Antoine
Belliveau,
a farm worker perhaps from La Chaussée, near Blois, in the Orleanais region
of the Loire valley in France, arrived in Acadia by 1645 and married
Andrée
Guyon,
widow of ____ Bernard, at Port-Royal in c1651.
Their daughter married into the Bourgeois family. Their only son,
Jean,
born at Port-Royal in c1652, became a carpenter as well as a farmer.
He married twice, first to
Jeanne, daughter of
Antoine
Bourg
and Antoinette
Landry, at Port-Royal in c1673, and settled on the north shore of
Rivière-au-Dauphin, today's Annapolis River, below Port-Royal.
He also owned land at Chignecto in 1701.
Jean and Jeanne had four
children. Their daughter married into the
Boudrot family.
Their three sons, all born at Port-Royal, created families of their own:
Oldest son Jean, fils, also
called le jeune, born in c1674, married Madeleine, daughter of
Charles
Melanson and
Marie Dugas, at Port-Royal in c1696. They had five children,
including three sons who married into the Granger and Gaudet
families. Their daughter married into the Landry family. Jean, fils died at Port-Royal in c1707.
Charles dit Bideau,
born in c1678, married Marie, another daughter of Charles Melanson
and Marie Dugas, at Port-Royal in c1698. They had 13 children, including two sons who
married into the Gaudet and Blanchard families. Five
of their daughter married into the Gaudet, Lanoue, and
Poirier families.
Youngest son Antoine dit Blondin,
born in c1680, married Marie, daughter of
Claude
Thériot and
Marie
Gautrot, at Port-Royal in c1701. They had nine children, including three sons who married
into the Dugas, Gaudet, and Melanson families.
Their three daughter married into the Bourg and Granger
families. Antoine
died at Annapolis Royal in c1740, age 61. One of his sons, Joseph, the one
who married into the Gaudet family, moved to Chignecto. The others
remained at Annapolis Royal.
Jean,
père remarried to Cécile,
yet another daughter of Charles
Melanson and Marie Dugas
and widow of
Abraham
Boudrot, in
c1703. She gave
him three more children. Their two daughters married into the Boudrot,
Fougère, and Dugas families. Their only son created a
family of his own:
Louis, born at Port-Royal in c1708, married Louise, daughter of Michel Haché dit
Gallant and Anne Cormier, at Port-La-Joye, Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, in June 1735.
In August 1752, a French official counted Louis, Louise, and six of their
children at Tracadie, on the north shore of the island.
In c1721,
Jean,
père
left Annapolis Royal and took his second wife and their children to Port-Toulouse
on Île Royale, now Cape Breton Island, far from the hated British. He moved to Île St.-Jean
in c1728, where he died at Tracadie in the mid-1730s, in his 80s.
Some of his descendants remained on the island, at Port-La-Joye and Tracadie.
[For more of this family in pre- and post-disperal Acadia and Canada, see
Book Three]
In 1755, descendants of Antoine
Belliveau could be found at Annapolis Royal and on Île
St.-Jean.
LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT
[For the family's travails in
the Great Upheaval, see
Book
Six]
LOUISIANA
Only one Belliveau seems to have made it to Louisiana,
Pierre dit Bideau. Judging by his dit, he was probably a
descendant of Charles dit Bideau of Port-Royal, one of Jean, père's sons by
his first wife. The date of Pierre dit Bideau's arrival in Louisiana, where
he settled, and
who he married, if he married at all, remain a mystery to this
researcher. I
have found him only in Wall of Names, in which he is listed singly with
the Acadians who came to Louisiana between 1764 and 1785. A perusal
of the church records of the New Orleans, river, and prairie
parishes where the first Acadians in Louisiana settled, turns up no one named Belliveau.
Neither have I found anyone by that name in the censuses listed in this study
or on the passenger lists of the Seven Ships of 1785 from France. So it is safe to
say that this old Acadian family, whose descendants up in Canada can be
numbered in the thousands and whose blood can be found in so many South
Louisiana families, did not establish roots in the Bayou State.
The family's name also is spelled Beliveau, Belivo, Belyvo. [See
also Book
Ten]
Sources: Arsenault, Généalogie,
408-27, 842-45, 2206-07;
Brasseaux, "Scattered to the Wind",
55-61; De La Roque, "Tour of Inspection," Canadian Archives
1905, 2A:148;
Hébert, D., Acadians in Exile, 24; Historical Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 29;
<islandregister.com/1752.html>;
Appendix;
White, DGFA-1, 96-104; White,
DGFA-1 English, 19-20; Milling, Exile Without End,
41-42; Wall of Names, 11.