Charles Duchene was born in Canada in 1863 and came to St. Paul in 1898. In 1900 he and fellow stone cutter Xavier Moore lived at this house with their wives and children - 13 people in all. Duchene was active in the Journeyman Stone Cutters Union and was elected vice president of the St. Paul Local in December of 1904. Information provided by his great-great-grandson indicates that the full name of Deschenes (Duchene, Duchaine, etc) was Charles Miville dit Deschenes; "dit" being the French word for "called." He was also a stonecutter on the St. Paul Cathedral project.
After the Cathedral project was finished, he and his wife moved to Winnipeg and lived there for almost the next 20 years. It was during the 1910s
that Winnipeg was having its building boom and Charles worked as a stonecutter there. Most their children remained in St. Paul.