Peter (Pierre) RENO

  General Notes:

He is found with his family in the 1920 census in Southbridge. He is found in his father's household in the 1880 census. He is supposed (according to Russ McKinstry) to have bene in Calgary, Alberta CAnada for the birth of three of his daughters (and evidently before that in Columbus, Ohio), because he had gone there to look for work. He was an optician/ optical grinder at American Optical in Southbridge, which was one of the largest employers in teh area. Its plant is now some sort of government accounting center. It is and was an international company, and someone suggested to me that possibly he went to those other places in connection with his job with AMerican Optical. Someone else suggested he could have tried to take the Canadian government up on an offer of free and easy to obtain land in Alberta. His WWI draft card (image at ancestry.com) says he was living in Calgary, Alberta, and working for Consolidated Optical as an optician.

In 1910 Henry Bastien, the father of his wife Diana who he married in 1907 (according to the Massachusetts marriage index), was living in Southbridge, his family nowhere to be found. The marriage record is 1907 vol 572 p 423. In 1920 Henry Bastien and all of his family lived next door to Peter Reno with his wife Diana and most of his children.

The family were evidently Roman Catholic, as every single child of this couple I have obits for was Catholc. All those Reno's who I have obits for who belong to the wider Reno/ Renaud clan in Southbridge were also Catholics.

1990 census says he was born in April 1879. This is consistent with his age of 1 year old on the 1880 census.

The townships his father and Diana were born in are suspiciously near each other.

On the 1920 census, they lived at 15 Hamilton Street.

Peter married Diana BASTIEN, daughter of Henri Napoleon BASTIEN and Philomene GIRARD, on 30 Dec 1907 in Southbridge, Worcester, Massachusetts. (Diana BASTIEN was born on 5 Sep 1885 in Saint-Germain-de-Grantham, Quebec.)