Born:  November 2, 1934 at Warwick, Rhode Island, USA

Died:  March 25, 2007 at Brevard, North Carolina, USA

"She was thrilled to learn that there were so many Buteaus and she wanted so badly to attend a Buteau reunion and get acquainted with as many as possible, but was never well enough to do that. The Bible speaks of "a great cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on as we run our race here below." I'm sure Sylvia is now part of that cloud of witnesses, and that she is cheering for the Buteau Family."

Bob West

RECOLLECTIONS OF MY FATHER, GEORGE H. BUTEAU II 
from conversations with me between 10/5/1988 & 2/4/1990

by George H. Buteau

INTRODUCTION:

My grandfather, George H. Buteau, the oldest son of Thomas (Damase) and Delphine (Lussier) Buteau, probably met Salome Cloutier in West Warwick, Rhode Island where they were married in June, 1899. Their first son, my uncle James Buteau, was born January 1, 1901. My father, George H. Buteau II was born on September 14, 1904. My grandparents separated when my father was just an infant. My grandfather remarried a few years later. He and his second wife, Grace Thorpe, had three children: Doris, Clark and Bernard Buteau.

George Sr. worked as a weaver in a cotton mill when he and Salome were married. Both my father and my uncle Jim recalled that their father was employed as a bakery wagon driver and then as a streetcar conductor. Jim remembered that when his brother was about two years old, he and Arthur Buteau, his father's youngest brother who was close to Jim's age, nearly hanged young George in the attic of grandmother Delphine's house in New Bedford. Jim also remembered that, on payday, Delphine would have the workers of the household stand in line while she collected their pay and returned to each of them just enough spending money to last until next payday and she stuffed the remaining money into the top of her dress. George and Jim's cousin Lillian (Buteau) Beaudin remembered hearing it said in the family that Delphine, who did not work outside the home, once took in laundry to earn enough money to buy a piano.

After his parents separated, young George spent his early years until about age five on the North Scituate, Rhode Island farm of his aunt, Mabel (Cloutier) Williams. Mabel was his mother's oldest sister. My father recalled that he was "treated like a king" there. He learned to swear while hanging around with the farmhands. He also remembered riding in the car with Mabel's husband, Fred Williams, who owned one of the first automobiles in the area. Fred was the proprietor of a bar and would sit young George on a bar stool and both of them would eat pickled tongue and crackers. My father remembered riding in the front seat of Fred's car. Fred was swerving all over the road and young George was cussing Fred for his bad driving.

When Mabel died suddenly, my father was sent to live with his aunt Mary (Cloutier) Owens in Scituate, R.I. His uncle George Owens had a job as a skilled employee in a textile mill in Scituate. He recalled that during his stay there, he was constantly being put in the corner for cussing which he had learned while on Mabel's farm. His maternal grandmother, Marguerite (Larose) Cloutier, who was living on the farm, and who my dad recalled as a petite and very loving woman, saved him from a spanking on one occasion when one of the men was chasing him after he has been cussing. One incident that my father said haunted him for a long time occurred one winter day when his grandmother was outside with him and he pushed her causing her to fall in the snow. She died a few days later, from causes probably totally unrelated to falling in the snow, but he believed, as a young child, that he had caused her death. My father recalled that his grandfather Cloutier, who also went by the surname Clookie, was living with his daughter, Mary Owen, when he died around 1915.

From Scituate, six year old George was sent to live with his aunt Rose, another of his mother's sisters, in Woonsocket, R.I. He was enrolled at Sacred Heart Academy ('ti College) on Hamlet Avenue. He recalled that he took a beating from other students in the school yard the first day of school because of his red hair. He also remembered learning French very rapidly but was taken out of the school and placed in a public school after only a few months. When he was about eight or nine, his mother complained to her sister Rose about the excessive cost of her son's room and board ($5 a week). She convinced her newly remarried ex-husband to take his son.

At about age nine, my father, in an apparent interim move, lived with his aunt Mary Jane (Marie Jeanne Buteau) Carbonneau. His grandmother Delphine was also living with the Carbonneau family on their farm in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was while he lived there that my dad learned to speak French while playing with the young Carbonneau children.

My grandfather was working as a streetcar conductor in Farmington, Connecticut when my father arrived to live with him and his new wife. My uncle Jim was already living there, having been removed from the orphanage where his mother had placed him when she and her husband separated. Whether Jim was jealous because of his perception that his younger brother was treated better as a child or just sibling rivalry, my father remembered that his older brother constantly gave him beatings.

My father recalled that on once occasion, he took his father's gun, which George Sr. carried because of the large sums of money that he handled as a streetcar conductor, and went down to the Farmington River and shot a large fish he had seen swimming there. He remembered that the recoil of the gun knocked him down. He also recalled taking occasional trips on the trolley from Unionville to Hartford and spending the day downtown seeing the sights or taking in a movie. He also remembered going on a vacation for a couple of weeks in the summer by train to his aunt Rose's house in Woonsocket with $5 to spend.

George, Jim and Lillian recalled that their paternal uncle Henry Buteau, was a good fighter. Jim remembered that part of uncle Henry's ear had been bitten off by a horse. Henry was a ladies' man and my father recalled once when he was about twelve that a very pretty and very buxom young lady came to their house looking for his uncle Henry. George, Jim and Lillian's cousin Albert (Leo) Carbonneau, recalled that Henry was married and the father of three children. One son, William Buteau, was the private cook to General Jimmy Doolittle during the First World War.

My father remembered that his paternal grandfather, My great-grandfather, Damase Buteau, who did not live with his wife Delphine in his later years, would make occasional short visits to stay with George and Grace Buteau and family as he would also do with the families of other relatives. Doris (Buteau) Dugas, granddaughter of Damase's oldest brother, Henri Buteau, recalled than an uncle Thomas would come and stay for extended visits with the family when she was a young girl. My dad remembered helping his grandfather split wood for the stove. He remembered Damase cutting the heads off chickens and letting them run around the back yard headless. He also recalled that once while splitting wood, his grandfather, annoyed by a small kitten, picked it up and killed it by throwing it against a nearby tree. This unnecessary act of brutality soured young George against his grandfather. My father also recalled that during these visits, Damase would eventually go on one of his drinking "toots" and stepmother Grace would make him leave. George's cousins Lillian and Leo also recalled that Damase did not start drinking until about age fifty. My dad remembered that his grandmother Delphine, a short plump woman, would travel from New Bedford to Farmington to help Grace when she gave birth.

My grandfather bought a bowling alley in Derby Connecticut where Jim and George worked setting up pins. My father recalled that one night, he had taken enough of his older brother's taunts and flew off the handle throwing pins at Jim. Their father apparently prospered as owner of the bowling alley during World War I. The family lived in nearby Shelton. They moved back to Farmington toward the end of the war.

George Sr. began to have behavioral problems as my dad entered his teens. Jim had joined the Navy when he was fifteen, apparently lying about his age. By his own admission, he did not get along well with his father. My dad recalled that, as his father's condition worsened, he began to show signs of kleptomania. Young George would have to follow his father around town paying for items taken. My dad's half sister, Doris (Buteau) Odenkirchen, remembered once as a young child being taken with her brother to the movies in Hartford by her father who got up from his seat during the movie and left the theater. The two young children luckily were recognized by one of their father's co-workers as they emerged from the theater without their father. They were both taken home on the trolley. My grandfather's behavior apparently became too much for the young family to handle and one day when my father was about fourteen, two men came in a car and took his father away to Norwich State Hospital. My dad never saw his father again but stayed two additional years in Farmington helping his stepmother with the younger children. During that time, he worked after school at Thompson's Dairy in Unionville. The owner was the husband of Grace's sister. Young George's job was to wash bottles and to help deliver milk. One day, as he was waiting in the wagon while the owner was delivering milk to a house, the horse took off down the hill and ran for a mile or two before coming to a stop. Young George was holding on to the reins for dear life. Each afternoon he worked, he would bring home a small metal container of milk for the family.

My dad left Farmington in 1920 when he was sixteen to seek employment in Woonsocket, R.I. His father died a year later. He recalled that his father started using the name Joseph George Buteau around the time he joined the Masons. My grandfather's death certificate identified him by that name rather than George Henry Buteau.

In Woonsocket, young George was first an apprentice at the Taft Pierce Co. to become a draftsman. There was a postwar decline in business for the company which forced a curtailing of the apprenticeship program. He then got a higher-paying job in one of the many textile mills in town. Shortly afterwards, his mother Salome quit her job in Providence, R.I. and moved in with her son in Woonsocket. The Woonsocket Directory of 1924 recorded that George Buteau (shipping clerk) and Mrs. Salome Buteau lived at 334 Rathbun St. In the 1925 edition, they were listed as living at 117 East School St. My father started to learn to play the saxophone in 1922. By 1924-1925, he was playing summers in an orchestra on Block Island. This yearly break from working in the mill came to an end after the stock market crash of 1929. There was no summer job in the summer of 1930.

My grandmother met Alfred Donais, many years her senior, and they were married in 1930. My dad worked for "Pops" Donais before the end of Prohibition making trips to Providence to purchase bootleg liquor for the old man's speakeasy on Clinton St. Pops had been raided and arrested twice when my father started working for him. The old man's lawyer told my dad that one more offense would land Pops Donais in jail. My father decided to take the rap if there should be another raid. There was a third raid and dad was arrested. The incident was reported in the local newspaper and eventually came to the attention of his stepmother's mother, old Mrs. Thorpe, who was a very strict puritanical "Yankee". She wrote to my father and told him never to show his face again in Farmington. He took her at her word and never visited the family in Connecticut until after the old lady had died.

My dad worked in Pops Donais' bar after Prohibition was repealed until he was hired onto the Woonsocket Fire Department in 1937. He met Raymonde Genereux in 1938 while working at No. 6 fire station on Fairmount St. They were married on August 28, 1940.