l’acadie! presentation

L’Acadie! Presentation. Speaking Notes

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Steve Abrams. Opening and introduction.

Thank you. Good evening everyone. Churchill once said that “History is written by the victors.” Well — I guess that is one of the reasons why we are here this evening to talk about the history of Acadia. The Acadians were not victors and so their history is not well known.

So tonight, I will take about 45 minutes to overview the story of Acadia. We’ll discuss the origins of the Acadians, how their colony developed, their migration in North America and the interesting history that was documented by our town historian, Henry Nourse about the connections that existed between colonial Harvard and Acadia. If you can hold your questions until the end, I would appreciate it.

I would like to welcome my friends and Harvard neighbors this evening. I appreciate your interest in the story of Acadia. I hope very much that you will enjoy this program. I’ll try to keep it interesting!

L’histoire de l’Acadie! — Said in any language, the history of Acadia is an im-portant part of North American history. History that took place in the 17th and 18th centuries when France and England were pushing to establish themselves in the New World.

There was a time when the story of Acadia was not well known. I will ex-plain why as we walk through its history. It is an important story because it turns out that the Acadians were experimenting with democracy and capital-ism even before the American revolution. Also, the history of Acadia in-cludes an important story of ethnic cleansing in North America. For those reasons only, we should be familiar with our Acadian history.

Acadia was the first colony to be settled by France in North America and was the second colony in North America. The first was St Augustine in Florida which was settled by the Spanish in 1565. Acadia was settled in 1604. But unfortunately, France ceded its interest in Acadia to England more than a century later in 1713. England renamed the colony Nova Scotia. I’ll explain the name in a minute.

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LONGFELLOW AND ACADIA…

In 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a 16,000-word epic poem titled, ‘Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie’. At that time, Longfellow was professor of classical literature at Harvard and so, he went big. He wanted to get peo-ple’s attention, so he wrote an epic poem, written in unrhymed, dactylic hexameter an especially beautiful poem. Some of you became familiar with the poem in your English Literature studies.

The tale is a fictional account of a love story that takes place during the infamous expulsion in 1755 of the Acadians from their homeland. The Acadians called the event ‘le Grand Dérangement’... the big disturbance. The epic poem tells the story of a young Acadian woman named Evangeline Bellefontaine who became sep-arated from her fiancée Gabriel Lajeunesse during the expulsion. Evangeline devotes the rest of her life searching for her Gabriel wandering from Nova Scotia to Québec and Louisiana.

The poem was the most popular literary piece of the mid-1800’s in North America and in Europe and as a result, many portraits of Evangeline promi-nently hung in the 19th and 20th century parlors of America and Canada. The poem had a powerful effect in raising an awareness of Acadian history and defining Acadian identity. Many songs and books were written about Évangéline, the fictional folk heroine. They are still writing songs about her today. We could devote another program on all the music, poems and litera-ture that was inspired by Longfellow’s ‘Évangéline’.

But before we go on, I’d like to take us back to the 1850’s — to Longfel-low’s world at that time. I will try to do that by reading the opening lines, the first 200 words of the 16,000 words of ‘Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie’. I think it will help us understand the people of that time who so reacted to this poem.

Let’s listen to Longfellow... (Pause)

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Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harper’s hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it

Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the hunts-man?

Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, —

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,

Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflect an image of heaven?

Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!

Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October

Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.

Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,

List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;

List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.”

Well, it took many years for the history of the expulsion to be written and published. We know today that the details were kept from historians by the provincial government of Nova Scotia for decades.

By 1900, only one American writer and historian, Francis Parkman, had writ-ten the history of the Acadians or as he called them, French Neutrals. Unfor-tunately, Parkman’s histories (at least three of his otherwise beautifully writ-ten histories) favored the English. For years, Parkman challenged Longfel-low’s presentation of the expulsion in his poem. But as it turns out,

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Parkman, a Boston Brahmin, was a loyalist for the English. But thanks to other American and Canadian writers and researchers like Edouard Richard and Professor Faragher, today we know the complete history of the Acadians and their expulsion from their land.

Our very own town historian, Henry Nourse accurately covered parts of this history in his ‘Military Annals of Lancaster’ in 1889 and his ‘History of Harvard’ in 1894. But Longfellow was the first to bring this story to the at-tention of America with his epic poem, one hundred years after the expul-sion.

SETTLING THE FIRST COLONY IN NEW FRANCE.

So, where was Acadia?

France referred to their set of colonies in North America as ‘New France’, of which the first colony was Acadia. As highlighted in this slide, the geography of Acadia included all of the present-day Canadian Maritimes: the Gaspé peninsula, New Brunswick, Île St Jean or Prince Ed-ward Island, Île Royale or Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and the eastern third of present-day Maine. Mount Desert Island with Bar Harbor and Acadia Na-tional Park and that quaint down-east village of Castine and Fort Pen-tagoët, one of the Acadian forts, formed the extreme southwestern corner of Acadia.

Today, many visitors of Acadia National Park climb the 1500-foot summit of Mount Cadillac before dawn to witness the first sunrise in the United States for that day. From that summit on a clear day, you may see Passamaquoddy

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Bay and the St Croix River. The Acadians first landed on St Croix Island on Thursday, June 26, 1604. The leadership team of the expedition included Pierre du Gua, Samuel de Champlain, Jean de Biencourt, and Marc Lescarbot.

On board with them were some 75 male settlers, a mix of hunters, trappers, fishermen and wood workers.

Their plan was to stay on St Croix Island as an in-terim base until they found a suitable perma-nent settlement. They quickly constructed their shelters and cleared some land for a few late crops.

As a side note, the settlers largely came from the La Rochelle area of west-ern France (as shown in Slide 10) as did many of the settlers that arrived later. It is noteworthy that the other colony, Québec was later settled largely by people from the Normandy area of northern France. The two regions are distinctly different in genetics and culture which explains some of the differ-ences in the two colonies. Still today, the culture, habits and temperament of the French Canadians are often different than those of the Acadians.

But getting back to our history, the winter of 1604-1605 was an extremely rough winter on St Croix Island and the settlers’ choice of location for their landing was not good. It was a very small island (400’ by 1000’) surrounded by mostly salt water. Fresh water was very difficult to find, and the winter weather was extreme. As a result, the expedition lost 35 of its settlers. The remaining 40 settlers were saved largely due to the good deeds of the local Mi’kmaq’s. This event started a long friendship between the Acadians and the Mi’kmaq’s.

The following spring, they found a better location on the south side of the Bay of Fundy on the Annapolis Basin. (As shown on Slide 12). The new loca-tion was sheltered and easy to protect.

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The Port Royal Habitation was built in the next years. Shown here is a repro-duction of the habitation by Parc Canada.

The colonials soon learned about the area’s high 60-foot tides and expansive marshes all along the Bay of Fundy. These marshes were very similar to those of western France where dykes were used to turn hundreds of thousands of acres of marshes into rich farmlands.

THE GOLDEN YEARS.

The leadership of the colony changed several times during this period until 1630 when Charles de Menou, Lord d’Aulnay of Charnisay, France was named Governor. D’Aulnay owned a large ‘seigneurie’ or fiefdom in Charni-say from which he recruited some 100 men for an expedition to Acadia in 1632. The expedition included the progenitors (the ancestral fathers) of many future Acadian families including my family. The progenitor for my family, Jehan Terriot, a peasant farmer, was known for his skills in building the ‘aboiteaux’. I will talk about the dyke aboiteux later.

Many of the peasants were known for their skills in farming, milling, dyke building, wood working, orchards, animal husbandry and others. Over time, the 100 men were encouraged by D’Aulnay to go home to France, get mar-ried if they were not already and return with their wives as did Jehan Terriot around 1635.

D’Aulnay was a ‘laissez-faire’ governor. He and later governors adopted poli-cies that allowed the settlers to own their farmlands and properties, to trade with the local natives and later, with other colonies like Quebec and Massa-chusetts and to re-invest their profits into their properties. As the colony population grew, the settlers spread out to settle new villages like Grand-Pré on the Minas Basin and other areas of Acadia.

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At some point, the colony established a system of representation to make collective decisions that affected the entire colony. Each village, parish or neighborhood chose a representative or ‘délégué’ (delegate) who would meet with the Governor periodically to administer the colony.

Clive Doucet, a Canadian writer, and politician wrote in his book titled “Notes from Exile, On Being Acadian”:

“The independent, democratic ethic of the Acadians presaged the modern era, which arrived powerfully a generation later with the American and French revolutions.”

So, this egalitarian culture of the Acadians was foreign to the English and the French but also foreign to their cousins to the north in their sister colony of Québec which continued the feudal customs of France.”

Let’s talk about the marshes in Acadia and their dykes. Why the dykes? Why weren’t the Acadians clearing land by cutting trees and popping stumps like everyone else was doing at that time?

Well— the area of France where the Acadians came from had large marshes up and down the western coast. Marshes were so common that centuries ago, some monks from the Netherlands moved into the area around La Ro-chelle close by and started building dykes as they had in the Netherlands centuries earlier. The culture spread to the local people, and it became a common farming practice.

So, when the Acadians settled in Acadia, they felt right at home with the huge marshes of the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin and many other ar-eas. It was their first priority for developing farmland: first, develop the marshes then later clear the remaining land by cutting and removing trees.

The ‘aboiteaux’ is an important part of the system of dykes. The word refers to the collection of wooden sluices that served as water channels and hinged doors that were part of the Acadian dykes that allowed the marshes to drain at low tide but kept the seawater out at high tide.1 According to the history

1 Researchers later found some inaccuracies in Longfellow’s beautiful poem which was published before

many historians were able to fully research the details of Acadian history. In ‘Part The First’ of his poem,

Longfellow writes:

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of my family, Jehan was a builder of the aboiteaux for the dikes. As a matter of colonial policy, the dykes were jointly owned as common property by the settlers who were each required to work on the dykes a certain amount of time every year. Here, we see the Acadians working on one of the aboiteaux of a dyke.

Here is a sketch of a dyke with an aboiteau constructed as part of the dyke which allows the water to drain from the marsh.

And this is a photo of part of the aboiteaux of an actual dyke in Nova Scotia recently, large square wooden ducts allow water to drain out of the marshes.

Let’s take a break for a moment to familiarize ourselves with Acadia and the surrounding areas in the late 1600’s before 1713. On this map, I have identi-fied the key Acadian settlements which included Port Royale, Grand Pré and Beaubassin. There were other smaller villages, but these were the key loca-tions.

While we’re looking at the geography of Nova Scotia, let me insert another side note here to give you a few travel tips on Nova Scotia. I have marked with a little red heart, the destinations that my wife Rosemary and I love. Nova Scotia loves its visitors, and all are very welcoming. Halifax is a terrific destination, with much to see and visit and the Atlantic shores are beautiful especially those of Cape Breton which are lush. Digby on the bayside has the best scallops in the world. Further west from Digby is St Mary’s Bay, an Acadian enclave with wonderful Acadian cuisines and Acadian music. We’ll talk more about the Acadian enclaves later. In normal times, ferries run from Portland, Bar Harbor, St John, NB to Nova Scotia. The ferry from Bar Har-bor is a super-fast catamaran ship and all ferries take autos as well. Or, you can drive all the way to the Isthmus and cross into Nova Scotia there.

Longfellow in his poem, Evangeline says:

“…Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant,

Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates

Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o’er the meadows….”

To the contrary, the ‘aboiteaux’ in the dykes opened at low tides to allow the marshes to drain and closed at

high tides to present the seawater from flooding the marshes.

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Getting back to our history— The first census of Acadia which was taken in 1671 shows us that there were roughly 40 family names in Port Royal. One of those families was the Forêt family (highlighted in BOLD in this slide). You will see that name again later in the presentation.

MOVING TO THE ENGLISH ERA.

In the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, King Louis XIV consolidated his gains and losses in the New World and ceded the Acadian peninsula to England along with Newfoundland and Labrador. This left France with Québec and the rest

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of the Acadian colony which included the Gaspé peninsula, present-day New Brunswick, Île St Jean / Prince Edward Island, Île Royale/ Cape Breton and the eastern third of present-day Maine. England’s plan was to use the former Acadian peninsula as the new home of the settlers coming from Scotland and so, they named the peninsula “Nova Scotia”, or New Scotland. (shown in Slide 22)

As the Acadians started into their second century in the New World, their population was approaching 15,000 people. They had settled a dozen vil-lages as shown on this slide.

They had cleared some 250,000 acres of land which included 100,000 acres of cultivated land. They owned their homes, barns and livestock including about 130,000 head of cattle. They had a well-established fishing industry that they had been fishing off the Grand Banks since before the settling of Acadia. They were trading with their Indian friends of course, the Mi’kmaqs and their sister colony, Québec along with some of the English colonies in-cluding Massachusetts and the West Indies.

For a more comprehensive coverage of this important period of Acadian his-tory, I would recommend Professor John Mack Faragher’s book; titled “A Great and Noble Scheme” that he published in 2005. Professor Faragher teaches at Yale.

At this point, the Acadians felt that their best years were coming to an end. While they continued to try to get along with the English, the disagreements were complicated and difficult. Their relationship with the Mi’kmaq Indians was a liability because the English could not get along with the native Ameri-cans and the Mi’kmaqs did not trust the English. As with their faith, turning against their Mi’kmaq friends was out of the question.

Many families started feeling a need to perhaps move to other places if not outside of Nova Scotia, perhaps somewhere in Nova Scotia close to the bor-ders where escape would be possible. A new village named Beaubassin was settled close to the Isthmus at the border with present-day New Brunswick where the French had built Fort Beausejour.

Joseph Terriot, the 5th generation grandson of Jehan, chose to make his home in Beaubassin with his new bride in 1746. Other families did the same in Port Royal and Grand Pré. Beaubassin became a very large settlement during this time.

Longfellow summed it up well in Evangeline:

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“… Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts,

Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow.”

The Acadians continued to persevere.

”LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT”…THE EXPULSION.

On April 14, 1755, the Governors of the English colonies convened at the Council of Alexandria (Virginia) and decided to attack the French in four lo-cations. One of those locations was Fort Beausejour in Acadia (present-day New Brunswick) just inside the border. At the time, the two countries were at peace.

As part of the French and Indian War, two thousand provincial soldiers were mustered at Boston; they were formed up in two battalions; one under Colo-nel John Winslow and the other, under Colonel George Scott. The battalions were then sent off to report to Colonel Monckton in Nova Scotia after which the battle with the French at Fort Beausejour was begun. In June, the French quickly surrendered. Monckton renamed the fort, Fort Cumberland.

On his own authority, Governor Charles Lawrence of Nova Sco-tia, operating out of Halifax, de-cided to instruct Monckton to break off a few of his troops and send them under Colonel Winslow to Grand Pré. He or-dered transport ships up from Boston. The Acadians were to be gathered at several points throughout the colony, loaded onto ships and sent away to be dispersed among the English colonies, south, along the Atlan-tic seaboard. Once the commanders implemented the expulsion, then, the Acadian homes and all their possessions, were to be torched.

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And so, it was that on Sunday, August 10, 1755, the then Governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, along with Governor Shirley, the Colonial Governor of Massachusetts ordered Colonel Handfield to Annapolis Royal, Colonel Winslow to Grand Pré, Murray to Piziquid and Monckton to the three settle-ments of Isthmus, Tatamagouche and Cobequid to meet with the Acadians. At that time, public meetings took place in the village churches. After the Acadian males (fathers and sons) reported to their churches, the doors were locked, and the men and boys were placed under arrest. They were then read their orders which was that all Acadians would be arrested and placed on ships that were waiting elsewhere and then shipped to destinations all along the eastern seaboard.

Later, the Acadian females were gathered, arrested and shipped as well. Then, the homes and barns were burned and destroyed, and their livestock was left abandoned. This process of searching for and expelling Acadians continued for nine years until 1764.

From his “Military Annals of Lancaster”, the section titled “Lancaster in Aca-dia and the Acadians in Lancaster”, Henry Nourse records this part of history as follows:

“It is one hundred and thirty years

Since the burning of Grand-Pré,

When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,

Bearing a nation, with all its household goods, into exile;

Exile without an end, and without an example in story.”

Nourse does not mince words. He continues:

“Of the numerous Lancaster readers of ‘Evangeline’ few now suspect how nearly — the sad tale of ravaged Acadia touched our town history. Upon the crown officials then in authority over the Province of Nova Scotia, historian and poet have indelibly branded the stigma of a merciless edict of expulsion, which devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven thou-sand simple peasants from a scene of rural felicity rarely surpassed, to scat-ter them in the misery of abject poverty among strangers who speak a strange tongue and hate their religion.”

So, Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow’s mission was to remove the French and the Acadians from Fort Beausejour in present-day New Brunswick near

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the isthmus between Acadia and Nova Scotia. (shown in highlighted area) Their vessel was a sloop called “Victory” which transported several compa-nies of soldiers including the one that was made up mostly of Lancaster and Harvard men and was part of Lieutenant-Colonel Scott’s battalion.

One of its officers was Captain Abi’jah Willard who was the brother of Colo-nel Samuel Willard, both natives of Still River. His younger brother, Joshua Willard and Moses Haskell were his lieutenants, and Caleb Willard his ensign. The Harvard men in his company shown in this slide included Benjamin Atherton, aged 20, laborer. Daniel Harper, aged 21, laborer. Jonathan Creasy, 25. Elias Haskell,19, cooper. Isaac Day, 24, cooper. Joseph Metcalf, 21 and John Farnsworth, 30, laborers. Silas Willard, 19, laborer.

Nourse tells us that Captain Willard kept a journal that began on the day that his company marched from Lancaster on April 9, 1755. We know from the Captain’s journal that his company participated in the capture of Fort Beauséjour also shown in highlighted area.

Some of his comments make clear that there was a “…hearty dislike between the Massachu-setts soldiers and the [English] Regulars.” Cap-tain Willard makes it clear that by far the larg-est share of hard and disagreeable work was allotted to the Massachu-setts men.

Nourse says …"Colonel Monckton, who com-manded the entire expe-dition for England, appears in Captain Willard's pages as a cold-blooded mili-tary leader, caring little for the comfort of his soldiers.” Nourse continues “For example, with plenty of cattle roaming wild on the meadows about them, the soldiers were forbidden fresh meat. Several were arrested for go-ing out to gather some green peas, a great abundance of which were grow-ing on the marsh.”


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On August 5, Captain Willard was placed in charge of some 250 men and was given sealed orders to proceed to Minas Bay. Reading from Nourse:

“Captain Willard's march along the shore of Minas Basin (See Slide 28) came near ending in a tragedy, which would have carried mourning into many a home in Lancaster and Harvard. They had been traversing the beach, the banks of which were precipitous and nearly one hundred feet in height, when the increased roaring of the tide attracted their attention and an Aca-dian warned them that their lives depended upon their swift retreat.”

Captain Willard notes in his journal:

“I ordered the party to return back as fast as they could; We were obliged to travel 2 miles before we could escape the tide and before we got to the up-land where we could get up the Banks which we were obliged to wade up to our waists and just escaped being washed away. …At this place the tides rose 80 foot.”

“When the expedition reached Tatamagouche, Captain Willard, accord-ing to instructions, opened his secret or-ders, he said — " sur-prising to me for my or-ders were to burn all the houses that I found ...

Captain Willard contin-ues: “And thus, the pil-lage and destruction, the wailing of women widowed, and children made fatherless went on from hamlet to hamlet, and when the torch had desolated the district assigned to him, Captain Willard marched back to Fort Cumberland and reported to Colo-nel Monckton.”

In April 1756, his company was allowed to return to their homes.

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THE ACADIAN DIASPORA…

So now, the task was to distribute the Acadians among the colonies down the eastern seaboard. This was the beginning of the Acadian DIASPORA. While Nourse’s best information in 1890 was that 1000 Acadians were received by Massachusetts, today we know that number was 2000. (See Slide 27) Con-necticut received 700, New York; 250, Pennsylva-nia; 500, Maryland received another 1000, Virginia; 1100, North Carolina; 500, South Carolina; 500, and Georgia; 400.

As shown at the top of the map, in addition to those Acadians who were ar-rested and evicted, about five thousand others fled Nova Scotia to Québec, the St John Valley in the Madawaska territory and other parts of New France like Ile Royale (Cape Breton) and Ile St Jean (Prince Edward Island).

Several ships were in-volved in storms and were forced to land in Santo Domingo and other points in the West Indies. Many of those Acadians much later went to Louisiana as ar-ranged by Spain. To-day, we know them as Cajuns, a contraction of Acadian.

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So, to summarize, all Acadian families were affected by this expulsion. Each branch of all Acadian families has its unique migration history.

For my branch of the Terriot family, as shown in this slide, it was Joseph, son of Claude, in the 5th generation of my lin-eage who was affected by the expulsion.

After hiding, staying with the Mi’kmaq’s and otherwise evading the English, my fifth-generation grandfather, Joseph fled Beaubassin for the colony of Québec with his wife and seven children in mid-January of 1759. Eleven months later, they arrived in the village of St Roch-des-Aulnies 60 miles east of Quebec City on the St Lawrence on the first of November. Joseph was one of about 1500 Acadians who fled to Québec. In my book “Destination: Madawaska”, I present Joseph’s story along with a history of the Acadians.

As another example of an Acadian family who avoided the forced expulsion by ship, is the Roy family. My good friend Scott Roy gave me permission to put up his Acadian lineage which shows that his 3rd generation ancestral grandfather Benoit Roy fled Nova Scotia for Bouctouche, NB just north of the Isthmus. That area was still under the control of the French. Later, his branch migrated to another French possession Cape Breton, then later around 1900, his branch migrated to Cambridge, MA.

Now, of the two thousand Acadians that were deported to the colony of Massachusetts, three families, which included twenty persons were assigned to Lancaster. These were: BENONI MELANSON, his wife Marie, and chil-dren Marie, Joseph, Simeon, Jean. Bezaleel, Carrè, and another unnamed daughter; the second family was GEOFFREY BENOIT, with Abigail his wife, and children Jean, Pierre, Joseph, and Marie; and the third family was THÉAL FORRET, his wife Abigail, and three daughters Marie, Abigail and

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Marguerite. The Forret family was later reassigned to Harvard. These exiles arrived in February 1756, and the accounts of the town's selectmen for their support were regularly rendered until February 1761.

According to Nourse, they were destitute, sickly, and apparently utterly unable to support themselves, and were moved now here, now there, among the farmers, at a fixed price of two shillings and eight pence each per week for their board. Sometimes a house was rented for them.

Paraphrasing Nourse: In the end, these unhappy people suddenly disap-peared from their habitation. Wracked with homesickness, some had stolen away and made a bold push for the sea. This was in the middle of winter, February 1757…

From that date, these refugees never re-appeared in the annals of Lancaster or Harvard.”

CONCLUSION. So, this story ends today, almost 300 years later, with the Acadians having settled in several enclaves in the Canadian Maritimes includ-ing the Caraquet and Bouctouche areas of New Brunswick on the Atlantic, the St Mary’s Bay of Nova Scotia, the St John River valley in northern Maine and northwestern New Brunswick that we refer to as the MADAWASKA TER-RITORY where I was born and raised, the province of Québec along the St Lawrence, and areas in the states of Maryland, the Carolinas and the state of Louisiana.

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ACADIANS ASSIGNED TO LANCASTER & HARVARD:

BENONI MELANSON. Wife, Marie. Children: Marie,Joseph, Simeon, Jean Bezaleel, Carré

GEOFFREY BENOIT. Wife, Abigail. Children: Jean,Pierre, Joseph, Marie.

THÉAL FORRET. Wife, Abigail. Children: Marie,Abigail, Marguerite. REASSIGNED TO HARVARD


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Today, Acadians have settled in all parts of the United States and Canada. I will wrap up my presentation by show-ing you once again, the list of Acadian families from the Aca-dian Census of 1671.

It is interesting to note that the family names listed in red are families that live in Harvard today. So, the Acadians have re-turned.

By the way, if your last name is shown on this list either red or black, you are probably of Acadian descent. Is there anyone with us this evening whose name is listed but not shown in red?

This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.

I am open for questions or comments.

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