Eva Deschaine had to grow up fast.
From her black rocking chair inside a Fort Kent nursing home, she describes a childhood with far fewer amenities than today. Deschaine and her three brothers grew up in nearby Black Lake, a small town with a one-room schoolhouse. Like many families in the region, they spoke French.
This interview is part of our series of conversations with Maine centenarians.
Deschaine says formal education was an afterthought for her and her siblings. Her parents were somewhat nomadic, finding work as cooks or laborers where they could. So the focus for their children was on earning money from a young age, either at farms or factories away from town.
As early as age 10, Deschaine says she learned how to cook dinner for her family while they picked potatoes during the annual harvest.
“When I was young I don’t like to go to school,” she says, laughing. “That’s why I can’t talk English too much.”
Because of Deschaine’s limited English, as well as some hearing difficulties, her daughter, Anna Mae Deschaine Raymond, translates and shares some of the family’s stories. Deschaine says she met her husband as a teenager, and they married soon after.
“Fifteen years old when I get married,” Deschaine says. “I was young.”
And marriage meant responsibilities beyond what was typically expected of a teenager. Deschaine moved into a house in Black Lake with her husband, Emile, and later his brother and his wife moved in with them. They lived without electricity or running water.
Deschaine says she cooked and supported both families, including her four children at the time.
About once a week, Raymond says, her mother’s family would take a horse and buggy into town, bringing homemade butter and other goods with them to sell.
“And the money they got from the butter, they bought little things like matches, kerosene, molasses and sugar. Because they didn’t have that on the farm,” Raymond says. “She would sell her butter. And hook rugs, they made hook rugs, too. And then, they made baby clothes. This company came, and they would ask the housewives to crochet or knit baby clothes. And a lot of the farm housewives did that to earn extra money to buy the staples. So that was their life. Self-sufficient and working to earn a little bit of money.”
But in the 1930s, the Great Depression hit the community hard. Deschaine’s family sold their farm in 1940 and moved to an unfinished house in Fort Kent.
Raymond says it was a drastic change, from a quiet rural setting to a town with automobiles and busy stores. Over time, Deschaine’s family saved enough money to add electricity, running water and a small bathroom to their home.
“And my gosh, it was in heaven,” Deschaine’s daughter recalls. “Because where they lived, there was no such thing.”
And despite the constant work required to raise children, maintain a house and even take up additional work for more than 20 years as a cook’s helper in the local school system, Deschaine somehow found time to enjoy herself. She and her husband held “kitchen parties” that would bring friends from across the community.
“People would come to the houses with their instruments. And they would play the violin and the harmonica. She played the harmonica very well. She is self-taught, too, to play the harmonica,” Raymond says. “And everybody would dance. Our family, we danced. We were just little babies and they taught us to dance.”
Deschaine’s husband passed away 32 years ago. With her children already grown, Deschaine learned to make quilts, dish cloths and small fabric butterflies.
And Raymond says that her mother has seen life transform drastically over the course of 103 years, with the advent electricity and cars.
“With the automobile, they would go downtown. They would go to Madawaska, shopping. And they could visit further, like go into Connecticut, and things like that. They could go in the store and buy anything they wanted,” Raymond says. “The changes, it was almost like luxury.”
