Michel (Mitchell on his tombstone in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Springfield, Vermont) was six feet tall, as were his brothers, and had huge hands. His occupation was listed as carpenter in his obituary. Family lore is that he built the pews for the old St. Louis Church in Highgate Center, Vermont. If he did, it was years after the church was built with an addition to the back section that was moved in 1849 from the St. Armand Road to Highgate Center, Vermont. Family lore also is that Mitchell and a number of men with a French-Canadian background sprang Bishop Louis DeGosbriand, a native of France and Bishop of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, from the St. Albans, Vermont jail where he had been incarcerated. Bishop DeGossbriand was imprisoned there at the behest of some Irish Catholics who did not want the Bishop's replacement of yearly purchase of pew rights for weekly pew donations and random sitting. Mitchell was known to cut, slit, and pile a cord of stove wood a day for 25 cents a cord. His family lived for a number of years in a log cabin in Highgate Center's French Village which begins near the new Catholic cemetary. There, he lost his first wife, Mary Miner/Menard, to tuberculosis on April 20, 1888. Three of his children succumed to diphtheria in the summer of 1891 as did two of Chauncy Austin's daughters that same summer while the French Village was under quarantine because of the disease. The Austin home was built in the 1870's and Lambert family lore is that Mitchell was one of the carpenters. The Austin homestead became the home of Doctor Powers. His widow, Fannie Powers, a former teacher, sold it to Homer and Lucienne (Laroche) Lambert in 1945. Homer was a grandson of Mitchell. There, Homer and Lucienne raised their 13 children. Mary and Ruth were born in the house. Lucienne sold the home to her daughter and son-in-law, Barbara and Claude Chevalier, who raised their three children there.