Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Acadian Families

I was reading about the Acadians by Bona Arsenault today and wanted to share some of it with you. I am translating it so I hope it will be satisfactory and interesting.
The first census of the colony, the one in 1671, was taken by Father Laurent Molin before the arrival in the spring of the first contingent of french settlers arriving from France to Acadie after the english occupation. Therefore there were 59 heads of families consisting of 320 people in Port Royal.
Elsewhere around the Canso Strait lived families of which the majorities were metis issued from the Biencourt and Latour companies who had arrived in Acadie in 1610. More census would be kept for Acadie and thus we could keep count in the population increase. The 1686 census gives us 885 persons, 1693 gives us 1068 persons, 1707 gives us 1484 and the census of 1714 gives us 2500 habitants.
In all evidence, there were no families in the contingent of the 300 men who accompanied Rozilly from France to Acadie in 1632, nor none in the group that left Dieppe in March 1633 where the Gazette de Renaudot announces the departing for Acadie.It is only in 1636 that the present of french families is mentioned in Acadie.
We know that Charles de Menou sieur of d'Aulnay got his noble name from the village of Aulnay in Loudunais province of Vienne, where he and his mother possessed many domains including the villages of Angliers,Aulnay, Martaize and possibly La Chaussee.
Thanks to the great research undertook in France by Genevieve Massignon , she found out that many french families who came to Acadie in 1636 to 1650 were originally from the villages mentioned above. She wrote that she found many same surnames as the Acadians who had left there in 1636. Which leads others to believe that Charles de Menou had at that time installed twenty french families from his area in Port Royal.After examining the parish registers of La Chaussee ,Genevieve wrote that more than half the acts form 1626 to 1650 concerned surnames that we find among the 53 Acadians in the 1671 census of Acadie. Babin, Belliveau,Bertrand,Bour,Brault,Brun,Dugast,Dupuy,Gaudet,Giroire,Joffriau,Landry,LeBlanc,Morin,Poirier,
Rimbault,SAvoie,Thibodeau,Chevrat,Gautier,Guion,Lambert and Mercier,Terriot. The seigneurie of Aulnay also included the commune of Martaize in Vienne, if we judge by the surnames of the women who married before going to Acadie, the ancestors of Aucoin,Boudrot,Doucet, and Lejeune would also come from this region.
This is just part of what I read, I do hope you have enjoyed it or learned from it.
Today I went to the genealogy center ,"centre d'etude acadienne". That genealogy center has so much stuff, I have been going there since 1976 and each time I go, there is tons of stuff I have never read or never knew it was even there. That is my second home, there I can go and relax, and dig to my hearts content, as I am researching or helping others, I keep looking for some new information on my own ancestors too.
Everyone should know who they are and where they come from, that is what we call history or rather what we should call Our family history.
Thanks for stopping by, and do come again.
Have a great day
Aline

4 comments:

Catherine said...

J'imagine que les archives de nos départements qui commencent à être disponibles depuis peu sur Internet seront trés utiles aux recherches.
J'ai fait des recherches généalogiques pour ma famille. Les archives départementales donnent accès aux registres paroissiaux pour ce qui concerne l'avant révolution. Encore faut il arriver à déchiffrer les écritures !

alineskee said...

Catherine, est-ce que tu demeure en France? J'ai fait un peu de recherche dans le departements de Nantes en France, pas de resultat encore, mais peut etre une bonne foi je serait chanceuse. Je cherche un marriage de Rene Bergeron et Anne Dagault vers 1662.
Aline

Evelyn Yvonne Theriault said...

Aline,
Glad to see you joined Genea-bloggers.
Welcome!

alineskee said...

Thank you Evelyn