The Joseph Chiasson house was built around 1890. It was built shortly after the birth of Joseph’s first daughter, Célestine. This one-and-a-half-storey vernacular house, with its gabled dormers and summer kitchen, is a true reflection of the classical cottage influence on late 19th-century residential construction in rural New Brunswick.

Unlike 19th-century Acadian homes, the interior walls of the Chiasson house are covered with painted paneling. The kitchen features an indoor water pump, more common in Acadian homes of the 1890s-1930s.

Furniture has come a long way since the previous century. Since the end of the 19th century, and especially since the beginning of the 20th century, Acadians have been able to purchase industrially manufactured furniture and furnishings from outside New Brunswick. Fervent Catholics, Acadians also put up holy pictures and statues of the Virgin Mary or the Sacred Heart, to decorate their homes and demonstrate their attachment to religion.

Joseph Chiasson’s life was an eventful one. Joseph, born in Lamèque in 1866, is the son of Abbé Chiasson. Like many of the island’s inhabitants, Abbé Chiasson left Lamèque with Father Louis Gagnon to found the colony of Saint-Isidore. Joseph, still a young man, accompanied his father and the rest of his family. He married Clothilde Parisé in 1888, but unfortunately she died in 1902, and Joseph married Odile Mallais of Saint-Isidore the following year. In all, Joseph had 18 children.

Joseph is a farmer, cultivating his land in summer and working in the yards in winter. He may also work as a mill hand, notably for David Haché. Before his death in 1920, Joseph owned cows, an ox, a dozen sheep, chickens and pigs. Like most farmers, he grew potatoes, turnips, carrots, beets, oats, buckwheat and flax.

On April 21, 1920, in Saint-Isidore, Joseph dies of Spanish flu. He left all his possessions and property to his wife, Odile. Odile, now a widow, placed six of her children with her brother, Barney Mallais. Abbé, aged 30, remained an “old boy” because of a leg handicap, and so stayed at home with his mother and brother, Albert, aged 14.

Odile left for Montreal the same year, probably to work as a servant. She returned to Saint-Isidore in 1924, where Albert tried, as best he could, to support himself and his brother, working in the lumberyards in winter and cultivating the land in summer.

Following their mother’s return, some of the children moved back into the family home. In 1925, Odile married Joseph McGraw for the second time, but no children were born.

Odile died in 1933 at the age of 50. In her will, she left her husband, Charles McGraw, two acres of land in Saint-Isidore, and her son, Richard Chiasson, the house, barns and other buildings. She also asked Richard to take care of her father-in-law, Charles McGraw, until he remarried or became unpleasant.

Richard moved to Quebec City, and it was around 1949-50 that he sold the house to his brother, Médard Chiasson. At that time, the house was boarded up. Médard Chiasson has been married to Catherine Ferguson since 1941, and has lived in Montreal for several years. He lived in Montreal, but died in Saint-Isidore, where he had built himself a house very close to the family home.

The Chiasson house, located in the Village historique acadien, served as a summer home for Médard’s family from the moment he acquired it from his brother, Richard. Médard died in 1988 and wanted the house preserved, so the family donated it to the Village. His wife, Catherine, moved back to Montreal in 1994, where she remained until her death in 1999.

• Square with vertical half-timbering
• Two-story building: main building and summer kitchen
• Gable roof
• Two pedimented dormers on the façade
• Symmetrical arrangement of windows and doors
• Two main façade entrance doors
• Slanted window on the wall of the main square between the main roof and the summer kitchen roof
• Interior integrity with partitions