "Schmidt", yes, but "Smith"? Nope. Now I know about a half dozen Smiths. Despite the massive foreign immigration into Boston and other industrial regions of New England, it has still maintained its basically Anglo-Saxon character to a degree amazing to me and unimaginable in places like New York or New Jersey. (At work, the office manager once sent around an e-mail with the subject line, "WASP WARNING", telling us of a large wasp nest seen dangling from a tree in the parking lot, to which I replied to my boss, "OMG -- I just realized: I'm surrounded by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants!") Though huge migrations of Massachusetts folks is rapidly changing this, New Hampshire is definitely among the "WASP-iest" of the New England states, save perhaps for Maine. The major urban centers like Manchester and Nashua are an exception, but outside those areas -- i.e., in most of New Hampshire -- to have New Hampshirites as friends is to have a bunch of Smiths, Joneses and Coopers in your address book.
The major exception to this Anglo-Saxon stronghold are the French: Northern New Hampshire, along with northern and western Maine, were once claimed by l'Empire français or Nouvelle-France ("New France"), as France's 17th and early 18th century colonial empire in North America were called. This is why, for instance, the state immediately to our west today is not known as "Green Mountain", but rather the French version, Vermont. (Colonial Vermont belonged to New Hampshire until 1777.) When English settlers started moving into New Hampshire in the 17th century, they found themselves jostling for real estate with folks named Jacques and Pierre. Oh -- and some Indians, but we'll talk about those later. Today there is still a surprisingly large Francophone community here in New Hampshire, to the extent that the governor found himself in hot water from French groups a couple years back when he updated the welcome signs for the state -- and had left out the Bienvenue au New Hampshire bit. Many of these modern Franco-Americans (yeah, I think of Chef Boyardee too when I hear that) actually derive from a large migration of Quebecois in the 19th and early 20th centuries who moved to New Hampshire looking for jobs in its industrial cities, but wherever they came from, Lyons in 1630 or Montreal in 1910, you're as likely to meet New Hampshirites today with names like Bergeron or Gagnon as Smith or Jones -- and the further north you go, the more likely you'll meet folks with the former names rather than the latter. (I suppose I should mention that Tom Bergeron of "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "Dancing With the Stars", though born in northern Massachusetts, spent most of his early life in New Hampshire.) The first credit union in the U.S., La Caisse Populaire Sainte-Marie -- nowadays "St. Mary's Bank" -- was created by French workers in Manchester, New Hampshire's mills in the early 20th century to help these laborers save and earn a middle class lifestyle at a time when regular banks of the day largely ignored them as too poor.
So, with all of these Franco-Americans and immigrant French-Canadians living here in New Hampshire, the obvious question that immediately comes to mind -- I'm sure you were already wondering this -- is how is it possible that New Hampshire doesn't have its own NHL hockey team then....?
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