Our Girl from Kankakee: Lillian Zoa Dionne Maltos

Lillian Zoa Dionne Maltos 1881 - 1957

Lillian Z. Dionne Maltos was tall, dignified and was given to scolding outbursts in French. Every Sunday I remember her wearing hats and gloves to church. She favored floral print dresses and did not put up with nonsense. I recall my mother, Marie Ida Maltos Allison, asking her to speak english when her french came fast and furious.  I didn't care what she spoke, because when I first met her I didn't speak anything.  I was zero and Lillian was in her late sixties. Perhaps that was why she seemed so tall. 

My last memories of grand mama Lillian are the impressions of a toddler. She was a widow who's latino husband Jack Maltos had died in northern California about two decades before. Lillian lived with my family for a number of years and then moved to Utah in the 1950"s to live with her younger daughter, Juanita Maltos Rogers.   After she moved, I never saw her again.   

What I knew about the history of Lillian Z. came mostly from the memories of my mother Marie.  I knew Lillian Dionne was French Canadian.  I also knew she was from Kankakee, Illinois.  As a kid, I could hold these conflicting facts in my mind. No problem.   I knew she came from a big family. I was told she was related to the Dionne Quintuplets. (I had no idea what a quintuplet was.) Lillian had sisters and cousins in Los Angeles.  

Sometimes mom packed up us little girls and we visited this clan of Dionnes and Lamberts in LA. These visits required a small girl to be on best behavior for a couple of days.  I was deeply bored as I squirmed in Aunt Stella's (Lillian's sister's) formal living room with a black grand piano with a bunch of relatives in their church clothes after a long, tedious Sunday lunch.  

I decided then and there I didn't like French Canadians much. Clearly they were too dull for words. Why would anyone spend five minutes with them? They have been last on the Allison sisters genealogical list to explore.   

I was wrong. Very wrong.

Pulling the threads on Lillian Dionne's tree has revealed an amazing, deep history of the French in the Americas. She is from a lineage that includes Quebecois from a very early era, as well as some of the first families of Port Royal in the Acadian Canadian maritime provinces. Some of her Canadian ancestors became Cajun families that found their way to Louisiana after they were exiled from Acadia by the British in 1755.

Grandmama Lillian Zoa Dionne b.1881 has opened the door and connected us to a world of history we didn't know was there. Discovering French Canada has been fascinating and fun.   

Merci Lillian Z!