Walk through the cemeteries of Berlin, New Hampshire, and the headstones tell the city’s story in a single language. Croteau. Morin. Garneau. The French surnames stretch row after row, markers of the thousands of families who came south from Quebec a century ago to work the paper mills and log the North Woods.

Renney Morneau, president of the Berlin Historical Society, knows those rows well. His own family plot is among them. As NHPR reported this week, Morneau is part of a growing effort in the Berlin area to keep the city’s French-Canadian heritage alive, not just in museums and cemeteries, but on the tips of tongues. From a monthly French practice group to high school classrooms in neighboring Gorham, North Country residents young and old are reclaiming a language that many families nearly lost.

The revival matters because the stakes are generational. The mill workers who carried French across the border are gone. Their children, many now elderly, grew up in households where French was the language of the kitchen table but English was the language of advancement. Their grandchildren often heard French only in fragments. Without deliberate effort, the chain breaks.

A Million Immigrants and a City Built on Paper

Berlin’s French story is part of one of the great migration waves in American history. Between 1840 and 1930, mills across Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island drew close to a million French-speaking Canadian immigrants south from Quebec. They came for wages and stayed for generations, building parishes, schools, and tight-knit neighborhoods in New England’s industrial cities.

At the peak of the North Country’s timber industry a century ago, Berlin was a magnet for workers from around the world. Russians, Irish, and Greeks all settled in the city to work the paper mills or cut timber in the surrounding forests. But the largest group by far came from French-speaking Quebec, just north of the border. Their influence shaped the city’s churches, its street names, its accent, and its identity in ways that persist today, long after the mills themselves fell silent.

That industrial heritage still defines much of the region’s character, the same way the White Mountains define its geography. The North Country has spent decades navigating what comes after paper, a transition visible in everything from trail preservation battles in the White Mountain National Forest to efforts to win global recognition for the region’s landmarks, like the proposal to make Mount Washington a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Franglais: The Language the Mills Made

What survived in Berlin is not textbook French. It is something linguists and locals alike call Franglais, a blend of French and English that developed organically over generations of bilingual life.

Morneau offers examples with evident delight. Instead of saying le bureau de poste, a Berlin speaker might simply say la post office, taking an English word and, as he puts it, Frenchicizing it. Pronunciation shifted too. In the Berlin area, the A sound often became an O sound, so Sainte Anne, as in Saint Anne’s Church, comes out as Sainte Ohn.

These quirks are not corruptions of the language. They are artifacts of a particular history, evidence of a community that lived in two languages at once for a hundred years. That makes the Berlin dialect worth preserving in its own right, distinct from both the Parisian French taught in most American classrooms and the Quebec French spoken across the border.

Fifteen Chairs in a Circle

The center of the revival effort is a monthly French language practice group in Berlin, led since 2023 by Rick Alger, a retired English professor from White Mountains Community College. About 15 people typically attend.

Alger’s own story captures the generational rupture the group is trying to repair. He is a descendant of Francophone Canadians, but he did not grow up speaking French. He still remembers the shock of hearing his father speak the language for the first time, at a restaurant in Lewiston, Maine, when he was four or five years old. He recalls crying and asking his mother what was wrong with his father. Upon retirement, he decided to finally learn the language his family had set aside, and then to help others do the same.

For the group’s members, the motivation is less academic than personal. Jerry Riendeau puts it plainly: it’s our heritage, and we shouldn’t lose it. Sharon Stephenson describes the fear that brought her to the group. With her grandparents and parents gone, there was simply no one left to speak French with.

The Next Generation Picks Up the Thread

Perhaps the most hopeful sign for the language’s future in the North Country comes from the high school in neighboring Gorham, where students are studying French as a direct line to their own families.

Zalee Baker, a sophomore, has a 98-year-old great-grandmother originally from Canada. As her great-grandmother has aged, much of her English has slipped away, leaving French, her first language, as the one she still holds. Baker says learning French has transformed their relationship. She understands far more of what her great-grandmother says now, and when she has a question from French class, her great-grandmother can help.

Her classmate Whitney Bouchard grew up in a household where French was the language her parents used when they wanted to talk over the children’s heads. Now, she says, she can pick up more of it, and she enjoys letting them know exactly what she understood.

There is a wrinkle: the students learn the Parisian dialect in school, which differs from the Canadian French their families speak. But the basics carry over, and the connection is what counts.

The pattern in Gorham mirrors a broader movement in New Hampshire education to teach the state’s full story, including efforts to bring Abenaki and Indigenous history into NH classrooms. Heritage, these programs suggest, is not something a state has. It is something a state teaches.

New Hampshire’s French-speaking story is also still being written. In recent decades, immigration from West Africa and the Caribbean has brought new populations of French speakers to the state, adding fresh voices to a linguistic tradition nearly two centuries old.

In Berlin, the work continues one conversation at a time: fifteen chairs in a circle once a month, a teenager on the phone with her great-grandmother, a historian walking the cemetery rows and reading the names aloud. A language that crossed the border generations ago is still finding its voice in the North Woods.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Berlin, New Hampshire have French-Canadian heritage?

At the peak of the North Country timber industry about a century ago, thousands of French-speaking immigrants from Quebec moved to Berlin to work in the city's paper mills and surrounding logging operations. They were the largest immigrant group in a city that also drew Russian, Irish, and Greek workers, and their descendants still make up a significant share of the region's population.

What is Franglais?

Franglais is a blend of French and English that developed among French-Canadian communities in New England. Speakers mix English words into French speech, for example saying la post office instead of le bureau de poste. The Berlin area also developed distinctive pronunciation, such as shifting A sounds toward O sounds.

How many French-Canadian immigrants came to New England?

Between 1840 and 1930, mills across Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island attracted close to a million French-speaking Canadian immigrants, one of the largest migration waves in the region's history.

Is there a French language group in Berlin, NH?

Yes. Rick Alger, a retired White Mountains Community College English professor, has led a monthly French language practice group in Berlin since 2023. About 15 people typically attend, many of them descendants of Quebec mill workers looking to reconnect with the language.

Do New Hampshire schools teach French?

Many do. In Gorham, next to Berlin, high school students study French, typically the Parisian dialect, which differs somewhat from the Canadian French their families speak. Students say the classes help them connect with older relatives who grew up speaking French.

read more