A young woman ventures to create a life on 1830s frontiers, from French Illinois to colonies in Texas
Sylvie Pensoneau has grown up an orphan and knows she must take risks and challenge rules to create a life beyond her traditional French community in southern Illinois. Avoiding an early marriage, she leaps to join an uncle in an American colony in Texas, then part of Mexico.
Spurred by ideals for a new society, she becomes caught up in the Texas war for independence, and after a bit of spying, endures life as a refugee and aids at a key battle. Returning to Illinois presents its own dangers, though, including fighting for her rightful inheritance. She faces being disowned if she goes back to Texas and marries the man she loves. And she questions whether she has the courage to make a home on land that Comanche Indians have traditionally claimed and will fight to keep.
Drawing on a legacy from generations of explorers and voyageurs, Sylvie weaves a story that will inspire herself and her family to continue striving for a better world. Readers can recognize her struggles to find love, friendships, and a place where she belongs by reaching across the borderlines of race, religion, culture, and language. Sylvie's Chance is based on actual events.
"A few facts in a family history prompted me to travel to sites in the story and explore related archives ..."
Little is known about the real woman that Sylvie is based on, just dates for her birth, wedding, and the births of her children. Yet histories are full of information about her father, husband, and male friends and relatives.
Questions abound, like how she got to Texas, and how did she change from her French Canadian culture to marrying one of the first Texas Rangers and living on the frontier? The facts available provide the outline for her portrait, and my best, researched guesses paint a possible life and fill in a character. -- Carolyn Dale
Additional pages on this site explore the history of the Pensoneau and Magill families, plus follow the descendants' trek to the West Coast and their lives as early pioneers. Adventures span from 1660s Quebec, to early French settlement of Illinois, and on to colonies in Texas and their war for independence from Mexico in 1836. By 1887, the next generation is setting out again, this time by covered wagon across 900 miles of the Staked Plains.
Descendants of characters in Sylvie's Chance became pioneers in Washington state, as retold in this memoir by Ella P. Dale, which is available as an e-book.
