RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

L’Etoile – A Star on Prince Street: Chapter 1

Two years ago, Louise Peloquin began sharing excerpts from L’Etoile, a French-language newspaper published in Lowell from 1881 to 1957. At my urging, she has agreed to compile some of her previous posts with added contextual information into a book manuscript to be called, L’Etoile: A Star on Prince Street. Starting this week, Louise will present draft chapters from the book in serial form here on the blog. Today, we have Chapter 1.

Richard Howe

L’Etoile – A Star on Prince Street

Chapter 1 – The Star’s Course

By Louise Peloquin

Twenty-two French-language newspapers were published in Lowell between 1881 and 1957 and, from 1975 to 1995, Le Journal de Lowell revived the French publication tradition. Among the three hundred-odd French newspapers published in New England since the second half of the 19^th century, the most widely circulated was Lowell’s L’Etoile (The Star).

Maxime Lépine managed L’Etoile, founded in March 1886 by Le Cercle Canadien of Lowell. In 1909, the New England Investment Company acquired L’Etoile and went bankrupt after a series of ambitious moves such as enlarging the newspaper format from six to seven columns, purchasing new printing presses and upgrading headquarters.

In 1910, the newspaper was auctioned off and purchased by Louis-A. Biron and colleague Paul Chaput, founder of the Courrier de Salem. They successfully transitioned L’Etoile from a weekly to a daily and established its reputation all over New England. In 1910, L’Etoile had approximately 60,000 subscribers.

Biron later became L’Etoile’s sole proprietor and manager. The paper adopted a modern, dynamic approach highlighting Lowell’s Franco-American culture and identity while including national as well as international news. Capturing Franco-American life was always L’Etoile’s main objective and asset.

Biron and his team boosted L’Etoile’s notoriety all across New England. The paper became a member of the L’Alliance des Journaux Franco-Américains (The Alliance of Franco-American newspapers) and of the New England Foreign Language Newspaper Association. Renown journalists Arthur Smith and Charles Daoust brought their French-language expertise. Firebrand newspaperman Wilfred Beaulieu interned at L’Etoile before founding Worcester’s Travailleur (Worker) in 1930. Edmond Turcotte served as editor-in-chief for eight years.

Writers such as Yvonne Lemaître, Louis-Alphonse Nolin and Joseph Laferrière offered literary contributions to the paper. Franco-American poet laureate Rosaire Dion-Lévesque published in L’Etoile. Antoine Clément, L’Etoile’s last editor-in-chief, distinguished himself by his passionate pleas in favour of maintaining Franco-American identity in Lowell and beyond.

The 24-26 Prince Street workshop printed many regional papers. Among them were the Courrier de Salem, the Courrier de Lawrence, the Journal de Lawrence, the Bulletin Français of Lynn, the Lynnois of Lynn and the Journal de Fitchburg.

In 1937, L’Etoile celebrated its golden jubilee. On this occasion, the Société Historique Franco-Américaine solemnly granted the newspaper and its editor-owner the Grand Prix medal.

In the 1940’s, constraints brought about by World War II hit L’Etoile considerably. Publication became triweekly. The newspaper celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 1946.

On August 17, 1957, L’Etoile, become biweekly, published its last issue.

During the June 1977 Franco-American Week, the city of Lowell paid homage to Louis-A. Biron by naming a French-language corner of the Pollard Memorial Library “Salle Louis-A. Biron” (Louis-A. Biron Room). The following plaque was put up on June 24, 1986:

1977

Salle Louis-A. Biron

Lowell City Library

Dedicated June 19th, 1977

To commemorate the contribution of the publisher of

L’Etoile  1886 – 1957

 Lowell’s French language daily newspaper

 Louis-Alphonse Biron

Né à Lotbinière Québec, en 1861. Débute à L’Avenir National de Manchester, N.H.

Fonde L’Impartial de Nashua, N.H. en 1898

Acquéreur de L’Etoile de Lowell en 1910

Décédé à Lowell en 1947

Respect and Remember: A journalist’s commitment to those who serve by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Years ago, when Martha Raddatz was Martha Bradlee, we were colleagues at WCVB-TV, Channel 5 in Boston — she in the newsroom chasing stories, I in the editorial department, commenting on the news from a safe distance. Millions now know her as chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News: the intrepid reporter embedded in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, more recently, filing from Ukraine and covering Iran from Jordan— a serious newsperson of significant gravitas.

Her new book, The Hero Next Door: Stories of Patriotism and Purpose introduced me to someone I thought I already knew. It is a deeply moving collection of ordinary people who did extraordinary things in the worst circumstances war can invent, and who then dug deep to build meaningful lives out of what those circumstances left them.

From this extraordinary book, I came to see Martha as I have never have before, not only as a consummate professional but a person of deep courage, of loyalty, of profound humanity. She writes of warriors on the front lines: some pararescue jumpers or PJs, the Air Force medics who rescue wounded warriors, often at great risk to themselves; of doctors and nurses in a Baghdad Combat Support Hospital treating thousands of trauma patients; of Captain Rosemary Bryant Mariner, a tactical jet pilot who worked to enable fellow female aviators to fly in combat; of “skull cracker” Rocco Armonda, a retired U.S. Army neurosurgeon, who volunteered every year to operate in conflict zones on soldiers suffering ghastly traumatic brain injuries and, when on the home front, spent his free time soliciting donations of medical equipment, piling up in his garage, to send to Ukraine to help the grievously wounded have a chance at functional lives.

Martha’s focus includes the lives people lead after active duty.  First Lieutenant Mark Little, who had both his legs blown off when his vehicle was hit by an explosive device near Baghdad, Iraq. She was at the hospital the day he was brought in and later visited him at Walter Reed Hospital. Little, who also suffered burns and traumatic brain injury, would come to lead a full life, captain of the USA Warriors Ice Hockey Team, getting advanced education at George Washington University and executive leadership education at Harvard. He would devote himself to aiding other profoundly wounded to navigate the V.A. and other systems serving veterans.

She formed long-time bonds with a small group of soldiers who in 2004 survived a horrific attack in Iraq but were deeply scarred not only by what happened to their fatally wounded buddies but what they themselves did in response to the attackers, who were mingled with women and children.  This was at a time when PTSD was scarcely recognized as a war injury, leaving the friends to lean on each other, working to achieve resilience and meaningful lives after participation in a life-altering scene of carnage.

Raddatz, mother of two, was particularly drawn to certain Gold Star mothers, not just those whose children had died in war but to those who spent years nursing the fragments of human beings whom the armed forces had returned to them, never to be the same again.  She describes their unconditional love, coupled with the “most selfless sacrifice” she has ever witnessed.  These women, no less than their sons, are presented as heroes.

Along the way, we learn a lot about how our U.S. forces live their lives on and off the battlefield, and how the military life is a family affair.  Traveling regularly into volatile war-torn zones, Martha provides fact-based accounts of front-line tactics, support logistics, medical care, bureaucratic challenges, and, later, disproportionately high suicide rates.

A reader might reasonably infer that a reporter herself might suffer from PTSD after a quarter of a century of doing these stories. Why did she embark on this course? Raddatz offers one clue: she “grew up as a fatherless, scaredy-cat little girl” who, “even at a young age, … wanted to do something to change that.” But it seems so much more than that.

She never gets into the rationale for our nation’s embarking on the various “forever wars.” She never speculates on whether they were right or wrong.  Her focus is on the individuals who, from a sense of patriotic duty, give themselves (and their families) over to the mission. She credits Tom Brokaw’s masterful WWII book “The Greatest Generation” and  Steven Spielberg’s later films creating greater understanding of that era’s defining wars. But her explicit goal is to celebrate the lives of unsung heroes in wars that may have had less clarity but still boiled down to individuals motivated, after 9/11, by their passion for service and resilience in caring for those who gave every last measure of their devotion.

Raddatz declares herself “a better person for knowing them.”  A lesser journalist might tell such intimate stories in an exploitive way. The lifelong relationships she has developed with many of the subjects keeps her from falling into that reportorial trap.

There are up to two million active duty personnel at home and abroad, much less than one percent of the population. (Another 2.6 million are family members.)  Just over six percent of Americans have ever served in the military, many of them from families with a tradition of military service.  So, for the vast majority of us for whom those serving in the military has too often been a column of statistics, or a line item in an unfathomable DOD budget, we come away knowing the real lives behind the numbers. I keep returning to Rocco Armonda’s garage — the retired Army neurosurgeon quietly stacking donated equipment to ship to the wounded in Ukraine, asking no one to watch. That is the book: heroism with no audience. Prepare to be moved.

Lowell Politics: Aug 16, 2026 (Title Theft)

The Lowell City Council met this past Tuesday evening; however, I was away and didn’t have time to watch the meeting, so I’ll write about it in next Sunday’s newsletter. Today’s topic is “title theft” the term used to describe the fraudulent transfer of real estate. The prompt for that topic was a recent Lowell Sun editorial, “Digital crooks looking to steal your property” (July 28, 2026, print edition) that brought useful attention to the issue but also contained a substantial misstatement of the law and an equally important omission. (I sent a Letter to the Editor to the Sun in response but haven’t heard or seen anything about it.)

While it’s important to be aware of the possibility of title theft, it is exceedingly rare. In my thirty years as register of deeds of the Northern District of Middlesex County, I only encountered three instances of it with only one of them being the type of crime contemplated by those who warn of title theft. (The other two instances involved fraud by a family member or a care giver.) Before addressing the Sun article and explaining some relevant legal concepts, I’ll start with brief summaries of the three real life deed fraud incidents I encountered. (With the caveat I’m just writing from memory and haven’t drilled back into the records for precise statements of the facts.)

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The one true instance of “title theft” involved an elderly couple who lived in a suburban neighborhood. They had an adult child who lived in the region but not close by, although the child actively assisted in the care of the parents. Both parents eventually became disabled and relocated to care facilities and routine maintenance of the house was not done. Eventually, both parents passed away. Not ready to deal with the house, the adult child (the sole heir of the couple), held off on probating their estates. Real estate taxes on the house were paid, but not much else was done.

One day, a man walked into the registry of deeds and dropped off a deed to be recorded. The deed purported to convey this particular property from the parents to a third party. The deed contained what appeared to be the signatures of both parents, was notarized, contained the five or six other things required, and was accompanied by the necessary fee, so it was recorded.

At some point after that, the man to whom the property was conveyed called a local real estate broker and asked them to list the property for sale. Fortunately, the broker knew the history of the property including that the owners had died and that there was an adult child involved. Not knowing how to contact the adult child, the broker called the police who, because of frequent medical calls to the property in the past, still had the adult child’s contact information and got in touch.

The adult child immediately called the registry of deeds and spoke to me. Their story sounded credible and there was enough about the deed and other information I could find online to corroborate the adult child’s side of the story. I explained that while they should fully cooperate with the police who had promised to open an investigation, it was critical that they immediately hire a lawyer to file the necessary paperwork in court to begin unwinding the transaction.

A lawyer called me the next day on the adult child’s behalf. I provided copies of the deed that had been recorded and other relevant documents and explained all that I had been able to discover about the transaction. The lawyer promptly filed a lawsuit in Superior Court and obtained a lis pendens which is a notice of a lawsuit about the state of the title to property. Once the lis pendens was recorded at the registry of deeds, anyone who acted in reliance of that recent deed would be on notice that something might be wrong with it. Put another way, with the lis pendens on record, no legitimate buyer or lender would do business with the purported owner until the lawsuit was resolved.

Soon after that, the lawyer submitted affidavits to the court and obtained judgment in the form of a court order voiding the fraudulent deed. That order was recorded at the registry. With the fraudulent deed cancelled by the court order, the adult child was then able to probate their parents’ estates and dispose of the property however they wished.

I’ll explain some of the legal and procedural concepts involved in this story later in this essay, but for now let’s move onto a more common deed fraud scenario, one involving a family member.

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Sometime in the 1960s, Mom and Dad purchased a home for themselves and their two children, a Son and a Daughter. Mom died at a young age, Daughter grew up, married and moved to another part of the country. As Son grew to adulthood, he remained in the family home with Dad. As Dad’s health declined, Son provided some level of care to Dad with both remaining in the home. Notably, Son had never held a job for very long.

Towards the end of his life, Dad went to a lawyer and had a will drafted and executed. The will left the house equally to Son and Daughter. However, the day before Dad died, he purportedly executed a deed transferring ownership of the house solely to Son. A few days after Dad died, Son recorded this deed at the registry of deeds.

A few months later, Daughter called the registry of deeds and asked who owned the house according to registry records. I spoke with her, told her of the deed from Father to Son, and sent her a copy of it. Before getting off the phone, Daughter insisted that the deed had to be fraudulent. I urged her to contact the police and to give the investigating officer my contact information, but more importantly, to hire her own lawyer to take appropriate civil action to protect her rights in the property.

When I was in law school, my teacher for Wills and Trusts, a nationally respected figure in that field, one day told us, “You learn a lot about a family when the surviving parent dies.” By that, he meant that siblings often disagree with the disposition of property by their parents. That observation of human nature is well-known to anyone in the legal field. So, while I didn’t dismiss this claim out of hand and sincerely urged Daughter to pursue it, nothing about this situation distinguished it from many other calls I had previously received from heirs disappointed by a parental bequest.

Except this one turned out to be different. Daughter was persistent, both with the police and with retaining her own lawyer. The lawyer filed a lawsuit seeking to void the deed. At the trial, Daughter’s lawyer got the notary public who notarized the deed to admit that he did not personally see Dad sign the deed. Notary was a friend of Son who came to Notary with the document, which was already signed, assured Notary that the signature was Father’s, said Father was feeling poorly that day, and asked Notary to notarize the document so Son could get it recorded. Notary complied and Son recorded the document.

Also at the trial, Son testified that Dad did in fact sign the deed just the day before he died and that everything he told Notary had been truthful. The judge didn’t believe him and ruled that the deed was void which meant that property ownership would be controlled by the will. (I assume Daughter included a claim for money damages against Son as part of this lawsuit, otherwise he would still end up with half the property notwithstanding his wrongdoing, but I don’t know for sure.)

A postscript of this case: About a year later, investigators from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office interviewed me in preparation for a criminal trial against Son for fraud. I heard nothing further about it until I randomly encountered one of the people who had interviewed me. They volunteered that Son had pleaded guilty and had been sentenced to a short (but still significant) sentence of incarceration.

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The final case will be brief. It involved an elderly person in poor health who had moved from the home they owned into a long-term care facility. Elder had distant relatives who were in touch with Elder during their lifetime, but no family members that seemed especially close. Shortly before Elder died, a neighbor who had assisted the Elder in the care and upkeep of the home, came to the care facility accompanied by a notary public and had the Elder sign a deed that conveyed the property to Neighbor. The notary witnessed this and notarized the deed. Neighbor brought the deed to the registry of deeds and recorded it. Although the deed recited that Neighbor had paid $100,000 for the property, Neighbor had not done that by the time Elder died shortly thereafter.

Heirs of Elder vigorously questioned the propriety of this transfer. The police investigated and charges were brought against Neighbor. I don’t have the outcome of the criminal case documented; however, I found a deed on the registry of deeds website from several years after all of this took place. In this deed, Neighbor conveyed the property back to the lawyer for the estate of the deceased Elder. The deed states it was done pursuant to an agreement in a Middlesex Superior Court case, citing a criminal docket number. The property is now owned by an unrelated third party.

While we know what happened to the real estate, I don’t know for sure the ultimate disposition of any legal case, criminal or otherwise. However, I believe the prosecution’s theory was that at the time the deed was executed, Elder, because of their medical and mental state, was unable to exercise free will and that Neighbor had imposed their will on Elder.

I’ve been a lawyer for 40 years now. Regrettably, the only thing I see that’s unique about this case was the criminal prosecution because instances of elders being unduly influenced by family members, friends, care givers or others, are not as rare as we would like them to be.

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So, those are my stories. What’s important to know about the relevant law and procedure?

First, Massachusetts law is quite clear: a forged deed does not convey title. Consequently, in the first two scenarios described above, neither deed conveyed legal ownership of the property to the grantee shown on the deed even though the deed (1) looked legitimate, and (2) had been recorded at the registry of deeds. This is a BIG DEAL and is almost always omitted from advertisements and editorials that warn of title theft. It should also ease the concerns of those who worry about falling victim to this type of fraud.

BUT even though title does not pass to the fraudster, the true homeowner is still left with a legal and paperwork mess to resolve. As illustrated in cases one and two above, it was the person harmed who had to hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit to get the fraudulent deed declared by the court to be fraudulent. This hardly seems fair but that’s the way the system works. Once the court case is filed, if the facts are like case one above (the stranger drafting a completely fictitious conveyance), the case should be resolved quickly since it’s unlikely that the wrong doer will show up to defend against the claim. On the other hand, a case like number two above which involves an interfamily dispute may require a full trial and would therefore take longer to resolve.

In either case, the legal fees incurred by the innocent property owner would be substantial. Including a claim for money damages in the lawsuit or seeking restitution in a criminal prosecution look good on paper, but both of those would take time to adjudicate and, more importantly, wrongdoers usually don’t have assets to pay such judgments.

Something that might help the innocent property owner is title insurance. When you buy real estate and finance your purchase with a mortgage, your lender requires you to obtain title insurance. For a one-time payment, title insurance protects against financial loss resulting from defects in a property’s legal title. Almost everyone who has bought or refinanced a home purchased title insurance at the closing, although amidst the avalanche of documents that are signed at the closing, few realize title insurance is included. Critically, there are two types of title insurance policies. The mandatory one, a lender’s policy, covers the mortgage lender to the amount of the loan. The second one, which is optional, is the owner’s policy which covers the equity in the property. Since it’s optional, buyers might be tempted to forgo it given all the other closing costs, but you should always opt for an owner’s policy of title insurance.

However, whether title insurance would pay a lawyer to represent you in a case of deed fraud that arises after you have become the owner of the property depends on the fine print of the title insurance policy. Some cover it; some do not.

Legislators interested in this issue should explore making coverage of title theft defense and loss mandatory for all Massachusetts title insurance policies even if that increases their cost. (However, because title theft continues to be so rare, it is unlikely to gain any legislative momentum since other public policy issues have higher priority.)

Regardless of who pays for a lawyer, receiving early warning of title theft is critical. The best way to get that is by signing up for the free Consumer Notification Service offered by the Massachusetts Secretary of State. Once you create a free account, you enter information about your property. Then, anytime a new document that affects that property is recorded at the registry of deeds, you get an automated email about the new document so you can check it out. This system doesn’t prevent a fraudulent document from being recorded but it does give you immediate warning of it.

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to recording documents at the registry of deeds; real estate ownership and finance is a huge part of the U.S. and global economies. In that context, the speed with which transactions can be processed and recorded is critical to the smooth operation of that system. While you could create a document recording system that reduced the changes of fraud – say, by requiring all sellers to personally appear at the registry to sign their deed – the entire real estate system would grind to a halt and chaos would ensue. I do think technology can provide greater safeguards, but the scale of the problem must be big enough to warrant the investment. However, because title theft continues to be so rare, that’s unlikely to happen.

Finally, regarding the Sun editorial, the omission was that a forged deed does not convey title, something I covered above. The misstatement of law dealt with something called a “quitclaim” deed. The editorial asserted that quitclaim deeds are “not usually used for traditional home sales” since they do not carry the same protections as other forms of deeds. That may be the case elsewhere, but in Massachusetts a quitclaim deed is the standard type of deed used in nearly all conveyances, and it carries all needed protection. (What is called a quitclaim deed elsewhere is a deed of release in Massachusetts.) I mention this in case anyone reading the editorial panicked when they saw they had a quitclaim deed since that is exactly what everyone who owns a home in Massachusetts has.

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This week in my Seen and Heard column, I mentioned a NYT business column that urged caution in putting too many assets in the stock market which may be dangerously inflated due to AI investments; commented on another NYT article about the US granting Saudia Arabia access to nuclear technology; highlighted a profile of an artist who is “helping Trump reshape Washington;” recommended a recent Bob Sullivan Substack column about him interviewing Tony Bennett and Allen Ginsberg on consecutive nights; and the unstated Lowell connections in a Boston Globe article about Mount Auburn Cemetery.

‘Frost Land’ by Paul Marion

Frost Land

On the small balcony with purple morning glories and magenta zinnias in pots, I see two eagles flowing west to east, lower to higher, doing whatever they do at a time like this, but definitely showing themselves off in a faded blue flannel sky with a muted sun on a day with rain due. Layered into the distance are the various greens of woods and forest, barely Maine past rolling New Hampshire just off the coast, the greens softened by a damp atmosphere which also tamps down the sound of an occasional truck and the housing construction below on a main road.

With one eye on the eagles, I’m reading a 1946 compilation, 1965 21st printing, of the poems of Robert Frost introduced casually for the average reader by community organizer Louis Untermeyer, the tireless anthologizer of the 20th century, his Bob Frost coming to us in a brisk profile, highlights of the path to Famous Frost, like Famous Seamus of Ireland later:

born in San Francisco; rebel father’s early death there; mother-led return to New England roots territory, mill city Lawrence on the Merrimack River (echoes of cultural cousins Anne Bradstreet, J. G. Whittier, and H. D. Thoreau); in and out of college; part-time jobs teaching, doing factory shifts, and news writing; then a farm in Derry N.H. thanks to a grandparent; ten years of crops and poultry (with poetry on the side); ten years in the dirt before earning his way out of agriculture; selling the land to finance a last-ditch attempt to get noticed as an author by sailing to England with wife Elinor and four kids; walking into a London book publisher’s office and getting a deal to launch his first collection of poems, then another one, the second being “North of Boston,” which lifts him into literary orbit in his late 30s; followed by return to America and the late start of a career. World War I has begun. He steps off the ship and is the talk of the book world in New York City.

On his way forward he collects four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, teaches on numerous campuses, endures brutal family tragedies, makes a friend of a young President from New England, and achieves a commemorative U.S. postage stamp after passing in 1963.

Frost is still the codeword for “poet” in most of today’s America, more than Whitman or even Dickinson for mainstream recognition. “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping By Woods…” “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” All this in the 75 cents paperback bought in a shop with “used books,” from a time when a regular person could get 200 pages of Frost’s poems for less than a dollar. Almost free. And still in circulation. In his own way he is all around us.

Paul Marion (c) 2026