By Leslie Rounds

Recently, I posed a mystery.  The Saco Museum owns three woodcarvings attributed to a Biddeford carver known only by his last name and that he’d been badly injured as a lumberjack around 1900.  I requested that if you knew something about “Bernier the Lumberjack,” you give me a call.

I wish all mysteries could be so easily solved!  The day that column appeared, Richard Boissonneault called and told me that Bernier had been his great uncle.  The next day he and his cousin, Lorraine Patt, stopped by with more information about this remarkable artist.  Although their lives only overlapped Bernier’s briefly, they knew quite a lot because there is still one niece, Jeanne Grenier, to remind them of old tales, and their own memories are strong.  Afterward, I was able to pull up more information from official records.

He was born Joseph Ramual Bernier (although always known by some version of his middle name) in Ste. Henedine, Quebec, on April 17, 1873, one of the youngest of six children. His parents were Elziard and Hanriette LaCourse Bernier. He emigrated to Biddeford around 1889. (His father appeared in the 1886 and 1888 city directories.) On Dec. 31, 1894, he married Georgiana Turgeon.  Children soon followed: Maryanne in 1897 and Blanche about 1900 appear on the census. At least two others died very young: Antoinette and Alfred. Georgiana died just weeks after the death of infant Alfred in November 1909. 

Most of the Turgeon family worked in the mills, but Bernier is listed as a day laborer. On July 20, 1912, he married Anthenaise Beauchemin.  Almost immediately the pair drop off census records and city directories, and when they reappear in 1922, it’s very clear that something ominous has befallen Rumuald. 

 He is listed for several years with no job, but by 1930, and from then on, his career is “wood worker.” His descendants tell us that a tree fell on him while he was working as a lumberjack and that he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. No longer able to provide for his family by virtue of his own youthful strength, he’d found another way to earn an income. They recall him carving complex sculptures, often of eagles, all done with the scraps of wood he could find or afford, and with only one tool: a pocketknife.  The best ones he gave to family and friends; the more simple ones, for which he is now most known, he sold for paltry sums.

By the early 1950s, Bernier was elderly and infirm.  If he’d ever been able to provide adequate income with his art, that time was past.  Anthenaise, too, was no longer able to support them with her mill job.  Recollections are of them living impoverished, in a tiny house on West Street. Romuald Bernier died on Feb. 16, 1952. Later taken in by her niece, Anthenaise lived on until January 1959.  They are both buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, their graves unmarked, in a plot that bears the name of the Bouchard family.

Some years passed before Bernier’s fame began to grow. By the early 1960s, some collectors recognized his work, but his work became more prominent after a brief mention in a folk art book published in the 1980s.  And now, hopefully, we have more of his story, and he will gain the recognition he so richly deserves.  Thank you so much to Richard Boissoneault, Lorraine Patt, Jeanne Grenier, the Courier and everyone else that called me with stories of Bernier and his birds.  Come in and take a look at his work!

Leslie Rounds is executive director of the Dyer Library/Saco Museum.