As the textile industry in Woonsocket grew, so did the need for mill workers. The first French Canadian families were recruited from Quebec to work in the mills of Woonsocket in the 1840’s. The life of the French-Canadians in Quebec was largely agrarian. It was a system where each household grew, produced or bartered for everything the family needed to survive. As the population grew and family farms could no longer support succeeding generations, many left behind this self-sufficient lifestyle, for one based on wage labor in the mills. Eventually, one third of Quebec’s population left Canada for mill villages in New England where they gathered in close-knit ethnic communities. By 1900, sixty percent of Woonsocket’s population was French-Canadian and Woonsocket was the most French city in the United States.

The 1930’s and 1940’s represented what was for Woonsocket perhaps the peak of French Canadian culture. Numerically, the French represented seventy percent, or 35,000 of Woonsocket’s 50,000 residents in 1930.  Social Corner was the commercial and residential heart of the French Canadian community. The most obvious evidence of French Canadian culture was in the daily lives of ordinary citizens. The preservation of the French language was the key factor in the maintenance of French Canadian heritage. At times, children would speak French before learning English and many later spoke English with a trace of a French accent.