Acadians Who Found Refuge in Louisiana, February 1764-early 1800s
Rousseau de VILLEJOIN
[Vee-uh-ZHWANH, VEAL-zhwanh]
ACADIA
Gabriel-Louis, son of Gabriel Rousseau, sieur de la Gorre et de Villejoin, gentlehomme servant son altesse royale Gaston de France, and Dame Marie Baudron, born at St.-Honoré, Blois, France, in c1683, inherited his father's title, sieur de Villejoin, and served as an officer in the Detachment of Marines, the gray-clad troupes de la marine, at Fort Louis, Plaisance, Newfoundland. Gabriel-Louis married Marie-Josèphe, daughter of Sr. François Bertrand, colonel of militia and a member of the Order of St.-Louis, and Jeanne Giraudet, at Plaisance in April 1708. Their wedding must have been a big affair; Newfoundland governor Pastour de Costebelle and dozens of other distinguished guests witnessed the ceremony. Gabriel-Louis and Marie-Josèphe had six children, the older ones born at Plaisance, the younger ones at Port-Toulouse, Île Royale, today's Cape Breton Island, where Gabriel, fils served as a captain in the 1710s. Gabriel-Louis died probably at Port-Toulouse in September 1718, age 35. His sixth child was born posthumously in January 1719. Two of his daughters married into the Le Coutre de Bourville and Tarride du Haget families.
Older son Gabriel, fils, who inherited his father's title, sieur de Villejoin, born at Plaisance in April 1709, married Anne-Angélique, daughter of Louis-Joseph de Gannes de Falaise and Marguerite Le Neuf de La Vallière, at Louisbourg, Île Royale, in January 1733. Beginning the February after their marriage, Anne-Angélique gave him six children, including five sons. Gabriel, fils remarried to Barbe, daughter of Michel Le Neuf de La Vallière, fils and Renée Bertrand and widow of Louis Delort, at Louisbourg in December 1753; Barbe's father was seigneur of Beaubassin and the brother of Gabriel, fils's first wife's mother; Barbe also was a sister of Gabriel, fils's younger brother Michel's wife Angélique. Barbe gave Gabriel, fils four more children, including three more sons, but only two of the children survived infancy. Gabriel, fils lived much longer than his father and exceeded him in military accomplishments. He was made a chevalier of the Order of St.-Louis in 1748, served as a major of the King's troops on Île Royale in 1753, and was promoted to commandant of Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, a part of the Île Royale colony, in 1754. In August 1758, soon after the fall of Louisbourg that July, the British arrested Commandant de Villejoin and his fellow officers at Port-La-Joye on Île St.-Jean and held them at Louisbourg as prisoners of war. In September and October, the British transported them to Spithead near Portsmouth, England. As agreed to by the contending powers after the fall of Louisbourg, Gabriel, fils was repatriated to France by the following July. Wife Barbe, meanwhile, remained at Louisbourg with their children, but they, too, were sent on to France. Meanwhile, their infant son Louis-Melchior, called N. on the passenger list, age 18 months, crossed to France with the family of Nicolas Bouchard on one of the five British transports that left Chédabouctou Bay in late November 1758 and reached St.-Malo in late January 1759. The boy died at sea. One wonders how he became separated from his mother. In May 1760, after his repatriation, Gabriel, fils succeeded his predecessor on Île St.-Jean, Major Claude-Élisabeth Denys de Bonnaventure, as inspector of colonial troops at Rochefort. In December, after the French surrendered Montréal, Major de Villejoin was named commander of the troops from Canada being garrisoned at Rochefort. In January 1763, on the eve of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Gabriel, fils, now a lieutenant-colonel, was named governor of Désirade in the Leeward Islands. There, he secured commissions for three of his sons and other scions of families who had served with him on Île Royale. When Île de la Désirade was subsumed by the government of Guadaloupe in 1768, Gabriel, fils returned to France and was promoted to brigadier of the King's troops that November. He retired not long afterwards and died at his home at St.-Jean-d'Angély, Aunis, France, in November 1781, in his early 70s.
Gabriel-Louis's younger son Michel, who inherited the title sieur d'Orfontaine, born at Port-Toulouse, Île Royale, in November 1717, married Angélique, another daughter of Michel Le Neuf de La Vallière, fils and Renée Bertrand, at Port-La-Joye, Île St.-Jean, in May 1757; Angélique was the sister of Michel's older brother Gabriel's second wife Barbe. Like his older brother Gabriel, Michel also became a chevalier of the Order of St.-Louis. After his repatriation to France, Michel served as capitaine dans les troupes nationales in French Guiane, South America, before retiring from the King's service in 1765. He died probably in France after1789, in his 70s.
Gabriel-Louis's younger brother Pierre, born probably at Blois in c1685, inherited the title sieur de Souvigny and also went to Acadia. He married Jeanne, daughter of Jacques de La Tour de Saint-Étienne and Anne Melanson and widow of Jacques Pontife, at either Plaisance or Île Royale in c1714; Pierre's wife was a granddaughter of former governor Charles La Tour. Pierre also served as an officer in the King's service at Plaisance and Louisbourg and was made a chevalier of the Order of St.-Louis in 1736. He retired from the King's service in 1744. His daughters married into the Chassin de Thierry and Le Neuf de Vallière families. He may have had no sons.
[See also Book Four]
In 1755, the descendants of Gabriel-Louis Rousseau, sieur de Villejoin of Blois, could be found on the Maritime islands of Île Royale and Île St.-Jean.
LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT
[For the family's travails during the Great Upheaval, see Book Six]
LOUISIANA: WESTERN SETTLEMENTS
At least three members of the family emigrated to Louisiana from Haiti via Cuba or Jamaica in the early 1800s, but only one of them created a lasting family line in the Bayou State:
Louis-Joseph Rousseau de Villejoin and his younger siblings, Marie-Joséphine, wife of ____ Sallée, and Grégoire-Michel, still a bachelor, settled not in New Orleans with the great majority of the St.-Domingue refugees of 1809 but chose to go the western prairies, where Grégoire-Michel soon married. Louis-Joseph, called Joseph, probably did not marry.
Descendants of Grégoire-Michel ROUSSEAU de VILLEJOIN (1777-1847; Gabriel, fils, Gabriel de Villejoin)
Grégoire-Michel, son of Gabriel-Michel Rousseau de Villejoin and Anne-Félicité Reynaud of Cayes du Fond, French St.-Domingue, was born there in June 1777, the son of a well-to-do planter and military officer. Grégoire-Michel was a teenager when the Haitian slave revolt broke out in the early 1790s. He and his family fled to Cuba or Jamaica probably in the late 1790s or early 1800s to escape the violence in Haiti. Grégoire and two of his older siblings were among the thousands of Haitian refugees whom the Spanish deported to New Orleans in 1809; he would have been age 32 that year and was still a bachelor. In Louisiana, he used his family's seigneurial name, not its surname Rousseau, as he probably had done in Haiti; but he did not use the noble de; he was simply Grégoire Villejoin, a reflection, perhaps, of his residence now in a republic, not a royal colony. At age 35, he married Marguerite, daughter of Jean Baptiste Jeannot and his Acadian wife Madeleine Hébert of Carencro, at the St. Martinville church, St. Martin Parish, in July 1812. They settled at Côte Gelée, which became part of Lafayette Parish in the early 1820s. Their daughters married into the Istre and LaFosse families, and perhaps into the Miller family as well. Like his noble ancestors, Grégoire must have been a shaker and a mover in his community; he served as the first sheriff of Lafayette Parish in the 1820s. A succession in his name, not post-mortem, was filed at the Vermilionville courthouse, Lafayette Parish, in August 1833. He died at New Orleans in May 1847, age 69. Only his older son seems to have created a family of his own, but the line survived on the western prairies.
1
Older son Prosper, born probably at Côte Gelée in May 1813, married French Creole Clémentine LaFosse, place and date unrecorded. They settled probably near Carencro. Their son Prosper, fils was born in May 1854. They also had an older son named Joseph Alcide. Their daughter married into the Caruthers or Credeur and Cormier families.
Joseph Alcide married Adeline, daughter of fellow Acadians Jean Baptiste Lejeune, fils and Adeline Hébert, in a civil ceremony in St. Landry Parish in August 1860, and sanctified the marriage at the Church Point church, then in St. Landry but now in Acadia Parish, in July 1867. They settled probably near Church Point. Their son Émile was born in September 1861.
2
Younger son Paulin, born at Côte Gelée in August 1817, may have died young.
CONCLUSION