How an Acadian helped

If any of you are familiar with Moncton New Brunswick then you probably heard about the German families who first arrived from Philadelphia to settle in Moncton. These were the Lutz, Somers ,Ricker ,Jones ,Steeves ,Copple ,Wortman and the Trites. Now the Jones and Trites stayed on Moncton land and the rest moved to the Hillsborough area. I was reading the book “The first hundred year “about how Moncton got its start and mainly about the family of Jacob Trites who was a Dutchman from Amsterdam and he came to Moncton by way of Philadelphia. It is an interesting book. A family coming to a strange land ,not knowing what to expect when they arrived. I kept reading the book and got to a chapter on an Acadian, well that really interested me because I have Acadian blood ,plus French Canadian ,plus English and even Native American way way back. Anyway I wanted to share that chapter with you. Remember the Trites were coming to an unknown area, so there were lots of things they had to learn. Here is part of the chapter:

An occasional visitor to the Moncton township settlers was an Acadian named Belliveau (am wondering if it would have been Pierre Belliveau) who with his large family was successfully engaged in working a large tract of upland on the Moncton side of the river almost opposite the Hillsborough township. It was from Belliveau who had first visited the Trites family in early spring of 1767 that the new settlers had learned to tap the maple trees, and from their sap to create a delicious sweet syrup and to make from the same type sap a form of sugar which served as a delicious sweetener. Belliveau had told the Trites family how after the British captured For Cumberland in 1755 ,he had his family had fled overland to New England to avoid the British raiding parties which operated from the fort ,had sacked and burned the farms of the Acadian settlers along the Memramcook River. These parties had also carried out raids against the Acadians at Shepody seizing all their property and carrying their livestock back to the fort. On learning that the Moncton settlers were not British and that German was their native tongue, Belliveau had no fear of them and offered them the benefit of his experience in using the natural resources of the land. He showed them how to snare rabbits, how to identify edible and nourishing samphire and goose tongue greens which grew on the marshes in the early summer.

He showed them how to make snowshoes so they could travel in winter and provided them with their first seed potatoes. From the potatoes came the delicacy poutine rapee. These are very popular to this day, (I love them). If we could go back just to observe I am certain that this Acadian Belliveau taught these families many things and I am sure a friendship must have grown between this Acadian family and the German families who settled nearby. I hope you have enjoyed this blog, and if you are interested in genealogy , and would like to see my genealogy products go to my store at http://www.zazzle.com/allicor*  click on my genealogy folder and enjoy.

Have a great day, thank you for the visit do stop by again.

Fort Beausejour Poster by allicor
Large format printing from zazzle