The Great Acadian Escapes.

First of all the source for the photo of the Fort is the Department of National Defence.

The reason I chose it ,is to give you some kind of idea about our Acadian ancestors being held prisoners there.

As you know many of the Acadians were captured by the British and held as prisoners in their forts. Imagine what it would be like, separated from your love ones, not knowing what will become of you. All the men could think of ,was to escape from their captors. Some Acadians even escaped from ships, such as the case of when Winslow ordered some transport ships to carry some prisonners away, instead of transport ships he received supply ships. He decided to fill five ships with Acadians, he wanted to keep the families together as much as possible, anyway there were 24 men who escaped and a Francois Hebert was charged as the instigator and Winslow ordered him brought to shore and watch while they burned his house and barn. Out of the 24 men , 22 surrendered and two were killed.

Now back to the Acadians who escaped from the Forts. If you go to my acadian-roots website and click on my Cormier genealogy, I added about Pierre Cormier aka Pierrot son of Pierre and Cecile Thibodeau who escaped with his brother Jacques by disguising themselves as women.

The women were allowed to visit their sons or husbands and they would bring them in clothing and breads and sometimes tools or knives. So Pierre and Jacques just walked out of the Fort as women, once they were out, they watched as the Sentinel turned his back and they ran for the Dykes and they crossed the dykes by grasping one branch then another until they were across. Once they were across, they watched as the Sentinel turned away and ran into the woods.

You have to remember that the Acadians knew their way into the woods, they probably had shortcuts the English never knew about.

On October first 1755 Dr.John Thomas wrote in his diary: "Storms dark night eighty six French Prisoners dug under ye wall att Foart Lawrence and got clear underdiscovered by ye Centry.(Father D'Entrement article).

Well on October 1 1755, during a really bad thunderstorm Beausoleil and 86 Acadian Prisoners in Fort Lawrence escaped by digging a tunnel under the prison wall. Now the women had to be careful what they smuggled in, so spoons, knives, and small tools is probably what they brought. The men would take turns at night and dig a tunnel under the ground using whatever they had. They would pile the dirt under the beds. When the time came for their escape the men went out in order of their size, the smallest man to the biggest .Each would squeeze through the hole to make it bigger for the next man. The last one out is said to be Rene Richard (Petit Rene) son Rene Richard and Marguerite Theriot husband of Perpetue Bourgeois who would have been 29 years old. He was the biggest man of the prisoners. Joseph Broussard .some of his sons and nephews were also among the ones who escaped.

Another eighty Acadians escaped on Feb.26 1756 from Fort Beausejour. These prisoners were fed horse meat and at the request of Pierre Surette son of Pierre and Jeanne Pellerin, the men saved the rib bones which they hid from their captors. At night they would dig with these bones to make a tunnel to escape. Can you imagine all the work and time this took? Imagine with a bone digging a tunnel big enough to go through? So the day arrived for their escape, they did the same , by letting the smallest man out first and making the hole bigger for the next man. The last one out was Pierre Melanson ,he was the biggest, and he got stuck in the middle of the tunnel. Receiving help from the other prisoners he got out just in time to flee into the forests with the other prisoners. They knew which path to take as where the English didn't know their way into the woods. These men stayed nearby in the woods, ate whatever they could find but food was scarce it was in the winter and the cold and hunger made them head out towards Miramichi where the situation was no better and they surrendered in 1759.

We have to give our ancestors credit, they were survivors. I am sure there were many more such great escapes , and events that we will never know about them.

I hope you enjoyed reading todays blog and these are things to write down along with our ancestors and their history.

Changing the subject, I was telling you we were on our way to look at a tent? Well we bought it, it is a two room tent, so we will have room to put our cooler inside and maybe some chairs, at least we hope so. The tent is quite big. So we will be much more comfortable when we set up camp for two weeks for the CMA2009. If any of you readers want to meet me and my genealogy group, let me know, and I will fill you in on where and when. We think we will all meet August 15th on Acadian Day.

Also if you have any ancestors who link up to Barthelemy Bergeron and Genevieve Serreau dit St Aubin and want to attend our reunion in July in Fredericton let me know.

Thanks for the visit,

Have a great day

Aline

Acadians after the Deportation

The following is from the book the Acadians by Henri D Parette, I wanted to share it with you.
Acadians who came back to the Maritimes, came out of the woods or were released from prison camps faced a depressing and seemingly impossible situation. Their lands had been taken by the New England Planters, Loyalists or other Protestant settlers, their rights were of small concern to authorities and they had little material wealth.
Primarily farmers before the Expulsion, most Acadians had to become fishermen after in order to survive. And most were no longer their own masters but moved into a seemingly endless cycle of work and debt, as fisheries around the Gulf of St Lawrence ,from Cheticamp,to Gaspe were controlled through the 19th century by others particularly les Jersias, traders fromthe island of Jersey who had as British citizens, a monopoly on credit and the labour market. As early as 1763 Jacques Robin, a French Protestant from Jersey, convinced Acadians to go to the Miramichi area to work for him as fishermen in the Gulf of St Lawrence.
For most the sea became their life to earn a living and it gave Acadian villages a most characteristic layout, with a wharf in the middle where people would gather and where women would wait for their men to return, although many men never returned from the sea, making this a source of life and a source of tragedy.
Acadian regions took on a unique appearance, rows of small houses, usually white but sometimes painted in bright colors, long roads close to the water and a church
in the middle of the village.
Acadian women must have been as strong as the men. They gave birth to large families, and the Acadian population grew faster than the anglophone.
In the Memramcook Valley, a pleasant and fertile agricultural region,the Acadians tried to recreate the life they had known before the Expulsion. In 1765 a small group of refugees from Fort Beausejour came to that region, which had already been dyked by Acadians, and settled on the west side of the river. They were joined in 1770 by Acadians who had been prisoners for 12 years at Fort Edward in Windsor. Most of the latter settled on the west bank, son on the east Landry,Richard,Breau,LeBlanc,Comeau,Dupuis and Bourgeois.
In 1781 the first parish to be established after the Deportation was created at Memramcook.
And the story goes on, so if you have a chance to buy or borrow the book The Acadians I would recommend reading it.
Well we are on our way, to see about buying a two room tent, I sure hope it will be what we want. If any of you live in an area where you can buy and sell from Kijji Classifieds, well if you are looking for something, that is the place to go. There are good bargains to be had.
We want our tent so that we can be more comfortable when we go to the CMA2009 in Caraquet New Brunswick this summer. We have a one room tent, but it is awful small, so we want to get a more comfortable and roomy one. Last summer we went to Quebec with the tent we have now, it was ok, it served the purpose, but we are now getting greedy , we want something better. grin.
There are not too many days left for the CMA2009, and in July we go to another reunion in Fredericton, but there we will not be tenting, we have our motel room reserved, and it is only a two day event, the CMA2009 is a two week event, we want to be there for Aug.15 Acadian Day and to try and participate in as many reunions as we can and also we want to meet our Cajun Cousins.
I would like to mention that my friend Rick Arsenault has started a blog , so if you want to check his out, I am a follower of his.
Have a great day, Thanks for the lovely visit.
Aline

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

ACADIA or ARCADIA.
The name of the new land of Acadie comes from one of the first explorers of the Atlantic Coast,Giovanni de Verrazzano,a captain from Florence,who had been sent to the new world by Francois1,King of France in 1524. Although Giovannie de Verrazzano did not enter the Bay of Fundy,he gave the name Arcadia to a stretch of coastline with beautiful forests. Very quickly the word grew to indicate on maps first the southeastern shores of Nova Scotia (the only part he had seen) and finally the entire Nova Scotia peninsula. After 1548 the maps carried the name Acadia instead of Arcadia.
Why did the French originally come to Acadie? The most obvious reason was economic. In the 17th century ,people in predominantly Catholic countries such as France were forbidden to eat meat for more than 160 days a year,so demand for fish was high. The most obvious choice was cod .There were plenty found on the banks of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and in the gulf of St Lawrence. According to Champlain in 1618 it was possible to fish a million cod annually. The Parisians prefered salt cod,the Italians and Portuguese prefered dried cod. source: The Acadians by Henri-Dominique Paratte.
When the Acadians settled in Acadie, many of them relied on hunting for food.Wild game such as moose, deer, beavers,rabbits,bear,porcupine,raccoons, all kinds of birds,doves, ,pheasants,pigeons,ducks,partridge. Can you imagine how plentiful wild animals were? Although probably the native americans also hunted for their food, and possibly they must have given the Acadians some ideas of how to hunt and trap. The Native Americans had survived our cold winter seasons and they shared their knowledge of how to make winter clothing out of furs and hides with our ancestors. They must also have shown our ancestors what plants to eat, and what ones to use for medecin, how to make tools and maybe even show them how to trap.
Now when our ancestors relocated near the water, many turned to the sea for food, and again the oceans were abundant with fish, especially Cod, and they could eat all the delicacies ,lobster, scallops, clams, quahawgs,mussels, (gee I wish I could go back in time ,just long enough to eat all the good things.grin). So our ancestors did not want for food at the beginning, plus they had their chicken, hogs, cattle, their gardens, and their fruit trees and berries.
Can you imagine after the deportation, and when they were attacked and had to flee for their lives into the woods for long periods of time? Then the food was not as plentiful, the winter weather was ferocious, many starved to death and many froze to death. I sit back and think about this, and imagine how it must have been such a terrible time for them. We may wonder what happened to Joe Savoie, or Marie LeBlanc, or Isabelle Cormier ,and wonder why we cannot find any records of deaths, it could very well be possible that they died while fleeing their enemies and we will never ever know for sure except we know they deserve to rest in peace.
I do hope you have enjoyed today's blog and will return. I see I now have 13 followers, my first goal is to reach 25, can I do it?
Have a great day.
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Well I have received my first blog award from Evelyn Yvonne Theriault at http://acanadianfamily.com/ , I want to thank her for such a nice award. You can visit her blog at the above url. Now in return I was asked to nominate seven bloggers but since I am not too familiar on how to find other bloggers, I will nominate four for the Kreativ Blogger award. First I nominate Richard Bergeron for his great article on the Bergeron-Damboise family,it is really worth reading.His blog traces Barthelemy and his family from France to Quebec and Acadie. his blog is at http://bergeron-damboise.blogspot.com/ .

Second I nominate Velda Arsenault she has a nice blog on the Arsenault and Adair families. Her blog is at http://arsenaultadairfamily.blogspot.com/ .

Third I nominate Olive Tree Genealogy, this site is amazing, Lorine has worked so very hard on her blog and she also deserves this award, her blog is at

http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/

My last nomination goes to the Franco American Connection, I think they are doing a marvelous job. Their blog is at http://francoamericanconnection.blogspot.com/

To all winners please collect your Kreativ Blogger Award add it on your post and in return nominate seven other bloggers for this award.

On another note: I would like to mention that I have added some marriages from Shediac New Brunswick Canada on my website at http://www.acadian-roots.com/ , if you had ancestors living in the Shediac area in the early 1900s you can check to see if they are listed. I have not listed every single marriage but a big part of them. I also recently added some marriages of Saint Paul in Kent County. If even one of the couples I listed helps someone, then it was worth me adding them on my website.

Have a great day and thank you for the visit.

Aline

Legends and superstitions among our ancestors were common, and sometimes believing them was pretty scary. I have the book Contes Legendes by Georges Arsenault .Mister Arsenault interviewed many of the local people of PEI .They shared stories brought down from the grandparents, and they shared songs they used to sing. What a beautiful thing to share with all of us. The book I have is in French , I shall translate one of the stories for you. I believe the story was shared with Mister Arsenault by Ozelie Boisvert. So have a cup of coffee and listen to the story she shared:
The lady in white:
This was a story that scared us all through our lifetime.We lived on lot 7 and we were the only catholics in the area and it seemed we were not wanted there. I don't know if this was true but I had heard it said. My sister who is now deceased was babysitting my younger brother one day and there was a lady taking care of me because my Mom was sick and mother had decided to come get me that day. My other sister who is still living was also at the house.It was a small house,the door was hard to open.It was so hard to close that it wore the floor down.It was in the spring and my sister remembers that the door opened and closed three times. She never saw anything, but my sister who has died saw a lady dressed in white enter into the house. My late sister said" there was something telling me to go to the door and you won't be afraid.Then she met the lady who brushed her with her veil three times and she moaned three times and then she left and dissappeared.
Then my sister said to my other sister"Go see if there is anyone around the house" B.ecause it was spring and there was mud they saw footprints.Then she said "Watch our brother , I will go meet mother she might still be sick."
Mother saw her coming and noticed how pale she was and asked her what happened. Your father didn't drown did he? They were always afraid. The daughter said " No there was a lady in white who came into the house. Then the daughter fainted. Then mother went and saw the priest and found out that another young woman saw the same thing in that same house.
We never slept there that night,we left and never returned. And that was the scare of our lifetime. When we would talk about the lady in white, everyone would be afraid. We would go to bed at night and at that time it was dark, and sometimes we would think we saw the lady in white and come downstairs in fear. The children all died the following spring and mother said she believes that all the moaning from the lady in white was a prediction , but she was very superstitious and it took us a long time to get that fear out of our system.
Was it superstition or was it a prediction?
Did I ever tell you about my late husband Gerry? Well he had Alzheimers and I was taking care of him at home , I had his bed in our front room, so he could look out the window and watch the birds and he could also watch the television. His sickness progressed and he could no longer walk or get up by himself. One day I was in the kitchen preparing his meal, and I always peaked around the corner to see if he was ok. This paticular day, I believe it was the end of June or first part of July, I peaked around the corner, and I saw him, he had a glow on his face and the most beautiful smile I had ever seen and he was half sitting in his bed and he had one of his arms stretched way out as if he was reaching, his eyes were focussed straight ahead as if he was seeing someone. When he saw me looking, he gently laid back and that was the only time I ever saw this. He passed away July 27th, and I honestly believe he did see someone or something.
Do you have any such stories or legends or supersticions you want to share?You can click on the comment at the bottom and share them with us.
I notice I now have 13 followers, I am slowly getting up to my first quoto of 25 followers, thank you for encouraging me to keep my blogs going.
Thank you for the visit and do stop by again.
Have a great day
Aline

Snow snow go away ,and come back another day? Well yesterday we had that white stuff again. We stayed home, and were nice and comfy in a nice warm place. Around 1030 pm, the phone rings. "Hello, this is the superintendant, the snowplow is on his way, can you move your car?" Well, I was not really in a mood to go out in this weather, but we both donned our boots,coats, and gloves and out to the car we went. Well the car was covered with snow, so we first had to clean the car. And the street plow had gone by and made a big snow bank, right behind our car. Grrrrr. There is no way that my little saturn would go through that pile of snow. We had no shovel, so I went in back of the car and started kicking the snow with my feet. Didn't I hit a patch of ice beneath the snow, my feet went in the air and my backside to the ground. Oh winter is soooooooo much fun. My ego was hurt, there were people getting their cars cleaned out , to move them, around me. OH what will they think of me? How embarassing,Aline fell down . I thought , I won't let it get the best of me, so I proudly got up, took a few gulps and then I said, "It happens". But the car was still not out onto the road, so George was behind the wheel, and I said Ok, I will push the car. So to the front of the car I went. I can do it, I said to myself. Puff, Puff, Push, Push. Another patch of ice, oh no! Down I go again. 'This was getting to be a habit". Where are those little boys who used to come shovel us out for one dollar??? No one around. But someone must like me , because all of a sudden our neighbors came to the rescue, and they pushed my car through the snow bank and into the road. What a relief!. Well you must know where we went while we were waiting to have the yard cleared . Yes you are correct. Tim Hortons here we come.
Changing the subject, I had been looking for the death of my great grandmother for a long time and I could not find her, she is not listed in the parish records. Finally I got a break and found her listed under Rosie and not Rose ,in the provincial archives, and Mom told me that when she died my grandmother just had a baby and could not go to the funeral, but she got out of bed when she was not suppose to, and watched the hearse go past her house, she said I cannot go to the funeral but I will see Mom go by. I checked Mom's story, and she was absolutely correct, Rose died December 4, my aunt was born Dec 6 and Rose was buried Dec.7. I received the death records for Rose, she died at the age of 67 of pneumonia. They say 'things comes to those who wait" ,well that is correct, it took me close to thirty years to find the death of my great grandfather but I finally did.
I am working on my website, and helping organize our Bergeron-Damboise Reunion, and moving . We are moving two doors down from my Mom, that will be a good thing, if she needs us we will be close by. She is doing pretty good, she told me it doesnt hurt as much when she moves around.
Well I do hope you enjoyed my blog. Please stop by again.Thank you.
Have a great day.
Aline

In the old acadian houses there were chairs. They were wooden chairs made by our acadian ancestors.The following exherts and photo are from an article by Dr Ivan H Crowell in the Societe Historique acadienne book." One of the needs in the homes of our early settlers was chairs. The Acadians built chairs with the same simple tools that they used in building their houses. Where they got their designs is not known ,but it is suspected that they might have come from ecclesiastical sources in their homeland. These skilful pioneer recalling what they had seen, built chairs which over the years had developed certain variations, yet has remained a distinct style.Four variations of the Acadian style are recognized . In the first two, the parts are made by simple edged tools such as the axe, draw knife and spoke shave.It is very easy to see the marks of these simple tools on chairs in these groups.In the Acadian chair there are no nails, or screws or glue holding them together, they are held by pegs. The early Acadians used two to four kinds of wood in their chair, Birch,Maple,Pine and Ash were the most popular.The Acadian Chairs were painted red or green or not painted at all.

Now changing the subject a bit, I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but what did our ancestor do when they were sick? How did they treat their illnesses? Well I have added a page on my website at www.acadian-roots.com called Old Remedies , I hope you will check it out. I know there are many more old remedies and later on I may add more of them.

Today we went to my Mom's place, picked up a Tim Horton coffee and took it over, Mom enjoyed it. I had also made some Banana Bread and brought over a loaf. She was in good spirits today and feeling better. I felt better when I left knowing she was ok.

All is well at our genealogy group room, we are now trying to organize a meeting at the Congres Mondial in August, which would be very nice. I do hope you have made your accomodations if you plan on staying the night, because the accomodations are getting harder to find, I believe the closest places are now Miramichi and Bathurst. I am anxious to go and attend various reunions and also I want to attend the Louisiana reunion on the 21st of August in Tracadie-Sheila. I was told if we go we might be given some Mardi Gras beads.

I am looking for a two room tent for our stay there, we have a one room tent, but we find it is too small. So we have plenty of time to shop for a bigger one.

Thank you to the ones who have left comments on my blog, and to my followers, I do hope more of you who are reading my blogs will be a follower too, all you need to do is click on follow my blog, register and click the orange button I believe, it is all free.

Well thank you for the lovely visit, hello to cousin Eve .

Have a great day

Aline

ACADIAN HOMES . Have you ever wondered about the way our ancestors lived? The photo on the right is about 200 years old, I found it in the genealogy center along with an article on old Acadian houses by Father Anselme Chiasson. The article includes extracts from document of when they talked about the Acadian houses. So here are some of them.In Menneval Memoirs in 1688 he says, Port Royal is an area that has around 20 awful looking houses of mud and wood. There is only around six houses and the rest far from one another about 6 or 7 lieus all along the Port Royal River.In 1731 Robert Hale wrote the following: They have but one room in yr houses besides a Cockloft,Cellar, and sometimes a closet. Their bedrooms are made something after ye manner of a Sailor's Cabin, but boarded all round about the bigness of ye bed, except one little hole on the foreside, just big eno' to crawl into, before which is a curtain drawn and as a step to get into it, there stands a Chest. They have not above two or three chairs in a house and those wooden one, bottom and all. I saw but 2 Muggs among all ye French and ye lip of one of ym was broken down above 2 inches.When they treat you with strong drink the bring it in a large bason and give you a Porringer to dip it with. Desbarres's papers in 1795 describe the homes this way: The premises of every one seem to be a house from 18 to 25 ft long and as many in breadth without porch or partition but the outer door opening immediately into the sole room. There are generally two doors, the one being that which is used . The chimney of which the lower part is stone and clay wrought upon cross bars of wood beneath a wooden frame is in the remotest part from the door.The Beds are on both sides of the house from chimney to the doors. In the end of the house opposite to the chimney, the pots and water vessels lie on the floor, and the Milk and Milk vessels are disposed of on shelves, together with their bowls, muggs,etc. As they all sleep ,eat, cook,smoke,wash etc in this house or room, I need not say it must look black and dirty enough particularly as the houses are now old. Behind the Chimney on the out side is an oven of clay, the opening to which for bread and fire is on the In side back of th chimney. The oven rests on a square wall of Loggs or stone around an appartment three or four feet in the square, where a few pigs enter on the out side, and lie warm from the heat of the chimney and oven. In their barns they are more sumptuous. They are from fourty to fifty feet in lenght, from twenty to thirty in breadth and from ten to fifteen hight, the lower story destined for the cattle and the upper for the corn,hay,and threshing floor; At a distance they sett off the whole place. I had almost forgot to mention that their houses have a cellar under ground for the roots to which they descend from a trap door in the floor.

An old house in Memramcook in 1846. In June 1846 ninety one years after the Grand Derangement, in an old log house situated near the Cran a Ben on the east side of the Memramcook River around 3 miles from the church lived happily an acadian family Amand Landry and his wife Pelagie Caissie, four children, the youngest named Pierre age one month, also living with them was Allain Landry widow and Natalie Landry.

This log home was poorly built, not much lighting and not comfortable in the winter. In the center of the house was a huge Chimney made with stones poorly assembled. The house was divided into two parts by a wall of boards. During the winter they only used the southern part of the house that only had two windows one south and one west. Near the chimney was the door to the cellar where they would go by with a small ladder. This cellar was but a hole where the light did not shine in because there were windows, and the house would get cold because of the cold cellar.One side of the house was one big room that held the kitchen, dining room,bedroom. Around the room, there were three bedrooms which could be 7x10 feet each with no windows. The guest room was in the attic ,the floors were wooden and in this room there was a wooden bed. A cradle of rough wood, three or four chairs, three or four Chests and a table was all the room contained. A large square stove adorned the humble and frugal abode. They had five arpents of land, about 15 arpents of meadow, a barn ,four or five cows, hens, geese,turkeys, ducks and pigs. (written by an elderly man in Memramcook named Landry.

Now you have an idea what the houses were, and you must also notice that our Acadian ancestors were not rich, they survived the best way they knew how. They were a strong people , the more you read about them the more you will realize this, they had hard times, shed a lot of tears I am sure, and did not give up.

I hope you enjoyed this blog, I got this information in the SHA=Societe Historique Acadienne.

Have a great day, thank you for the visit. Just a note to say, Mom is doing pretty good, she still cannot walk but my family is all praying that she will do so soon.

Aline

Hello everyone, today I will not be doing my usual blogs, but I did not want you to think I have abandoned you. My mom had an accident, she tripped on her boot strap and fell on her floor, she was taken to the hospital by ambulance yesterday, they took xrays and her pelvis has two broken bones, one on each side. She is in quite a bit of pain. The doctor released her, Mom did not want to stay there anyway. So she is back at home.
Please check in once in a while to see if have added more blogs ok?
Have a great day
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The destruction of Sainte Anne Village today Fredericton New Brunswick in 1759 was a terrible thing for all the villagers . The following is part of a letter written from Fort Frederick,St John's Via Boston, from the SHRSJ booklet that I have.
April 2 1759.:
The fifth of March, Lieutenant Hazen of the Rangers came in from a scout of fifteen days with a party of sixteen Rangers, up the River St John's, he brought in with him six French scalps and six prisoners. Lieutenant Hazen reports that he had been up to St.Anne's which is 140 miles up this river from Fort Frederick, where it was expected he would have found a strong garrison of the enemy,but on his arrival he found the town evacuated which he set fire to, burnt a large Mass house with a bell of about 300 pounds, a large store house and many valuable buildings amounting in the whole to 147, to-gether with a large quantity of hay, wheat, oats etc. killing 21 horses about 56 heads of cattle, a large number of hogs etc, and that he took the prisoners and scalps with eleven of his party on his return near Grimross, and that the inhabitants of St.Anne's are chiefly gone to Canada, the remainder scattered in the woods. He was pursued by thirty or forty of the enemy but not overtaken and that he found a large new schooner up the river which was taken lately from Capt.Grow, he bought one horse with him to Fort Frederick where he arrived in good health without the loss of one man/
As to what Acadians were in Sainte Anne de Pays Bas in 1759, I do know that in 1739 the census taken by Jean Pierre Danielou (priest) mentions the families of Pierre Bellefeuille, Louis Bellefontaine, widow Angelique Bellefontaine, her son Bonaventure, her son in law Michel Saindon and family,Pierre Laforest, Rene Valcour,Charles Boisjoli,Jean Laforest, Francois Roy his family ,and son Francois and his fiance,Barthelemy Bergeron, St Aubin,Augustin St Aubin, Jean Dugas, Beausejour Joseph, Michel st Aubin, his mother and their children.So this was twenty years before the massacre, in twenty years more children would have been born or grandchildren etc.
The SHRSJ, (River St John Historical Society) is planning an event in Fredericton New Brunswick to commemorate the massacre by Hazen and this event will be held the same time as our Bergeron-Damboise reunion July 18/19 2009. The more descendants that attend this event held by the SHRSJ the better it will be. They are hoping to have the location of the old St Anne des Pays Bas church, rectory and cemetery declared a historical site. I do not know their schedule . I think they have something planned for our Bergeron-Damboise reunion, and we have a hall for the second day. If you have any Bergeron-Damboise somewhere among your ancestors and you would like to attend our reunion, the Bergeron Association is asking for a twenty dollar fee each adult to have with the cost of the reunion. You can join our Bergeron-Damboise group at bergeron-damboise@googlegroups.com
On another note I have added another obit on my seniors 101 and over page at http://www.acadian-roots.com/

Thanks for the visit and do come again.
Have a great day
Aline

Hello, no the above are not outhouses,grin they are shanties, and they are used in the winter time by fishermen. They are little huts, hauled out onto the ice. Inside them ,the fishermen drill holes in the ice for fishing. They can have little heaters inside to keep warm. I remember my late husband going ice fishing , it was really cold, and Gerry and his friend used a truck to drive onto the ice, I don't think I would want to take a chance. They had gone smelt fishing. Some men use spears to catch them, others use lines. In the early spring the men have to remove their shanties off the ice before they sink into the water. I came across this photo while reading the newspaper at the laundromat. The photo was taken on Shediac Bay. Here is a little bit from the article; It's pretty hard to spear smelts by sitting in the open on the ice. You need a dark shack sothat you can see the fish in the water from the light that filters through the ice. In the dark shack, they show up really good, not so good if you are out in the sunlight.Dozens of smelts can be speared in a single day.
What about our ancestors of long ago? I don't imagine they had shanties, so if they went ice fishing, it sure must have been cold for them. And making a hole in the ice must have been hard to do back then. But probably they were used to the cold, and back then ,roads were not that plentiful, so many of our ancestors used the rivers to travel. In the winter with horses and sleds in the summer by boats. Take Prince Edward Island for instance, there were no bridges or ferries back then, so they had to cross the strait the best way they could, again by sled in the winter and boat in the summer. And what would our ancestors have fished? Well Cod was their most important fish, then probably they fished Herring, Makerel, Trout,Smelts,Gaspareaux. One thing for sure if they could fish, they would have plenty to choose from , plus the lobster, crab, and shellfish. And the ancestors who were not near the water, hunted for wild game to feed their families, Moose, Deer,Bear,Rabbits,Porcupine,Beaver,Partridge, Duck,Pigeons, oh yes they ate all of the wild game they could catch.
I was reading when the Acadians were led to safety through they woods, and the article said, they lived on Beavers,Rabbits, or any animal they could catch, depending on the time they travelled, Berries would have been plentiful too. But there came a time, some of our ancestors were fleeing into the woods to avoid being captured and during the cold winter months, there would not be any berries, and the snow would have probably hindered their hunting, can you imagine walking in the deep snow in the woods, trying to hunt? I only walk from our steps to the car and if there is a lot of snow, I get really tired. That is why many Acadians died in the woods, from the cold and from starvation. So very sad. If we only stop and imagine how awful it was for them, we would be so grateful for what we have today.
Well this is it for today, hope you enjoyed my blog and will come by again.
Have a great day.
Aline

I want green green grass, but we got snow,seventeen centimeters of the white stuff. We had flurries all day long. Now I would like it to just dissappear.

Now on another note, I would like to say, never ever let a man do the cooking. This morning George said to me Aline I will cook breakfast. Oh boy! Sure I said , that would be nice, while you are cooking the bacon and eggs I will take my shower.

So I was in the shower and after a while I kept hearing beep, beep,beep. What is making that sound I said to myself. So I opened the bathroom door. I could not see a thing. There was smoke everywhere. I had to feel my way down the hall. Just as if I was swimming. grin. By then George had taken the frying pan off the stove, he told me he liked his bacon crisp, crisp? It was charcoal black. I don't even think there was any bacon left. I said what happened? He replied I was on my COMPUTER and I forgot all about the bacon. The beep beep was the smoke alarm. Open the windows, open the windows. Phew what a smell, we even had to leave the apartment the smoke was so bad, we went down the road to a restaurant and had breakfast. The meal was the special of the day , bacon and eggs ,fries and toast for 3.99. Thats good , very cheap we said. We ordered each a cup of tea, when we got the bill, it was 4 dollars and twenty cents extra for the tea. We were gone for quite a while, when we returned, it still smelled smoke, so I used some plug in scented oils, it helped. But to be honest, it is a good thing that the alarm went off, because the pan was onfire. Worse things could have happened. So be very careful, grease is so very dangerous. We had a cover to stop the grease from flying it is a good thing.

Today I did not do too much, I found some information for two of my members. One of the names I was looking for was Kearney, well I found three different spelling , Kearney,Carney and Quarny. So sometimes when we cannot find someone, try another spelling that would sound the same.

I am happy that I did find this information, even if it is only one marriage, that is another part of the brick wall tumbling down.

Well that is it for now, I have banana bread in the oven, and I don't think I want another smoke filled room.

Thank you for the visit, do stop by again.

Have a great day

Aline

Time is slowly creeping by, soon spring will arrive , the tulips will pop out of the ground,BUT not now, our weather man is calling for fifteen centimetres of snow, we are having what they call a northesterner. So for now I will only dream of the tulips and the crocus. According to the groundhog, we are suppose to have six more weeks of winter. I think he is right. grin.
For the ones who haven't made their reservations for the Acadian World gathering in Caraquet, and surrounding areas, some of the hotels and motels are already all booked. Do not wait too long. If you cannot find accomodations close by, try Bathurst .
Do you have children who like to read? I have added some children books on my website ,and I am trying to add some that are Acadian related, they are not all Acadian related but some of the stories are set in the times of the Acadians, some are fiction but if you read the stories it has things that could have been possible. Such as a Mister LeBlanc had to leave his home and, this little girl befriends a little Acadian girl who is a LeBlanc. I think these stories would be nice to give our children or grandchildren to read. I keep on looking for more such books to add to my book corner. But the books I love most of all are the ones I wrote for my grandchildren. One I made into a book on my Mom and her two brother's adventures, of course my Mom gave me all the stories and I wrote them.
One of the stories was that Mom and her two brothers went fishing, and my grandmother made a fishing net and gave it to the younger brother, who had a cripple arm and when they went fishing Mom and the older brother fished at one end and the younger one decided to go further down river, and all of sudden they looked up and he was coming towards them with a really big fish caught in the net. And another time, Mom said they went picking berries and the youngest one who was always getting into trouble was carrying a stick and he saw something on the ground and before Mom could say Don't touch it. He poked it and it was a bee hive so they ran for their lives. I made it so that it would be interesting to read.
That book is in my grandaughter's possession, for my grandson, I wrote two books, one was about his Papa, his late grandfather. So he would not be forgotten. I wrote about him being little and he wore thick glasses and they boys would call him four eyes, and when his younger brother heard them tease him, he ran after them. And I also mentioned in the book how much Papa loved him and his sister. The third book I wrote was about Fluffy their pet, and I was talking as if I were Fluffy, that I had been a happy dog and now I was in doggy heaven and I seen Papa and another dog that I knew. I added photos of the dog in the book. My grandchildren have both saved those books. These are really what we should write about. It would be just like history books, but it would be history books that are personal. Even if you don't have children, write them down for your nieces ,nephews, or for whoever you think would appreciate them. Now is the time if you have parents grandparents aunts and uncles, ask them questions, write down what they say.As I said before, once they are gone, so are their memories. I would love to have been able to sit and talk with my grandmother, because Mom said she had a really good memory.
My dad's side , I don't have many stories because Dad did not have a good memory, and the grandparents were gone by the time I got interested in genealogy. But dad told me one story once, that when he was really young, he had his father's truck and was going down Main Street and lost control of the truck and landed through the window at Woolworths right among some Kewpie dolls. grin. Do you remember what Kewpie dolls were? I seem to remember seeing some at a circus long ago.
Well I hope you enjoyed today's blog. It pleases me to remember things and to share them with all of you. I hope you will stop by again.
Have a great day, stay safe
Aline

Noel Doiron was born around 1684 son of Jean Doiron and Marie Anne Canol, he married Marie Henry daughter of Robert and Marie Madeleine Godin in Boston around 1705 and his marriage was rehabiltated in Port Royal Sept 24 1706. They had the following children: Louis Mathieu married to Madeleine Pitre,Marie Madeleine married to Michel Pitre, Marguerite married to Claude Pitre, Paul married to Marguerite Benoit and then to Francoise Bourg, Pierre married to Emilienne Thibodeau, Francois married to Madeleine Tillard, Joseph married to Marguerite Tillard and Marguerite married to Amedee Blanchard. Everyone but the two Marguerites and Pierre died in the sinking of the Duke William in 1758. Think about it, all of these couples and their children . There were only four survivors I believe or should I say only four Acadian survivors plus the Captain and his crew and the priest Father Giroir. Alexis Doiron was on the lifeboat and survived. Stephen White has this note in his DGFA; We count Noel Doiron his wife, five of their children, more that thirty of their grandchildren and many great grandchildren among the Acadian families of Prince Edward Island who dissappeared without a trace after 1758. After a long study on the subject, we are led to believe that Noel Doiron was the old leader of the Acadians of Pointe Prime mentioned in the Journal of Captain Nicholls concerning the sinking of the Duke William. So many Acadians were lost at sea during the Deportation of the Acadians, if not by drowning then by sickness.
I have added another article that you can access through the Duke William page on my website at http://www.acadian-roots.com/ regarding Noel Doiron, where he was before he was on PEI, it is a very interesting article and it was what the documentary on CBC radio was based on. Hope you will enjoy reading it.
Changing the subject, isn't the internet a great thing sometimes? I just received an email from a distant cousin who is living in Stockholm on my Williams dit Bristol line, we are not directly related until we reach Elie Bristol, but it is amazing how many I have met since I came online .
On Facebook I have started a group called Old Photos of New Brunswick, where my hopes are to have many photos posted there again in hope one day some of my relatives may be in the photos. You never know. See there is a method to my madness as the saying goes and also by having that group ,pictures posted may also be photos of their ancestors, so it is good for everyone.
Have I told you that I added more books in my book corner? In my English Books I have added the Cajun Odyssey 11, and Escape from the Guillotine. One is about the Landry family's Journey to Louisiana. I added the book Deportation of the PEI Acadians by Earle Lockerby , and also a nice story for a young girl called Lightning and Blackberries in my Children Book page.
Our Bergeron-Damboise Reunion being held in Fredericton is coming along very well, we have a hall for one of the two days, having a Mass said for all the group, having some VIPs attending, so all in all, I am pleased. We have someone attending to the luncheon and we have someone decorating the hall. So if any of you readers have Barthelemy Bergeron dit Damboise somewhere in your direct line ,such as the Godins,Bellefontaine,Bellefeuille, Roy,Pare,Saindon, Beausejour, and if you want to join us, let us know. We have a Bergeron group
Bergeron-Damboise@googlegroups.com . Speaking of reunions , as you know the CMA2009, Congres Mondial or Acadian World Gathering held in northern New Brunswick around the Caraquet area will soon be here. Now is the time to reserve your accomodations. We have reserved ours, from Aug.11 to the 24th. If you wait too long you might not be able to get a place. We will be in a tenting area, oh my, two whole weeks in a tent. groan. grin. So mayby after the CMA is over I may show you photos of my mosquito bites. haha.
Thanks for the visit. Do stop by again.
have a great day
Aline

Duke William was one of the many ships that were used during the Deportation of the Acadians. In 1758 the Duke William and the Violet both left around the same time with their ships filled with Acadians for destinations elsewhere. The two ships lost touch for a while and then met up again. The captain of the Violet contacted the captain of the Duke William and discussed the bad weather and the condition of his ship. On December 12 the Violet sank into the ocean. The Duke William was also trying to save their ship. Even the Acadian passengers pitched it and worked feverously to try and pump the water from the boat, but it was no use. On December 13 the day after the Violet sank, the Duke William sank into the cold waters of the Ocean. Many Acadians were lost at sea during the Deportation, and we will never know what their last moments were like, BUT we can read what happened to the Duke William. The Captain and his crew escaped in a lifeboat, and the captain "Captain Nicholl wrote a jounal about that fateful day and the loss of the Acadians. I have been given permission to add the Jounal on my website, and I have done so. My special thanks go to Ken and Shawn Scott. As one of them said to me "The more people that reads this Jounal, the more that will know what happened that fateful day in December on the Duke William.

So now I have added it to my website at http://www.acadian-roots.com/ ,click on the url next to the lighthouse. I do hope you will read it and learn about the tragedy of all those who lost their lives.

Now I want to change the subject,and share with you what Mom shared with me today. I always love talking with Mom, because when she tells me about long ago, she makes it so interesting.

Today we talked about my grandfather, Mom told me that my grandfather was a very strict man at times and other times he was fun to be with. He was a teacher part time, and he believed strongly in his children being educated. Mom said night after night, he would have the children sit on the steps or around him, and he would read to them. And then he would make them read what he had just done. I said to Mom were they school books? Mom replied "Dad had all kinds of books, but he loved Robbie Burns and he would read poetry to us by keresene lights." Mom said because of my grandfather reading to them, at school their marks were very good.

Then Mom continued talking about him, she said she remembers when he worked in the woods, he also was a saw filer, and Mom said that she remembers him coming home ,night after night carrying two logs one on each shoulder for firewood. And she said, that she saw him being so tired that he could not take his moccasins off, he would ask Mom to do it. Mom said , she would unlace the Moccasins and pull them off. Then she said to me, Granny too worked hard, when Grandfather was away working , she had to tend the animals, and do the rest of the chores but Mom said we all helped her with the chores. See what I mean about memories, and sharing them and writing them down ? I intend on writing what she told me today in my book.Well thanks for stopping by, please be sure to go read Capt. Nicholls Journal, and remember he wrote this in the late 1700s. Have a great day.

Aline

Marriages of long ago, were not like those of today. Today we get married any time of the month or anytime of the year. But long ago in many communities you could not get married when you wanted to. In the summer months more important things than marriage took place, the planting and harvestion of the crops. Then the church had regulations, cannot marry during Lent or Advent,Christmas ,Good Friday and Easter.So they had to plan their marriages before or after these restrictions. And even then it was sometimes not easy to do, especially if they did not have a priest at their disposal all the time. A priest would come into the villages and perform a lot of marriages the same day.One Father Girouard went to Cheticamp and on the 9th of January 1872 he married twenty couples. And the priests also had to make sure the couples were not closely related (consanguinity).
I have mentioned this before, possibly in other blogs of mine, but when my parents got married, my mother was barely 14 and my father was 9 years older than her. My grandfather was very strict,( but can you imagine what he would he thought of this) but he was away working, Mom knew he would not let her marry my father, so my parents to be used to meet on a little wooden bridge in the middle of nowhere and make their plans, when the time was right, they took the train ,went into town and went to a baptist church and got married. So they thought they had it made ,grin. When the parish priest found out they were not married catholic, that was not accepted so he went to where they were staying, told Mom to go home, and told Dad to do the same until he got permission from the bishop of St John to marry them catholic. The priest received permission and married them. When my granfather returned and found them married , he was not a happy man.
So my parents had two marriage certificates to show of their marriage.
Now the beginning of my blog was partly taken from the genalogy book of Cheticamp ,the Poirier family.
Well I hope you enjoyed reading today's blog, and stop by again, you never know what I will blog about next.
Have a great day.
Aline

Hello and nice to see you again. Well I do know some of you reading my blogs are not in my genealogy group nor in my Chat n Brag group. Some of you are possibly on Facebook tho. So I want to share what I already shared in my group.
Sunday morning with the suggestion of one of my members I turned my radio on to CBC at 8 30 am. The topic was Noel Doiron and the sinking of the Violet and Duke William with all the acadians on board.
Ken Scott and his brother from Nova Scotia did a lot of research on the subject, They did a wonderful job,and Stephen White and George Arsenault also spoke.Sometimes hearing the words is much better than reading. And did you know that when the Duke William sank there were 300 or more Acadians on board? I believe only four survived. When the boat started taking water, the acadians and the crew both pitched in to try and pump the water out, but the water was coming in too fast. They did not have many lifeboats back then ,and the oldest Acadian on the boat was Noel Doiron . The captain later wrote a journal about the event and he said there were tears shed by both the Acadians and his crew. And I believe there were children on the boat and as Stephen White said, a whole generation of acadians were wiped out.
Noel Doiron son of Jean and Marie Anne Canol his wife Marie Henri daughter of Robert and Marie Madeleine Godin, their children Louis -Mathieu,Marie -Madeleine,Paul,Francois,Joseph, wives ,children, all died in the tragedy. Stephen White in his book DGFA says there were more than 30 grandchildren. One of the four survivors was Alexis Doiron a descendant of Noel. But it is sad to hear of so many losing their lives, and another boat full of Acadians The Violet also sank .Both boats were in the Atlantic at the same time and they even communicated with one another.If all those Acadians would not have perished think about how much bigger the Acadian population would be today.
So on August 15 2009 there will be many many Acadians in Caraquet and also many for the Congres Mondial. So if you are Acadian, and Cajun,even English,if you have even one spark of Acadian Blood, come celebrate Acadian Day and the World Gathering. I also must add that Louisiana is vying for the 2014 CMA to be held there, that would be great seeing that many Acadians settled there and known today as Cajuns. I am anxious to meet some of the Cajuns in Caraquet or Tracadie.
For any of you wanting to join our genealogy group, go to the right side you will see a link , the name of the group you first join is petiteacadienne in yahoo groups , from there I will send you an invite to our main group.
Well I hope you found this blog interesting.Until next time.
Have a great day
Aline

Can you imagine your son or daughter wearing clothes similar to the clothes in my photo? This couple are my great grandparents, and everytime I look at it, it reminds me of granny Clampett on the Beverly Hillbillies. grin. She ( my great grandmother) died in 1929 and he died in 1933 so this photo had to have been taken in the early 1900. I wanted to show you a photo with the clothing our ancestors wore in those days. Imagine working with these clothes? His clothes looks like he is dressed for Sunday Mass, perhaps hers was too.

Nevertheless, her dress must have been warm, this looks like the early part of the summer. Can you imagine working in the garden with a long dress? Or going picking berries, seems to me, the thorns and bushes would catch in the material. And notice the apron, it is quite long ,it covers nearly all of her dress. That was the style back then. I remember one of their sons, he used to wear woollen pants held up with suspenders and I was reading an article about Acadian clothing and it mentioned suspenders ,some were colored and some showed lines in them, to make them strong they were made wide and back then they were fastened with buttons. They were never out of style, the stores still sell them today. She must have been wearing a petitcoat under her dress to make it stick out like that. Anyway I can tell you, there wasn't much showing, long sleeves, high neck, no legs showing. I bet you the flies and mosquitos got discouraged trying to bite her. grin. Some of my members and I have been discussing the CMA2009, and if any of you do go, I would recommend to go to the Acadian Village in Tracadie, I went and it takes you right back to the days of our ancestors, well to a period back then anyway. The staff are all dressed in costumes with the long dresses for the ladies, and the men also dressed in Acadian costumes too.For more photos of what our ancestors might have worn ,look at old photos of your ancestors and notice their clothing, look at some of them in my photo gallery and again you will see their styles.Well thank you for the lovely visit, and do stop by again. Have a great day Aline.

CONGRES MONDIAL or CMA2009, some of you may not know what this is. I am sure you have heard that there was a Congres Mondial being held in Northern New Brunswick Canada in 2009. Congres Mondial is a World Gathering of all the Acadians that can attend. If you have ancestors who were Acadians, this is the place to go. And the countdown is on. According to the CMA 2009 website we are down to 197 days. The excitement is starting to build. Plans are being made. I went on their website a short while ago. The CMA is from August 7 to August 23.
There will be parades, there will be guided tours, there will be Acadian food served, there will be arts and crafts for sale or on display, music,bingos, bird watching tours, boat tours,bright colours everywhere. Houses will be decorated for this big festival with vibrant colors. There will probably be something for the children also. Can you imagine all the people that will be attending? The family reunions are planned at different intervals , for example the Leger/Legere & Trahan reunion is being held August 11 and 12, the Cormier reunion will be Aug 20. I would like to attend both but we are not sure if we can do so since they are far apart.
Now is the time for you to reserve your motel, hotel, campground, it is not too early. I made my reservations for the Leger/Legere/Trahan reunion Aug.11 and 12 th. We are tenting and will be at Colibri Campground and Motel in Bertrand ,close to Village Acadienne. The price isn't too bad for tenting. Twenty five dollars a night with two services water and electricity. If you reserve now ,well where we are going you need to put a down payment. We had to pay 25 dollars. This is because the World Congres is going to bring so many visitors in that they do not want to take reservation and the person doesnt show up and their rooms are vacant at the last minute.
My greatgrandmother was a Leger from Cocagne, on my father's side. As for my mother's side I could have attended the Cormiers,Boudreau,Vienneau, but have decided it would be Leger and my friend is a Leger. We are also attending the Bergeron reunion in Fredericton in July.
I am looking forward on meeting some cajun cousins, and many of you while we are there.
When the CMA was held in Louisiana, I really wanted to go, but could not make it. So this year God Willing we will be in Caraquet and Tracadie. Also the Cormier reunion isn't totally ruled out for me, we may still be able to make it. For more information and schedules for the CMA go to http://www.cma2009.ca/
Thank you for the lovely visit,
Have a great day
Aline