Upriver Families is not the first book Leonide Martin has authored, but this latest work no doubt holds a favored place in her heart – after all, it’s the final result of a knowledge quest that she, alongside her daughter and her cousin, began almost 10 years ago.

The book (the complete title is Upriver Families: Acadian Roots and Creole Heritage) details the findings of Martin, her daughter Katherine Bonnabel and cousin Corinne Martin – the three are co-authors of the book – about the genealogical history of the Vial and Martin families of St. Charles Parish. In 2013, Leonide and Katherine embarked on an ancestor quest, visiting Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to discover ancestral places and facts. The journey was inspired after the family learned they had Acadian ancestry, as well as by their aunt who lived to the age of 102.

“Another cousin of ours, Wayne Vial, is an experienced genealogy researcher, and we learned that we had that lineage in our family … we wanted to track it all down,” said Leonide. “We were fascinated with the Acadian origins of the Vial lineage and we wanted to learn as much as we could and to try and put it all together … to flesh the people out. Who were these 14 generations of ancestors of the Martins and Vials – what did they do, where did they live, what was their life and world like at that time?”

Over the course of a decade, the Vial-Martin women pieced together the lineage…