Visitors from New England

Grandpa Joe Pilot visited us with these two relatives who had their picture taken in the backyard at Edgewood Rd. Mom thinks that the lady on the left is Aunt Lumina Lussier, Joe's oldest sister. The lady on the right may be one of her daughters. Another photo found which appears to be taken the same day shows only five of us kids and Mom pregnant with Joyce. That would date this photo in the summer of 1961.

Lumina Pilotte Lussier was Grandpa Joe Pilot's oldest sister She was born in Richmond, Quebec before the family immigrated to Lowell, MA. Mom and I have been a bit confused about the names/identies of grandpa's two sisters because we found the church record of Lumina's baptism which gives her baptismal name as Marie Claire. Grandpa's other sister was Marie Pilotte Michaud. We have always referred to her as Marie Claire. Marie was born in Massachusetts as was grandpa.

I pulled up the Pilotte family portrait from 1910 and cropped out Joe and the sister that I think may be Lumina. Look at the shape of her face in both photos. I also see a strong resemblance in the lady on the right of the 1961 snapshot to the 1910 shot. On Friday I was at Tallmadge Library and used the Newspaper Archive database and found a clue about the mystery of the sisters' names. Lumina's obituary from the Lowell Sun on 23 June 1976 listed her name as "Lumina M.C. (Pilotte) Lussier." It seems likely that this older sister was Lumina Marie Claire. The next item of information I would like to dig up is a birth certificate for Marie, to see what her full name was.