Peter Marcoux
Peter Marcoux was born in Quebec, Canada, and lived at that place until he was seventeen years of age. Here, however, his education and training was almost entirely in French, so that since his removal to the United States he has been obliged to make a thorough study of English in the night schools of different cities in which he has been located. Also profitably put in four winter terms in the study of engineering and drawing in schools in Chicago. At the present time Mr. Marcoux is equally fluent in both languages, having well mastered the task that was set before him. He is the son of George and Felicite (Badard) Marcoux, the former a carpenter by trade and still residing at Quebec. The mother died in 1865.
After working in a machine shop about two years, Mr. Marcoux left Canada and came to Michigan, and for some time was employed in a sawmill at Menominee. Removing to Escanaba he worked at the carpenter's trade, after which he began his marine life, to which he had devoted his time since. In 1880 he went on the Argonaut as fireman for part of a season, with his uncle, Charles E. Marcoux, who was chief engineer, and who was lost on the Vernon in 1887, our subject being with him until that time, after which Mr. Marcoux filled the same position on the Rube Richard for the remainder of the year. That winter he returned to Escanaba, and was employed in a grocery store, going as fireman on the Chauncey Hulbert the following season. Upon this boat he remained two years, and receiving papers in August acted as second engineer after that, holding the same berth upon the J.C. Parrotte for a shirt time; the remainder of the season he went on the Fayette Brown as greaser. The following winter he spent in Chicago as engineer of a building, and during June of the next season he shipped on the Argonaut as second engineer, and remained two and a half seasons. He acted as chief of the same boat for two seasons, and then spent a season and a half on the Escanaba as chief, finally, in July, 1894, coming on the Parks Foster, on which he has since remained.
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Volume I
This version of Volume II is based, with permission, on the work of the great volunteers at the Marine Captains Biographies site. To them goes the credit for reorganizing the content into some coherent order. The biographies in the original volume are in essentially random order.
Some of the transcription work was also done by Brendon Baillod, who maintains an excellent guide to Great Lakes Shipwreck Research.
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