The Longtin Family
Pioneers Of the Downriver Area
by Frank Rathbun, January 29, 1953
Courtesy of The News Herald (originally published in The Mellus Newspapers)
LIVING ALONE in a modest Ecorse home is 88-year-old Agnes Longtin, last surviving member of a once numerous and prominent Downriver family.
Born in January 1865, in a now farm house near what is now the corner of Goddard and Longtin streets in Lincoln Park, Miss Longtin was four months old when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a crazed southerner in the presidential box of a Washington, D. D., theatre.
"Aunt Agnes," as she is fondly called by her many friends throughout the area, was one of nine children of Edward Longtin and Angeline Rousson, who were married in 1851 by the Rev. Father Charles DePrieter, founder of the St. Francis Xavier Catholic parish.
A PICTURE OF Father DePrieter is one of the many mementos of bygone days which grace the walls of Aunt Agnes' neatly kept home at 4508 Eighth.
Edward Longtin, first of the family in the Downriver section, was born in Montreal in the late-1820's, according to family records. When a violent cholera epidemic wiped out practically his entire family, including parents, brothers and sisters, Longtin came with a younger sister, Mary, to the frontier settlement at Ecorse.
Mary Longtin married Michael Roulo (1824-1882) and became the ancestress of many of the present Roulo families, including Councilman Stanley Roulo, of Allen Park.
Longtin purchased land in the southwestern section of present-day Lincoln Park and settled down to the task of clearing his acres and rearing a family.
NINE CHILDREN were born to the couple before Longtin died in 1870, leaving the widow to carry on the job of bringing up the youngsters, the eldest of who was not yet 20.
The family included five sons and four daughters, only three of whom ever married.
Sophia, born in 1862, married Michael Charles Bourassa; Harriet married a Cook, while a son, Edward Frank, married a DeMay and moved to California.
The other sons were John Simon, born in 1860; Winslow Charles, Sylvester and Eleazim, born in 1855. The ninth child was Jane, who died unmarried. Pictures of her deceased brothers and a sister, as well as her parents, are hung throughout Aunt Agnes' home.
The tiny wisp of a woman manages to do her own housework and cooking, but friends and relatives stop in frequently to visit and help her out.
Although her hearing is poor, Aunt Agnes' memory is good and she can relate fascinating stories about life in the Downriver area before it became the populous, industrial section it is today.
Mass Chanted for Pioneer
June 10, 1954 (Newspaper clipping; source unknown)
Requiem high mass was chanted yesterday morning in St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church by the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Tobias G. Morin for Agnes Longtin, 89 who died Sunday at her home following a lengthy illness. Burial was in Mount Carmel Cemetery.
Miss Longtin, who made Ecorse her home for the past 40 years, lived at 4504 Eighth. She was born January 20, 1865.
Surviving are a host of nieces and nephews in the Downriver communities.
