Some months ago, a nine year old girl living in Michigan in a town on the shores of the lake that bears the same name, gave a fifteen minute lecture on Acadian history. The class was stunned, the teacher awed, to say nothing of her mom who was absolutely ignorant of her daughter’s talents in that domain. The girl has Acadian roots through her mother and she only shared with the class what she had heard and learned of her heritage in her short life. The class had apparently never heard of Acadians, much less of their history. So true throughout the better part of the country. So with the thought of this little girl, and maybe by her unknown guidance, I present to you my version of The Silent People.

The majority of the time when people remove themselves from their mother country and emigrate to another country, it is to upgrade their standard of living in the search for a better life for themselves and their siblings. This held true in the 17th century when the French, who were fed up with a king who had a penchant for wars, fed up with poverty and famine and in some cases, the Huguenots, fed up with the harrassment of their religious beliefs emigrated to a place called Acadia. These new immigrants came to Acadia full of hope - the hope of a certain freedom, the hope of a new life. They were the conceivers of a brand new culture and a culture which would instill pride in the descendants that would continue to live all the way to our times right in the new millenium.

One day, the men came home from The Church... most of them made it home... and the word spread very quickly. So quickly that folks grabbed up a garbage bag…then known as Acadian matched luggage, packed up as much as they could and headed for the woods. You might say that these were the lucky ones. Tell you why.

After the initial storm had hit and done its damage, there were eighteen thousand people scattered about; five thousand strewn along the coast from Boston to Florida; five thousand in Europe and eight thousand more hidden in the Acadian woods.

Eleven years later, six thousand amongst them had died of misery, four thousand were indentured on the lands which were stolen from them, four thousand were mildewing in France, twenty five hundred had taken refuge in Québec and the fifteen hundred other ones resigned themselves to spend the remainder of their days in the States.(i)

Those who made it to the shores of the saint Lawrence had it the best. But they arrived with nothing at all. The charity was good, but charity can never erase the memories of their lost "patrie"/homeland. They cried for Acadia on (our) shores all the way to the end. (ii)

I present this sceneario: the Acadians had fled into the woods; families of were either together or had been separated; some were broken up, some fatherless and others husbandless.

Now if we go back a bit, remember that the English forced the Acadians to turn in their arms. Whether they did turn all of them in or not is a moot point because even if they carried any, they could not use them for fear of drawing attention. In the Acadian woods in 1755, there were no friends. They traveled in groups, as traveling alone, unless one was an expert woodsman or woman, it was pure suicide. Can you imagine what it was like traveling from Acadia to La Petite-Rivière-Saint-Jean? I cannot, and I am a woodsman. Here in the north country, before the snow has finished melting, mosquitos are out.. they are followed by no-see-ums, which need no introduction at all. These are then followed by black flies. Black flies can drive moose crazy, they come in hoards thick enough to shovel. People were born out there, many more were buried. There was never enough food, and though you can subsist for awhile on berries it is not enough. A mother carrying a young child trying to keep up with the group probably did it through teary eyes, through physical exhaustion and a state of mind akin to being a zombie.

Though I said that they had no friends, in fact they did... other Acadian refugees. These were their friends, their brothers, their sisters, their parents, their children, their countrymen. They could not rely on the Indian population although quite a few were sympathetic to their cause... as sympathetitc as their culture allowed them to be. Couldn’t they trust the French Canadians? The Damours family of Jemseg helped people, they helped John Gyles very much. My question is: If the French were living in that area, which was predominantly inhabitated by different Indian tribes of Algonquin stock, the Maliseets, from Rivière-du-Loup all along the Rivière Saint-Jean, could they safely take in Acadians without the probability of a potential retaliation from the Aboriginals? I wonder up to what point they could be hospitable. Well they did buy the captured ones like John Gyles (iii) who was taken as a captive in a raid on Pemaquid, Maine. He was sold to Louis Damours sieur de Chauffours. Set free he managed to eventually make his way to Boston.

Please bear with me and my penchant for tangents as I explain how the Acadian refugees lived. John Gyles found an old Indian encampment and also found a dried dog’s head, which he ate. Now, the First Nation People always had dogs around, and these were killed and eaten at feasts and parties. They were considered a delicacy (iii). Back to friends: the closer they came to the shores of the Saint Lawrence, the more people they met. From Petite-Rivière-Saint-Jean (Fredericton, N.B.) they would make it to Lake Temiscouata, and then at the head of the lake do a portage to what is today, Notre-Dame-de-Portage, some few miles west of Rivière-du-Loup. Today as you drive through Notre-Dame –de-Portage, among the summer homes which reek of rich ‘n famous, you see a monument of a man carrying a canoe. This says it all! This is also the same route taken by the French who went inland to the Saint-John River Valley many years later. To give you an idea of distance, it was a proud Maliseet who could paddle from Acadia to the Saint Lawrence when the Rivière Saint-Jean was high, a distance of 400 miles (iii).

From the year 1755, Acadians settled in Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse. Bellechasse, along with the Gaspé Peninsula, is the most ancient Acadian region in Québec. The parish of Saint-Charles was founded in 1749. It would later be divided into smaller parishes, one being Saint-Gervais, founded in 1780, where they would establish. These new immigrants were called the "Cadiens" and was seen often in documents, especially in the notorial and land survey acts. They settled in the part of Saint-Charles known as "Nouvelle-Cadie" in the Livaudière fief. There were a few Germans, Alsatians and Swiss who also came from Acadie, undoubtedly from the Louisbourg garrison. These folks were from Petitcoudiac, Memramcook, Port-Royal, Beaubassin, Chippoudy, Pisiguit, Rivière Saint-Jean, Notre-Dame de Beauchemin, Grand-Pré, Louisbourg, Baie des Espagnols de l’ile Royale, Beauséjour...(iv). Many also came in frail vessels from Ile Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island). The majority arrived in 1756, having been on the Island since 1750.

Let’s talk a bit about these Acadians who had already taken refuge on Ile Saint-Jean and then to be again forced into a similar situation in 1755. How many an exodus can a people survive? Though all Acadians came from the same motherland - France - they had come to a new country, a new culture and a new people. They now needed to take up arms to protect this new patrie/homeland. Do you realize that the Deportation was the first act of ethnic cleansing in North America? What courage, what inner strength these Acadians must have had! It is practically inconceiveable for us, the people who carry umbrellas just in case it might rain, to even begin to transpose ourselves into these Acadians' minds and bodies.

Many left Ile St-Jean/Prince Edward Island in these homemade vessels and sailed to the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence, upriver to Québec. Between these two places, there are some mean stretches of water. They had to be desparate. From Québec they went to Orléans Island and then to Saint-Charles. Saint-Charles was 20-25 miles from Québec depending where they landed, possibly at Saint-Michel. Their voyage was also spiced up by births, one being Louis Horn born at sea. He was the son of Françoise Savary and Jacob Horn.

They did not remain there for a long time. Opting for the constant moving around that was common amongst the colonists, they would receive a land grant, clear the land, begin some rudimentary farming, build a house on it and sell it. There was not much profit in this practice, but with their meager earnings, they would then search for a more developed place where they could farm and live a more normal and peaceful life.

Finally, after many years following the Deportation (1755-1763), the Acadians began to find a relatively normal life, as normal as one or two deportations and the rigors of driveby childbirths, untimely deaths and the ever present smallpox epidemics would allow. What lay over the horizon for a few of them? In 1759-1760, some took up arms to defend Québec all along the coast from Pointe-Lévy to Saint-Michel Livaudière. Can you believe this?

"In the fall of 1759, it was the turn of Saint-Michel to be taken over by the English. It was in the seigneury of Péan that the Acadians had taken refuge. The priest Marie-Antoine Roy describes the invasion in his book Saint-Michel de la Durantaye:

" ...Murray launched out onto the (Saint Lawrence) river, the ice covered it all the way to below Saint-Michel, the English squadrons came and began the bloodshed, partially burning our church, burning the homes of our inhabitants. These (inhabitants), took refuge in the concessions where some died and were buried."

The Acadians came back, and one more time, rebuilt their homes and homesteads. The whole place had been trashed and burned. The enemy even took the church bell.

What of the other Acadians... the ones who were taken prisoners? Their wives and families made it to Québec. For instance, Étienne Mignault was, along with many of his companions, brought to Georgia and forced to work on the plantations. They were treated as slaves and chained every night. After a few years of captivity they forgot, it seems, to chain them one night. They took off and hid in the woods. They walked in a northerly direction and after long months of walking, they finally found themselves on the shores of the Saint Lawrence. Having arrived here, they began searching for their families. Arriving in Quebec in 1760, a very discouraged Étienne wandered for a long time and finally wound up in Québec. There, on the shores of the river he met a young boy with whom he began to chat. The child said that his father "had gone to church and never came back, and that his mother was very poor and cried often... " "Where is your mother?" he asked... "Over there", replied the child as he pointed to a poor little house. The Acadian knocked on the door. When the child's mother opened the door, upon seeing her husband she cried out and fainted in his arms. This is how Étienne found his son and his wife...

This Mignault family are the ancestors of all the Mignaults of the parish of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu (v).

In conclusion, we can easily see that the Acadians who were deported, as well as the children they bore while in exile, lived through a great deal of misery, suffering and often death. Our history, culture and language must be preserved at all expense, if only out of gratitude for these pioneers who gave their all to build the life we have inherited. *We* are - The Silent Ones - we should be extremely proud to show the world what our ancestors survived and overcame. This is the legacy we should be proud to share! The End.

I thank you for reading me. I hope you have enjoyed this article. I thank also a certain lady, who I admire and look upon as an untiring person in search of our Acadian roots who asked me to do this piece. Sort of like Samuel de Champlain asking directions from one of his voyageurs. (Smile)

References:

(i) Rameau, Une colonie féodale en Amérique, ll, 105-210.
(ii) Bourassa in "Jacques et Marie", pp.5-6.
(iii) The Ordeal of John Gyles by Stuart Truman
(iv) Les Acadiens dans Bellechasse, by Pierre-Maurice Hébert
Histoire de Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu, by J.B.A. Allaire.

Biography: Jim Carten is originally from Stratford (Lordship) Connecticut, high school grad, USN 1955-1963. Went to Québec in May 1963, and retired as a shipyard steelworker in 1995.

Married in 1961 to Huguette Deschênes of Courville near Québec City, Jim has lived in Saint Jean-Chrysostôme for 27 years. He began doing genealogy research eight years ago delving into historical research much earlier. Jim enjoys doing lookups and sharing information in both French and English. Having done extensive work on the Savaria-Besset(te), Poirier dit Lajeunesse-Larivière families, he has obtained quite a bit of information on the Poussard-Bussière-Dussault families and is presently working on the Desêchênes-Drolet families.

A member of the Société Généalogique de Québec, Stratford (Ct.) Historical Society Jim is an avid headstone hunter, library and used bookstore addict.

Also interested in Cross Country skiing, he has participated in the Master's World Cup held at Mt. Sainte-Anne, P.Q. in 1989, enjoys long distance bicycling having gone three times from home to Stratford Connecticut. For their 25th wedding anniversary, Jim and Huguette biked through northern France, northern Belgium and Holland.

There have been several attempts to match the Acadian family groups from the various records available. One of the most recent attempts was made in support of the Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville and in preparation for the 1999 Congrès Mondial. Ensemble Encore is a database of the Acadians in Louisiana through about 1788. It is a wonderful resource, but because of time constraints, full crosschecking and validation was not possible; therefore, there are some inaccuracies. The inaccuracies can be discerned by viewing the actual write-ups (age discrepancies) and by reviewing the source documents used for the individual write-ups.

Since there were several Simon LeBlancs who were about the same age and since one of them was my 4th great-grandfather (Simon Joseph, b. 1744 m. Elizabeth LeBlanc who was his 3rd cousin – but that will be covered in another article!), I have decided to start this series with Simon LeBlanc, b. 1742 who is also shown as born 1741 m. Anne Arseneaux who is also shown as Anne Bergeron.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t show all the specific page references, but these will be shown on the full report that will be posted on my site at http://www.familycensus.com

The census of the Acadian Coast taken on April 9, 1766 shows a widow Bergeron in the home of Pierre Arseneaux and his wife Anne Bergeron. This was Anne Arseneaux. The Simon in discussion was not on the census. The list of marriages between 1766 and 1768 shows Simon LeBlanc married Anne Arseneaux on November 6, 1767.

The census of the Acadian Coast taken on September 14, 1769 shows Simon LeBlanc, age 28 with Anne Arseneaux, wife age 25, Marie Anne, daughter, age 1 and Marguerite Bergeron, other, age 6. The militia list of the First Acadian Coast (right bank) as of January 23, 1770 showed Simon LeBlanc, age 28 Acadian and married.

The census of the Acadian Coast of 1777 taken 1/1/1777 is where the discrepancy begins. It shows Simon LeBlanc, age 35, Anne Bergeron, wife, age 31, Alexandre, son, age 7, Edouard, son, age 5, Constance, dau., age 3, Jean Roger, age 20, Guianne (Guillame) engager (hired help) age 34.

The Ensemble Encore records show a Simon LeBlanc born 1741 married to (1) Marie Josephe Landry, (Note: this marriage would have occurred prior to the arrival in Louisiana and there is no record of it in the DOBR books), (2) Anne Arseneau, the widow of Barthelemy Bergeron and the daughter of Jean Arseneau and Marie Hebert on November 6, 1767. Children are Marie Anne (born 1768), Antoine Alexandre (baptized June 2, 1770), Anne Constance (baptized June 13, 1796), and Benjamin (married November 19, 1804). Parents are shown as Desire LeBlanc and Marie Magdeleine Landry; and Simon LeBlanc, born 1742 married to Anne Bergeron. Children are Alexandre (born 1770), Edouard (born 1772), Constance (born 1774). No parents are shown.

Simon born 1741 and Simon born 1742 are the same person. His descendants are eligible for membership in the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution.

Biography: Stanley LeBlanc, Jr. grew up in Olivier and New Iberia, Louisiana (with a short stay in Patterson and Berwick). He served in the U.S.M.C and was a Marine Security Guard in Paris, France from June 1965 to September 1967 where he met his wife, Marilyn Susan Boothby from England. They were married in Farnham, Surrey, England on June 24, 1967. They have 2 grown children, Sarah Maria and James Boothby.

He is a graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana (History,1971) and graduate work (Public Administration) at Oklahoma University (OU) and University of North Texas (UNT). He works for the Social Security Administration in Dallas, Texas and his current duties include serving as Regional Webmaster and Regional Coordinator for Electronic Service Delivery.

His avocation is History and Genealogy, and while at USL had the privilege of being part of the CODOFIL project. His genealogy goal is to prepare "family line books" from the DOBR, Fr. Hebert and other records to trace the lines in Louisiana and to link back as far as possible.

Stanley has a web site Family Census - the url: http://www.familycensus.com - Genealogy, History & Culture

Sourcing is one of the most important things a genealogy researcher can do. Sources are those places you research for information, a document you read or access, a census record you have found ancestors recorded on, church records, bible records, vitals any place at all where you have found information is a source.

Wouldn't it be nice to know which source you have received information from? Which web site? Which other researcher? Who sent you an email with information you have taken to be your own? (All of this for the purpose of verifying your information.)

Sourcing is the only way that you are certain you do not take for granted everything you see posted or told to you. We want to be sure that what we have comes from a good and correct source. Many people write to me for help after they've taken all kinds of information from the Internet and find their formation isn't connecting and no longer makes sense. Often, information on the Internet is not well sourced and some webmasters will not even respond when you ask them to send you the source or sources for the information they display on their sites.

Anyhow, I certainly don't want to take anything for granted nor do any serious researchers take for granted any and every post they see. Accepting all kinds of information can lead to disaster if it isn't properly sourced. It can mean having to delete all kinds of information later on and starting over again.... that is a researcher's worse nightmare!

The first thing one learns in doing genealogy research - and that is repeated over and over and over again by the experienced researchers and teachers of research - is "source your information" - if I haven't heard it once, I've heard it a million times. And this is what I teach in the workshops that I present. If information is not sourced, once all of the facts are gathered, how would we know what to keep and what to discard??? We sometimes collect information we think might be pertinent and it turns out that it might not be because of errors we later find exist in the document... once we know there are many errors coming from a particular source, a red flag should go up - and we should proceed with caution which means we then need to verify all information that comes out of that source with another source. Finally, no information is valuable unless it is correct.

Excellent research sources besides church records, baptismal, birth, marriage or death certificates is information that can be accessed from the Dictionnaire Généalogique des Acadiens by Stephen A. White for Acadian research, the Jetté Dictionnaire Généalogique des familles de Québec by René Jetté, the Tanguay, the blue Drouin marriage records, the red Drouin, all Church Registers, Moncton Acadian Centre's microfilmed records of the churches of New Brunswick, census records and the like. However, it needs be said that the most accurate and complete information on Acadian Genealogy today is Stephen A. White's Dictionnaire published August of 1999. His first two volumes may be purchased (there is a link on My Favorite links at the sidebar) and more are forthcoming covering the Deportation years and beyond. All of his information is exceptionally well documented leaving researchers no doubt as to where the information comes from. This also allows researchers to review those same documents if so desired. Bona Arsenault did a monumental work some years ago but the genealogy information he provided Acadian descendants has been found to have a great many errors. He often wrote a probably or a perhaps and the like, indicating that he was getting this information third hand and had not himself reviewed documents pertaining to such data. Janet Jehn has made many corrections to Bona's work so that if you are using his work you should have hers to double check. However, I believe that having Stephen White's books in hand negates the need for books from two different authors. Janet Jehn is also quoted in Stephen's work. (Stephen's web site may be accessed from my Links page.)

The first web site to exist on the Internet for Acadian genealogy, history, anecdotes and links, was Yvon Cyr's Acadian Genealogy Homepage web site. Yvon also facilitates this Rootsweb ACADIAN-CAJUN Mailing List. I believe the membership on this Mailing List now exceeds 650 subscribers. For some Acadian genealogy in France, you should go to François Roux' wonderful web site. François lives in France and readily shares his research with everybody. For Acadian/Cajun genealogy and history, you might want to visit Tim Hebert's web site. Stanley LeBlanc's site shares many good links for Cajun/Louisiana information.

If you are descendant of Catherine de Baillon married to Jacques Miville dit Deschênes, you will want to visit John DuLong's and his team's web site. They have done an immense work researching Catherine's lineage to Charlemagne. It is all explained on the web site and the direct lineage is posted. This site may be accessed from my Links Page. The team that worked on this project was, in addition to John who lives in Michigan, René Jetté (whose lineage to Charlemagne in his Dictionnaire was incorrect but based on the best information available to him at the time), Gail Moreau, a retired teacher and certified French translator and researcher from Michigan, Roland-Yves Gagné, a lawyer in Montréal and Joseph Dubé, a Jesuit priest in California.

PRDH is an excellent source for French Canadian research. They have put a freeze on Acadian research realizing that the information they have does not meet their usual standard. They are waiting for the forthcoming volumes of Stephen Whites additional volumes so they can update and make once again available, Acadian information.

As for genealogy research on the Internet: You must pick and choose where and what information you want to access. Though they are wonderful sites, and often a starting place, sites like Family Tree Maker, Ancestry-com and LDS are only as accurate as are their sources. Here is what I mean... did you know that information you find on those web sites have been contributed to them by people like us? Yes, people like you and me. I know that I source my information well but how would I know if the information on those sites has been well sourced or not by others? The fact is that you have absolutely no way of knowing. A credit to Ancestry.com though is that they do provide the name and email address of the submitter.

Please note that *you cannot become a good research by never opening a book*, *by never searching through vitals*, *by never sending for a birth/baptismal, marriage or death certificate*, *by never looking at census records*, etc. Granted, certificates are not needed for every person but you should have some of these to include in your genealogy information that will be handed down to the next generation. One Christmas, I prepared a 300-400 page genealogy book for my children, nieces and nephews. Included were copies of the birth/baptismal, marriage records, enlistment and discharge papers and the like including photos of my mother and father (their grandparents) when they were 19 years old. What a treasure trove they received and they knew it.

I've never visited so many cemeteries as I have since I do genealogy! I have amassed an enormous amount of photos of gravestones and the reason is simple: they list the names of the people buried there as well as dates of birth and death. I have found information about my great grandparents that I would not have found otherwise. I had no idea that my grandfather's parents were not buried together. Turns out that because they were poor, my great grandfather is buried in a pauper's plot with about a dozen other people that one of the undertaker's owned and would bury those who couldn't afford a burial in this plot. My great grandmother who lived a good many more years after her husband is buried in another son's plot with his whole family. I found names I didn't know existed and the dates to go with them. I used to drive by cemeteries thinking how very many people were buried there - now I drive by and wonder if I know anybody there!

Another point to remember is that "Aunt Emma's" information isn't necessarily the most accurate! As proof of this, I recall an incident that happened some months ago at the American Canadian Genealogical Society of which I am a member. A lady came in with a long list of names and dates that an aunt, who was always painstakingly "correct" (according to this lady) had handed down to her. She didn't want to verify this list as she was so sure of it but wanted to go on from there. After a long discussion, I convinced her that it might be wise to verify both the names and dates of that lineage. As soon as I looked at her list I knew she was in trouble. I recognized the very familiar Haché-Gallant line.

Thinking I would be verifying and helping her research ancestors in Québec I was surprised but pleased to see the very familiar Acadian name of Gallant ancestors. I immediately pulled out a book on the Haché-Gallant families and bingo, there was her whole family. Her aunt had many incorrect names as well as dates and she had the wrong people married to one another. A little more conversation revealed that her aunt had written all of these from memory and from hearing the names mentioned when she was a little girl. Had this lady simply followed the information on her list, she would have been the so called 6th great granddaugther of who was in reality her great uncle!

This woman learned a lot that day but had I not persisted in the conversation about checking everything and "sourcing", she would be no further than she was when she arrived by the end of that day. Even with the Haché-Gallant book in front of her she was determined her aunt was correct and the book wasn't - finally, as we checked the names one by one she realized that the book was correct and the aunt wasn't quite so.

I think this is another example of why sourcing is so very very important as well as checking and verifying all information that we get. Since this topic has come up so often on the List, I now have a page on my web site dedicated to this subject listing some of the most reliable sources available today.