About

This collection documents the Perras family in the early-to-mid twentieth century. They lived in the towns of Hermansville and Nadeau in Menominee County, Michigan and were farmers and small business owners. Hubert Perras and his wife Minnie Gamache Perras had seven children. When Minnie died in November 1919, the children were sent to the Good Shepherd Orphanage in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The children returned to the family farm when Hubert hired Clara Reinhard-Walls as a housekeeper in 1926. Hubert and Clara were married in 1927. The collection also contains records related to the Gamache family. Peter and Ora (Dubé) Gamache and their children moved from Rimouski in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of French Canada to Champion, Marquette County, Michigan in 1884. Sometime in the 1890s, they moved to Hermansville in Menominee County. A particularly interesting portion of the collection is a diary kept by their daughter Minnie in 1904 on their farm north of Hermansville, Michigan. Marie Amelié "Minnie" Gamache was born to Peter and Ora (Dubé) Gamache on February 8, 1884 near Rimouski. Minnie married Hubert Perras. The bulk of the collection is photographs of the Perras family and related families (Reinhard, Gamache, Benson). There are also a handful of condolence letters written at the death of Hubert Perras, an obituary for William Gamache, and a diary kept by Marie Amelié "Minnie" Gamache in 1904. 

This collection was donated to UPLINK by Jodi Perras at the community digitization event held in Stephenson in August 2022. The event was sponsored by the Menominee County Library and funded by the Michigan Humanities Council. For historical fiction and other documents related to Minnie Gamache and the Gamache and Perras families, see Jodi's blog Leaves of Menominee.

See the full finding aid here.