This website contains fragments of the saga of how we all got here.

Your lives will take the story forward from here.

We've all come from immigrants, it's just that some of them have been here longer than others. And here's a good example. On Grandma's paternal side—the Salliottes—we can go back way before the founding of this country. On her maternal side—the Kudlas—they arrived relatively recently. Regardless, we've all come from somewhere. And that's where our story begins....

The Salliottes

A Remarkable Relative
We'll start with one of the most famous members of the family, at least around these parts.  All of us living in the Pacific Northwest have been to a Providence hospital or clinic, and many of us have worked for Providence.

What is now Providence Health and Services was established by the Sisters of Providence, founded by Marie Émilie Eugène Tavernier, known to the world as Mother Gamelin.  Émilie was born in Montreal on February 19, 1800, the youngest of 15 children, although nine of her siblings had died young.

Émilie was quite the socialite in Montreal society, and at the age of 23 married Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, grand nephew of Grandma Kathy's 6th great-grandfather, Laurent Eustache Gamelin (1704 - 1771).  Laurent Gamelin was one of the original French Canadian settlers of Detroit.

Jean-Baptiste died four years into their marriage, and afterward Émilie Gamelin began her life of public works. She joined the Ladies of Charity, a group aimed at relieving poverty and destitution through home visits and the distribution of alms. She was struck by the misery that single and isolated elderly women were subjected to, and she took several of the most frail and sick into her home. She used her wealth to rent a series of shelters for elderly women, staffed by women she had trained to care for them.

During the Lower Canada Rebellion (1837–1839), Émilie obtained permission to visit imprisoned rebels who were under sentence of death, and gave them counseling and helped them to contact their families.

On October 8, 1843 she took her vows, and the next year formed the Sisters of Charity of Providence.

Under her early leadership the nuns provided shelter for orphaned girls and elderly women, established a hospice for sick and elderly priests, started an employment office to aid job-seekers, and opened a school in Montreal.

Mother Gamelin died during a cholera epidemic on September 23, 1851. She acheived remarkable success in the eight years between her vows and her death.  In addition to the above accomplishments, she established a hospital, a hospice for children of typhus victims, an insane asylum, and a religious order which, at the time of her death, numbered over 50 professed Sisters of Providence.

On December 18, 2000 she attained the third of the four steps to sainthood, beatification, and received the title "Blessed Mother Émilie Gamelin".