Dear Fort Followers,
Hello from balmy Arkansas. Andrew Beaupré here. I imagine few of you will remember me, as it has been quite a few years since I plied my trade on the banks of the St. Joseph River. I have since lived in four states and held multiple academic posts.
 |
| A recent pandemic photo of Andrew at the Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Station at Toltec Mounds Archeological Park. Photo Credit: Arkansas Archeological Survey. |
I arrived at Western Michigan University to begin my masters in the fall of 2007. I had recently graduated from the University of Vermont and was drawn to the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project and Dr. Nassaney’s work owing to my interest in my own French Canadien heritage. I served as Public Education Coordinator for the Project in the summers of 2008 and 2009. In this role, I was responsible for the Project’s summer camps and lectures series, among other tasks. This role really taught me what public archaeology was all about. Dr. Nassaney gave me the leverage to develop the camp program as I saw fit. We held three weeklong camps; one for teachers, one for junior high and high school students and one for adult members of the public. In this role, I was able to define the type of publicly engaged researcher I would become. In parallel with my work as the Public Education Coordinator, I completed my thesis on religious material culture on the French colonial frontier.
It was through Dr. Nassaney and the FSJAP that I met Dr. Reginald Auger of Université Laval. Dr. Auger offered me a position at Fort Saint-Jean in Quebec in 2010. Fort Saint-Jean was originally founded by the Carignan-Salières regiment in 1666, and the site is still occupied by the Canadian Military as an officer cadet training school. From 2011-2017, I served as field scientific director for the project. My experiences at Fort St. Joseph gave me the tools to liaise with all interested parties at Fort Saint-Jean, including the Canadian Department of National Defense, Parks Canada, the onsite museum, Université Laval and members of the public. Simultaneous to my work at Saint-Jean, I enrolled in the PhD program in anthropology at the College of William and Mary. My work at Fort Saint-Jean was the basis for my dissertation which centered on French settlement border theory along the Vermont/New York/Québec frontière. My research at Saint-Jean and throughout the Lake Champlain Richelieu River Corridor was shown on PBS in the first season of America from the Ground Up. For those of you that missed it, Fort St. Joseph was also featured in this program.
 |
| Andrew speaking to teachers and students at the Arkansas School for the Deaf during an recent archaeological project on their campus. Photo Credit: Arkansas School for the Deaf. |
Following the completion of my PhD, I took a year teaching at the Community College of Vermont. This year, ‘at home’ allowed me to be the primary caregiver for our baby son. In the fall of 2018, I was the inaugural post-doctoral teaching fellow at the McCormick Center for the Study of the American Revolutionary Era at Siena College in New York’s capital region. Finally, I have been able to continue my passion with public archaeology (and follow in Dr Nassaney’s footsteps) by taking a position at the Arkansas Archeological Survey. I currently serve as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the Research Station Archeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Research Station. I am now the State of Arkansas’s point of contact for archeology in eight counties including the Arkansas Post founded by French explorer Henri de Tonti in 1686.
 |
| Andrew excavating in with ‘assistance’ from his son. Photo Credit: SUNY- SCCC Consulting Archaeology Program. |
Aside from the foundational educational experiences that I gained at Fort St. Joseph and WMU, I want to stress the personal connects I was able to make with a great group of people. I first met my best friend, Andrew Robinson, while visiting the dig in the summer of 2007. Robinson is now an archeologist in North Dakota. I fondly remember sharing a beverage with Dr. Terry Martin on the back porch of the old field house at the Stables. Dr. Martin and I are currently collaborating on some Arkansas based research. It was during the summer of 2008 that I had the pleasure of instructing now fellow William and Mary alum and blog writer Cathrine Davis when she was but a FSJAP summer camper. Cathrine would later work with me on the Fort Saint-Jean Archaeological Project as well, and we remain close colleagues. Dr. LisaMarie Malischke, now of Mercyhurst University, was a collaborator in public engagement at Fort St. Joseph and has also remained a close friend and colleague. Beyond those of us that continued in archaeology, I made many friends that have pursued other careers at home in Michigan and around the globe. The atmosphere of teamwork and esprit de corps that was fostered in Niles and Kalamazoo has remained with me and my FSJ teammates as we have found our way in life.
Over the years, I have kept up with Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project through the blog, meeting with Dr. Nassaney and the successive FSJ teams at conferences and reading the published project outcomes. It is wonderful to see that the Project has continued to thrive. The training that FSJ has provided archaeologists is a boon to the field.
Air-conditioned wishes from south of the Mason-Dixon,
Andrew R. Beaupré
