BERLIN - They came down from French-speaking Canada for the work, bringing their faith and families with them and leaving a lasting legacy on the mill city by the Androscoggin River. The influence of their language can still be heard in the accents of their descendents.

The institutions of their religion — the churches and the schools — have mostly disappeared. The church is now represented only in a single church, but for many, their faith remains strong.

The grandparents and great-grandparents of Albert “Al” Morrissette and his wife, Marie, lifelong Berlin residents, were among those who swelled the population in the growing city. Al Morrissette's grandparents, Alfred and Georgianna Morrissette, were young when they immigrated to the United States in 1891, the year they were married. They found a life in Berlin and Alfred, born in 1870, found work.

In 1900, according to U.S. Census records, four of their 12 children had already been born, with Alfred supporting the family on the wages of a laborer. By 1936, he was self-employed as a grocer at 396 Forbush Ave., a business his son, Sylva, born in 1912, eventually took over. The surrounding neighborhood, on the east side of the city, was densely populated and primarily French-Canadian.

Al and Marie Morrissette regularly attend St. Anne Church of Good Shepherd Parish.

The closeness of their family is not unlike the relationships among the other families in Berlin of French-Canadian heritage. Even fourth and fifth generation Franco-Americans keep in close touch with their families, with multi-generational gatherings being the rule rather than the exception.

Marie Morrissette, sitting in the kitchen in the house in which she and Al raised their three daughters, said Wednesday that she usually talks to her daughters once a day. Two still live in Berlin with their families, while the third daughter and her family live in southern New Hampshire. An adult grandson lives in Maine with his family. In the summer, they get together frequently at their cottage on Akers Pond in Errol.

Keeping the family ties strong is part of her heritage. In her mother, Marie Rose Allard Girouard, Marie Morrissette said, “Family was first.” Her grandparents, Joseph and Alice Allard, immigrated to the U.S. in 1907, when they were children, and her mother, Marie Rose Allard, was born in Berlin in 1921.

The Morrissettes grew up in the same neighborhood on the east side of Berlin, at a time when the Catholic church exerted a much stronger influence over residents' daily lives. The couple, though born and raised in Berlin, still speak in the cadence of French, their first language. At the Catholic grammar school they attended in the late 1940s and early '50s, the Guardian Angel, most classes were conducted in French, an effort, said Al Morrissette, “to save the religion,” and “save the language.”

Ties to Canada were still strong, with morning history lessons at Guardian Angel concentrating on Canadian history.

Al Morrissette said it was important to them that their daughters speak English and they get a good education. “All our kids went to college,” said Morrissette, who is a CPA with his own company.

In 1972, the high school attended by the Morrissettes, Notre Dame, closed. The building still sits at the top of School Street, empty but saved from the wrecking ball by former students of the school who banded together, wrote the grants and raised the money to take care of environmental issues at the old building. Still unoccupied, the building is ready for renovation and reuse and is now owned by Tri-County CAP.

The Androscoggin Valley's last Catholic grade school, St. Michael School, closed in 2007.

Neither their daughters, nor their grandchildren speak French. Al said he thinks in both languages, though only 10 percent of the time in French.

An avid hiker — he's done all 48 4,000-footers and segments of the Appalachian Trail — he said when he was climbing Mount Lafayette he was catching bits and pieces of the French spoken by another hiking party. He couldn't place the accent, he said. It wasn't Quebecois French and it wasn't France French.

Finally, he greeted them with his own French, and asked them where they were from.

They were, he reported, from the French-speaking region of Switzerland.

The Morrissettes' old grammar school, where they spoke French with their classmates and teachers, closed in 1971. The big brick building houses various social service programs, including the Berlin Senior Center, where older citizens can go for lunch with their former classmates.

There, they can still converse in French, if they choose.