01. Mobile is the site of one of the oldest French settlements on the Gulf Coast
& is, in fact, the oldest permanent French settlement in the region. As
Mobilians are proud to point out, the establishment of a French settlement near
present-day Mobile, AL, predated the establishment of New Orleans, LA, by nearly 2 decades.
Fort Louis-de-la Louisiane was founded in 1702 by Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville, 26 miles up the Mobile River from the site of today's
city. In 1711, Iberville's younger brother, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur
de Bienville, the commander at Fort Louis, moved the settlement to the mouth
of the Mobile River, site of the present city. Old & New Mobile served
as the capital of French Louisiana from 1702 until 1723, when Bienville,
recently appointed as LA's commandant general, moved his headquarters to the newly-established post at New Orleans on the
lower Mississippi. In Feb 1763, as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended
the Seven Years' War, France ceded Mobile & the rest of French
LA east of the Isle of Orleans
& the Mississippi River to Britain, & Mobile became a part of British West Florida.
Occupation forces under MAJ Robert Farmar reached Mobile on 20 Oct 1763 &
by Jan 1764 occupied Spanish & French posts at Pensacola, Fort Toulouse, & Fort Tombekbé.
As a result of the British occupation & despite British
entreaties to remain, the great majority of the French settlers & soldiers
in the region chose to leave
their homes in what is now MS & AL & migrate to
the lower Mississippi Valley.
Families such as the BONINs, FONTENOTs, & GUILLORYs were among the AL refugees escaping the hated British.
Called Allibamont
in LA, they were some of the first
permanent settlers in the Opelousas & Attakapas districts, west of the
Atchafalaya Basin.
See Higginbotham, Old Mobile; Carl A. Brasseaux & Michael
J. Leblanc, "Franco-Indian Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley 1754-1763:
Prelude to Pontiac's Uprising?," 339, 344n72, in Conrad, ed.,
The French Experience in LA; Usner, Lower Miss. Valley Before 1783,
123; Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 125-27.
The first Acadian families to
reach LA--the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party--reached New
Orleans via Mobile in Feb 1764, within weeks of the Allibamont. Perhaps these
Acadians would have remained at Mobile if the place had
not become a British possession. See Voorhies, J., 125-26; note
02, below.
02. In Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians,
421-22, is a list of 169 Acadian farmers who were counted by the French
"around Fort Toulouse," the name of the French fort on the Coosa River just
north of present-day Montgomery.
The census, as Ms. Voorhies points out, was not dated, but she states that
"it is generally believed that this census was taken in 1758."
None of the Acadians on this list emigrated to present-day LA. Stanley LeBlanc in <thecajuns.com/correct.htm>
notes that "Stephen A. White has determined that the year 1758 in the
section entitled Census of Acadian Farmers Living Around Fort Toulouse 1758
[printed in Voorhies, J.] was actually about 1716; and, it was Fort[sic,
actually Port] Toulouse,
Cape Breton. The material was
inadvertently filed in the 1758 section of the microfilmed records."
So, following White, one must conclude that the "Fort Toulouse" list has nothing to do
with the LA colony.
The story of the first documented Acadians to reach what is now the State
of LA, the
CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party, can be found at <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>,
"Acadians Who Arrived in New Orleans in 1764"; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 430-31; Oubre, Vacherie, 59, 60,
68-69; &
Appendix. See also Dr. Carl Brasseaux's
essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>.
White, DGFA-1, 406, notes that the eldest member of the
CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party, Jean-Baptiste
CORMIER, père, was recorded in GA in 1763. Eight years before,
in the fall of 1755, British forces had packed CORMIER & other Chignecto Acadians aboard English vessels and exiled
them to
that faraway English colony. There, as Faragher writes on p.430, "these
interrelated families remained close, assisting one another, saving what little
money they were able to make." One of them, Olivier LANDRY, "had
a distant relative who was serving in a French regiment in Louisiana--Joseph De
Ville DES GOUTIN, son of Mathieu DES GOUTIN, who had been treasurer at Port-Royal during the last years of the French regime" in Acadia.
(Olivier LANDRY's paternal grandmother, Marie THIBODEAU, was Joseph DES
GOUTIN's mother's oldest sister; to an Acadian this would not be a "distant
relative.") From
this cousin, LANDRY may have learned that the French would welcome his family to
LA. See also Stephen White's essay, "The First Acadian in Louisiana:
Joseph DE GOUTIN de Ville," in <acadian-cajun.com/degoutin.htm>. In 1763, the families
evidently left GA for Charleston, SC, where
most of them were counted in late Aug of that year. See Jehn, Acadian Exiles in the Colonies,
231. According to what LA administrator D'ABBADIE told his superior in Apr
1764, however, the 20 Acadians who appeared suddenly at New Orleans "last
February" came to the colony "from New York," where," Faragher goes
on, "they booked passage on a vessel bound for the port of
Mobile...." However, the 22 Dec 1763 edition of the Georgia
Gazette, published in Savannah, states: "Yesterday more of the
Acadians in number about 21, went in a vessel for Mobile, from which place they
are to go to New Orleans." See "Acadians Sail to New Orleans
December 21, 1763," in <acadian-home.org>;
& <acadian-cajun.com>,
which says the article was published in the South Carolina Gazette on 14
Jan 1764, probably a reprint of the Georgia Gazette article a month before (such
reprints were not unusual for colonial papers; I have not seen either of these
newspaper notices in their original form, only references to them, cited above). <acadian-cajun.com>
adds that the ship taken by the 21 Acadians on 21 Dec 1763 was the Savannah
Packet out of that city, bound for Mobile. Arsenault, Généalogie, 2568, claims that Jean POIRIER married Madeleine, daughter of Jean-Baptiste
RICHARD, at Mobile on 22 Jan 1760 (italics mine), which makes no sense in light
of other evidence. However, White, DGFA-1, 1336, & Stanley
LeBlanc's <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>,
"Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana," clear this up by showing that
the marriage had existed since c1759, when the couple lived in GA, and was blessed
by a priest at Mobile on 22 Jan 1764 (italics mine).
By then, as noted, a British occupation force had reached Mobile, & present-day
AL was part of British West Florida. If the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party had remained
at Mobile, they would again be subject to British authority. The
Treaty of Paris of Feb 1763 had stipulated that individuals displaced by the
war had 18 months to return to their home territories. These exiled
Acadians were
determined to live in French territory again. They believed, like most of
the rest of the world, that western LA still belonged to France (the provisions
of the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau ceding LA to Spain in Nov 1762 were
not made public until Sep 1764, 7 months after the GA Acadians reached New
Orleans).
Moreover, as French administrator D'ABBADIE's 6 Apr 1764 letter to his superior reveals, the Acadians
were welcomed at New Orleans.
As to the numbers of individuals in the party, the Georgia
Gazette article counts 21, & D'ABBADIE's
letter counts 20. The list in <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>,
"Acadians Who Arrived in New Orleans in 1764," counts 18, leaving out
Marie-Anne, called Anne, CORMIER & Joseph & Marie LANDRY.
My list includes these 3 & also another CORMIER daughter, Madeleine, but
does not include Michel POIRIER, who is on the list in <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>,
making
my total 21. See
Appendix.
To illustrate the
consanguineous nature of this group, not one of the 4 heads of families was
married to a woman from outside the extended family. CORMIER was married
to a RICHARD, LANDRY to a POIRIER, POIRIER to a RICHARD, & RICHARD to a
CORMIER. Moreover, several of their children married within the
clan: 3 of the 4 CORMIER girls married a LANDRY, a POIRIER, & a
RICHARD, all sons of the other family heads, &, as mentioned earlier, 1 of the 2 LANDRY sons married a
CORMIER.
MOUTON family legend says that several MOUTONs were in the group
that reached LA in early 1764, but no creditable evidence confirms this. As
D'ABBADIE's letter said, there were 4 families in the group. The MOUTONs
were not one of them.
Faragher, p. 431, makes the interesting speculation that the
second group of Acadians to reach LA, the extended family of resistance fighter
Joseph BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil, could have been alerted to the fine qualities of the
Mississippi River colony by the father of one of Beausoleil's young
partisans, Jean-Baptiste CORMIER, fils. After settling in LA, the
elder CORMIER may have communicated with his son in Nova Scotia via the amazing
grapevine of Acadian seamen who worked on ships that sailed the Atlantic, the
Caribbean, & the Gulf of Mexico. When BROUSSARD & the other Acadian party
leaders decided in late 1764 to leave Nova
Scotia & find a new home in French America, they may have chosen the lower
Mississippi Valley over French St.-Domingue because
of what they had heard from the hand full of Acadians already there.
03. See
Appendix.
04. Professor Carl A.
Brasseaux, the best informed scholar on the Acadians in LA,
says that "Numerous published sources, based entirely on speculation, had
suggested that many of the Saint-Domingue Acadians left the colony for Louisiana
in the mid-to-late 1760s. The documentary record in Louisiana, however,
makes it clear that few, if any, Saint-Domingue Acadians migrated to the
Mississippi Valley." See Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind, 45
(italics added); Appendix.
This study largely agrees with Brasseaux's assertion; only a few dozen St.-Domingue
Acadians emigrated to LA. See
Appendix. For an analysis of why hundreds of Acadians from the British-Atlantic colonies
went to St.-Domingue in 1763-64 & their sad fate in the French sugar
colony,
see Professor Gabriel Debien's essay, translated by Glenn R. Conrad, in
Conrad,
ed., The Cajuns, 19-78. See also <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>.
That the BROUSSARD party, at least, changed ships at Cap-Français
is attested to by the birth of Jean, son of Victor COMEAU, one of the heads of
family in the party, in the Haitian city. See Jean's marriage record in Hébert, D.,
Southwest LA Records,
1-A:199, 498 (SM Ch.: v.3, #91), which calls him Jean COMEAUX
du Cap-Français, Isle St.-Domingue. At that time,
Cap-Français, not Port-au-Prince, on the other side of the island, was the
capital of French St.-Domingue. Ships going from France to LA seldom
sailed directly to New Orleans but usually stopped at Cap-Français or other
ports in the region. See David Hardcastle, "The Military Organization
of French Colonial Louisiana," 346, in Conrad, ed., The French
Experience in LA.
05. See
Appendix.
In Apr 1766, a year after his arrival, Jean-Baptiste SEMER, a young member of the BROUSSARD party,
dictated a letter to his father in France. The letter miraculously survived in a French
archive. According to SEMER, the order of
arrival of the Acadians from Halifax was: "'... in the month of
February 1765 ... 202 Acadian persons ... After us, there arrived yet another
105 in another ship and then eighty, forty, [and] some twenty or thirty, in
three or four others. I believe there are about 500-600 of us Acadians,
counting women and children." See Mouhot, ed., "Letter by
Jean-Baptiste Semer," 224; Bernard, Cajuns & Their Acadian
Ancestors, 30. Does this imply that the 40 Acadians who went to Opelousas
and some of the 80 Acadians under Jean-Baptiste BERGERON dit d'Amboise
who went to Cabanocé arrived on the same vessel? SEMER does
not say in what months the other vessels arrived. Approximate arrival
dates of the 1765 refugees from Halifax via St.-Domingue are best gotten from
the official French correspondence found in Brasseaux, ed., Quest for the
Promised Land, 31-54. See
Appendix.
06. Details from Stanley LeBlanc's <thecajuns.com>,
"Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana." Bourgeois, Cabanocey,
14, gives the date of arrival as 16 Nov 1766, & says that 216 individuals
came "directly from Halifax, Nova Scotia...." She bases her statement
on a letter from French Commissary FOUCAULT to his superior, the duc
de Praslin, dated 18 Nov 1766, in which the commissary says that the
216 Acadians who arrived in LA "approximately one-and-a-half months
ago" came from "Halifax on an English boat chartered at their own
expense." See Brasseaux, ed., Quest for the
Promised Land, 80. LeBlanc, however, bases his
information on a letter from Spanish Gov.
ULLOA to the marques Jeronimo GRIMALDI, the Spanish Minister of State, dated 29
Sep 1766, in which ULLOA says that the English sloop carrying Acadians who had arrived at New Orleans
the day before had departed "Maryland, New
England" in late Jun & numbered 224 men, women, & children. See Brasseaux, ed., 77.
Usner, Lower Miss. Valley Before 1783, hints that the
Acadians from MD may have been assisted in their passage to LA by the
Spanish. He states, on 119-20: "Reporting on the arrival of
some two hundred Acadians in September 1766, Louisiana's first Spanish
governor [Ulloa] minimized the returns that one should expect from the money
spent to assist their passage: 'They are not able to cultivate indigo
nor tobacco without having first a competent number of negroes to do the
work and they will be reduced to owning a few animals and to cultivating
grains and roots for their own consumption, with which they will be rich as
far as they are personally concerned but will not enrich the colony nor
contribute to the growth of its commerce, because it will never get beyond
producing wood, indigo of very poor quality, and tobacco in small quantities
and of ordinary quality.'" Nowhere in Ulloa's statement does it say
that the Spanish paid for the passage of the MD Acadians to LA, so this may
have been Usner's assumption. Ulloa's concern over their future
productivity, for the majority of the Acadian exiles, was well taken, but
there were exceptions--Acadians who, by the end of the Spanish period, owned
enough land & slaves to participate in LA's burgeoning plantation-based economy.
See, for example, the profile of
Pierre dit La Vielliarde LANDRY, who was one of the Sep 1766
arrivals.
07. For the vessel
taken by the Jul 1767 arrivals from Baltimore, see Wood, Acadians in Maryland,
33. The Virgin, like earlier expeditions from Halifax &
MD to LA, did not sail directly to New Orleans
but went to "Guárico," the older, Indian/Spanish name for Cap-Français,
St.-Domingue, where the Acadians lingered for 17 days, probably changing ships before they sailed on to
New Orleans. The voyage from Baltimore to New Orleans lasted a very long 78 days. See Voorhies, J.,
Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 430, quoting a Spanish official, who notes: "That during the 78 days
of navigation (including the 17 days at Guárico) from the harbor of Baltimore,
Province of Maryland till here [New Orleans], Armand HÉBERT, head of a
family and Maria LANDRY, a child, died and Oliver BABIN and Margarita HERNANDEZ
were born." It is entirely possible that Acadians wanting to leave St.-Domingue
could have come to LA with this group as well. See
online Wikipedia, "Cap-Haïtian";
Appendix.
08. Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 430-34, a
Spanish report entitled "List of Acadian Families Who Came to Louisiana to
be Established in the Year 1767," dated Jul 27, is followed here because it
is the only one of the Spanish reports that includes every individual Acadian's
name & age who went to San Gabriel in Aug 1767. The report in J. Voorhies,
428, entitled "Document Concerning the First Acadians to Arrive in
this Province in the Year 1767," also dated Jul 27, counts 200 individuals
in 45 families. Still another report, in J. Voorhies, 429, entitled
"Acadians Who Settled at St. Gabriel in the Year 1767," with the
notation, "List of the farms which were assigned to the chiefs and heads of
Acadian families who were going to be established among the people of St.
Gabriel," undated, counts 47 heads of families. A hand full of
Acadians from the Jul 1767 arrival may have stayed in New Orleans. See J. Voorhies, 426-27, a report entitled "List of Acadians Who Are in
the City in the Month of July 1767," dated Jul 23, not quite 2 weeks
after the arrival of the ship from Baltimore & 2 1/2 weeks before the
40-plus Acadian families left for San Gabriel. Since there obviously were
dozens more Acadians in New Orleans at the time of the Jul 23 report, the
Acadians in that report may have reached the city earlier, some in Sep 1766,
& for some reason were still lingering there.
Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 80-81, says that the
Jul 1767 party from MD wanted to settle at Cabanocé, where many of their
relatives lived, but, for strategic reasons, Gov. ULLOA was determined to send them to a new post, Fort
San Gabriel, 2 dozen miles above Cabanocé. The MD Acadians went to
St.-Gabriel reluctantly but soon realized that communication with the other
Acadian communities downriver was
relatively easy by boat.
At least two of the families who arrived in 1767--CASTILLE &
HERNANDEZ--were not Acadian. The wives were, but not the husbands.
09. Stanley LeBlanc's <thecajuns.com>,
"Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana," does not name their ship, nor
does he mention who their leaders were, but he does cite a Pennsylvania
Gazette article of 8 Apr 1768, which says the ship carrying the
"neutrals from Maryland" was a brig under Captain RIDER.
Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 82, says the party led by
Alexis & Honoré BREAU reached New Orleans in Feb aboard the Guinea.
Wood, Acadians in Maryland, 34, concludes that it was the Jane.
Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 200, offers a
copy of "a consular certificate granted at N. Potomack, Maryland to the
vessel Jane sailing to the Mississippi with 'one hundred and fifty French
neutrals with baggages,' December 17, 1767." The ship reached New
Orleans the following Feb. In a letter to his superior, the Marqués de
GRIMALDI, dated 11 Feb 1768, LA Gov. ULLOA mentions "the recently arrived
Acadians." See Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81,"
40.
Also accompanying the BREAU party from MD was James WALKER, who
came to LA to scout out possible settlements for English Catholics. A
letter from MD Catholic leader Henry JERNINGHAM, M.D., dated 14 Dec 1767,
introducing WALKER to LA Gov. ULLOA, indicates that the ship carrying WALKER,
& probably also the BREAU party, left MD soon after that date. See Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81,"
39.
After hassling with Gov. ULLOA about settling at
Cabanocé/St.-Jacque, where the BREAUs
wanted to go but where ULLOA refused to send them, the disgruntled Acadians left
the New Orleans area for Fort San Luìs de Natchez on 20 Feb 1768, without the BREAU
brothers, who had gone into hiding after the governor threatened to deport them
& their families for insubordination. The MD
Acadians finally reached Fort San Luìs on Mar 20 after a month of moving up the river,
stopping at various settlements along the way for replenishment of food &
fresh water (it must have been especially painful to stop at
Cabanocé/St.-Jacques & St.-Gabriel, where their kinsmen had settled). Revolt against the hated ULLOA followed in late Oct 1768.
Late the following year, ULLOA's successor, General Alejandro O'REILLY, allowed the
Natchez Acadians, including the BREAU brothers, to resettle at
Cabanocé, St.-Gabriel, or Ascension, where they could still be of service in the Spanish
scheme of defense along the lower Mississippi. Both
Brasseaux & LeBlanc say there were 149 Acadians in the group when it reached
New Orleans; Brasseaux, 82, also says 152. For the Spanish reports of
Feb 1768, one of which lists every person in the BREAU party, see Voorhies, J.,
435-39. See also
Appendix.
10. No group of Acadians who came to LA suffered as much as these folks to get to
the promised land. The English schooner Britannia (sometimes spelled Britania)
left Port Tobacco, MD, for New Orleans on 5 Jan 1769 with 7 Acadian and 8 German families aboard--100
passengers total. The crew of
the Britannia sighted the coast of LA on Feb 21, but the captain of the ship,
an Englishman named John STEEL, either through bad luck or incompetence, missed
the mouth of the Mississippi because of heavy fog. Strong winds drove
the ship westward, & the Britannia ran onto the TX coast at Espiritu Santo Bay. The crew went ashore in early Apr & located a Spanish officer,
Don Francisco THOBAR, who
suspected them of being spies or smugglers. Instead of giving them food & fresh
water & sending them on their way, THOBAR arrested them & ordered his men to escort everyone on the ship to
the presidio Nuestra Senora de la Loreto de la Bahía at present-day Goliad, which he commanded. The passengers & crew of the
Britannia
remained at La Bahía for 6 long months,
waiting for the Spanish authorities to decide their fate. (They could not
have known it, but the Spanish had built La Bahia presidio in 1722 on the
site of La Salle's fort of 1685-87!) While at La
Bahía, the Acadians, Germans, and ships crewmen were forced to work as semi-slaves around the presidio & on nearby
ranches. In late May, THOBAR slapped the captain & crew in chains, where
he kept them for 24 days. Finally, in early Sep, a Spanish officer,
Don Rafael MARTINEZ PACHECO, commandant of Fort Cokesau [the presidio
of San Augustine de Ahumada near El Orcoquisac on the lower Trinity River], arrived at La Bahía
with instructions for Commandant THOBAR to send the captives overland to Natchitoches in
Spanish LA. The crew & passengers could not return to the abandoned Britannia
because the Spaniards had confiscated whatever part of the vessel was
serviceable, & the coastal Indians had stripped what was left of the ship.
On Sep 11, the Acadians joined the other passengers & the English crew on
the 420-mile trek to Natchitoches, which they reached in late Oct. LA
Gov. O'REILLY, meanwhile, had decided that the Acadian families in the group
would settle at Natchitoches because of their familiarity with the growing
of rye & wheat. Natchitoches settlers welcomed the newcomers, & the
Spanish promised them food, tools, & animals. The German families were
told that they could continue to New Orleans via the Red & Mississippi
rivers, pick up supplies, & then head back upriver to St.-Gabriel d'Iberville, where the Spanish would give them
land near the abandoned fort there south of Bayou Manchac, across from
British territory. The Germans accompanied the English crew to New Orleans in
canoes &
arrived there on Nov 9. Most of the Acadians, meanwhile, refused to remain
at Natchitoches, which was too far away from their kinsmen to the south (they
had come to the colony to reunite with relatives, not fulfill some Spanish
settlement scheme).
So these wayward Acadians also left the Red River valley & joined their relatives in the established
communities of St.-Gabriel, Ascension, & Opelousas. See <thecajuns.com>,
Glenn R. Conrad, "German Settlers in Louisiana";
<thecajuns.com/britania.htm>,
"Passengers on
the Ship 'Britania'." Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81," 135-42,
146-47
(including a list of passengers, pp. 140-42), says on p. 138 that John STEEL
was captain of La Bretana. Robichaux, German Coast Families,
60, points out that these were the last Germans to migrate to LA during the
colonial period. Wood, Acadians in Maryland, 35-36, says, on p. 36,
that Philip FORD was captain of Britannia, but he was the schooner's
"supercargo." For some reason, Brasseaux, Scattered
to the Wind, 67, & <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>,
say that the Britannia incident occurred in
1770. No other source uses this date. See
Appendix
for a list of Acadian individuals & families aboard the Britannia.
If I may be allowed a personal note: One of the German
families aboard the Britiannia was that of Jacob MILLER & Anne-Marie
THEGEIN, both natives of Alsace & my mother's paternal ancestors. Also
in my direct maternal line were Britannia passengers Honoré TRAHAN, his
wife Marie CORPORON, & their son Pierre; & Canadian Pierre PRIMEAUX & his
Anglo-American wife
Susanne PLANTE. Much of my "blood," then, traveled on that ill-fated
schooner. My dear, departed friend Henry Eugene Ory of Lake Charles, LA,
& Pueblo, CO, once my parish priest in Jennings, was a direct descendant of
Nicolas ORY, the head of another German family that sailed aboard the Britannia.
A paternal ancestor of alligator hunter Troy Landry, a star of History
Channel's popular series "Swamp People," also sailed aboard the
ship--Nicolas MARCOFF, his wife Christine ORY, & their children, including
son Joseph, whose surname evolved into MALBROUGH, were among the German Catholics
aboard the vessel. Joseph's daughter Euphrosine was the second wife of
one of Troy's great-grandfathers. Joseph MARCOFF/MALBROUGH is also the
fifth great-grandfather of Acadian/Cajun genealogist/historian Stanley
LeBlanc, whose website, <thecajuns.com>,
cited above, contains a roster of Britannia passengers.
11.
Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81,"
141-42, a notarized copy of a report submitted to Spanish authorities at New
Orleans by "Don" Philip Ford, a member of the Britannia's crew (but
not its captain; that was John Steel), lists 31 Acadians aboard the ship; Glenn R. Conrad, in his article "German Settlers in Louisiana,"
<thecajuns.com>,
says there were 32 Acadians on the Britannia; Brasseaux, Scattered to
the Wind, 67, says 30 & uses the date 1770; the article
"Passengers on the Ship 'Britania," previously available at
<thecajuns.com/britania.htm>,
has 31 individuals in 7 families. I count 23
Acadians because one of the women, Susanne PLANTE, wife of Pierre PRIMEAUX, was not an
Acadian despite her inclusion on the Acadian Memorial's Wall of Names. And
neither was
Pierre
PRIMEAUX; he was French Canadian.
Antoine BELLARD and his son Étienne-Simon also were not Acadian.
BELLARD had an Acadian wife, whom he had wed in MD, but there is no
evidence that he lived in greater Acadia. See
Appendix
for a list of Acadian individuals in 6 of the families aboard the Britannia.
12. Also called Costa de
Manchac, it was located on the east bank of the Mississippi
along the
present-day boundary of East Baton Rouge & Iberville parishes, south of
Baton Rouge & just north of the Acadian settlement of St.-Gabriel
d'Iberville. Manchac was so close to St.-Gabriel, in fact, that these settlements
should be considered the same community. St.-Gabriel
was sometimes called St.-Gabriel de Manchac, & the Spanish called it San Gabriel. See
Appendix;
map.
13. The 7 Ships families sent to the Lafourche area
went to what the
French authorities had called Lafourche des Chitimachas & what the Acadians called Ascension, now the Donaldsonville area of
Ascension Parish, and to Valenzuéla, later called Assumption, a few miles down
the bayou from Ascension. See
Appendix;
map.
Dr. Carl Brasseaux, in his essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>
(no longer accessible),
says that these Lafourche Acadians settled in the area "between present-day
Labadieville and Raceland." That probably happened later.
14. Officially, 1,574 Acadians, representing 375 families,
came on the 7 ships to LA, but 28 stowaways raised the number
of individuals to 1,602; the official number of deaths for the enterprise was 85,
desertions 12, total 97, these losses partially balanced by 39 births
& 15 "immigrants", total 54. See Winzerling, Acadian Odyssey,
154-56; Kinnaird, "Post
War Decade, 1782-91," 169. Even after noting the
subtraction of "last minute withdrawals and failures of others to appear"
from Count ARANDA'S official report to King Charles III of Spain to get a total of 1,574/1,602, Winzerling still uses the too-large figure 1,596/1,624 as
the official total of Acadians & stowaways associated with them.
My
figure of 1,547 Acadians who took the 7 Ships to LA is based on a strict
definition of which families were or were not Acadians. For instance, when
the stowaways on Le St.-Rémi & L'Amitié married
their Acadian sweethearts in LA, Intendant NAVARRO generously granted them
status as "Acadians", though the grooms' families had never lived in
greater Acadia. See Winzerling, 145-46, 155. If a child's father was
non-Acadian but his/her mother was Acadian, the child is listed here as non-Acadian
because of how it goes with surnames; Acadian-ness here
is determined by surnames, remember.
My list contains over a
dozen Acadian newborns who were not counted by the Spanish, as well as children
who were in utero at the time of their mother's arrival.
All dates & places of
settlement are from Winzerling unless otherwise noted.
15. Family distribution figures are
from Winzerling, Acadian Odyssey, chap. 10, specifically 133 (Le Bon Papa), 136 (La Bergère),
138 (Le Beaumont), 143 (Le St.-Rémi), 146-47 (L'Amitié),
150 (La Ville d'Archangel), & 151 (La Caroline). A
slightly more detailed record of 1785 family
distribution in LA, followed here, is "A Report on Acadian Immigrants Who
Came to Louisiana from France in 1786[sic]," in Kinnaird, "Post
War Decade, 1782-91," 169, & <thecajuns.com/1785acad.pdf>.
16. See
Appendix;
map.
17. According to Din, Canary
Islanders of LA, 52, Nueva Gálvez was an Isleños, or Canary
Islander, community along Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs in present-day St. Bernard
Parish, on the left bank of the Mississippi below New Orleans. Founded in 1779
by the Spanish after they recruited settlers from the Canary Islands, Nueva
Gálvez should not
be confused with the Isleños community called Galveztown in present-day
Ascension Parish, also founded in 1779--see T. Hébert in <acadian-cajun.com>
for an example of this confusion.
Galveztown lay 15 miles southeast of the Acadian community of St.-Gabriel in a
district also called Manchac & was abandoned in the early 1800s. The
site of Galveztown lies on the south bank of the Amite River across from present-day Port Vincent, Livingston Parish. Nueva Gálvez, on the other hand, survived & even
thrived as a community, & today is known as St. Bernard.
Why is Nueva Gálvez not even mentioned in Brasseaux,
Founding
of New Acadia? Was the community that obscure? It was
certainly the smallest of the Acadian communities created in the 20 years
between 1765 & 1785. Din, cited above, on 55, says that 75 Acadians,
"many of them passengers on the ships Amistad and Carolina,
settled on the Mississippi's left bank below New Orleans." I have
counted only 50 passengers from L'Amitié & La Caroline who
likely went to St. Bernard in 1785, & several of them were not Acadians but
French spouses of Acadians. See
Appendix.
Din's 75 Acadians is from the official Spanish report of 1786, which can be
found in <thecajuns.com/1785acad.pdf>.
Note that the official Spanish report differentiates Nueva Gálvez from the
"Manchac Coast," near where Galveztown was located.
18. This larger number of families compared to the official number sent over on the
7 Ships reflects the many marriages & thus the creation of new families
at New Orleans soon after the ships arrived. It also reflects the
generosity of the Spanish authorities, particularly of Intendant NAVARRO, in
granting head-of-family status to Acadians who arrived in LA ahead of other
members of their families. Winzerling, Acadian Odyssey, 142,
writes: "NAVARRO did all in his power to reunite families and
relatives. Many Acadians became separated from one another in their haste
to be among the first to leave for Louisiana. When Spain's humane
treatment of the exiles in Louisiana was learned abroad, family heads would make
any sacrifice to leave France as fast as possible in order to be among the first
to receive Spain's grant of arable land in Louisiana. As a consequence
[Manuel] D'ASPRES [the Spanish consul at St.-Malo, who essentially organized the
embarkation of the Acadians in France] reported that there was considerable
confusion at times among the Acadians awaiting transportation. They knew
that ultimately they would find their respective families, but until then the
loneliness was heavy, and eagerness to get settled made it all the more
so. To heal all wounds NAVARRO granted these lonesome persons the rights
of family head, which meant a subsidy of ten cents [per day] instead of seven
and a half cents."
19. Here is another story of Acadian fortitude & determination. Joseph
GRAVOIS of Chignecto somehow ended up in France via VA & England. He married
fellow Acadian Marie-Madeleine BOURG at St.-Suliac, near St.-Malo, France, in
Aug 1763 & fathered at least 8
children by her, 2 sons & 6 daughters. Joseph was a mariner.
From the late 1760s to the mid-1780s, he took his family to England, to Baie
St.-Marie in Nova Scotia, to Carleton, Quebec, on the northern shore of the Baie
des Chaleurs, and, finally, to the French-controlled island of Île St.-Pierre,
off the southern coast of Newfoundland. Dissatisfied with conditions on the desolate,
wind-swept, crowded island, Joseph secured command of the schooner Brigitte, filled it
with 17 of his kinsmen, including his wife & 8 children, received permission
from French authorities to go, left Île St.-Pierre
on 16 Oct 1788, & reached the mouth of the Mississippi at La Balize nearly 2
months later. "Armed with a passport from Ygnacio BALDERAS, a Spanish
official they encountered, they ascended the Mississippi to New Orleans and
evidently secured permission to join relatives in present-day Ascension
Parish." According to Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux, this small party of
Acadians was the only group "known to have migrated to Louisiana from
Canada after the first migration (1764-1770)." See Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia,
105. For the GRAVOIS's association with Chignecto & St.-Malo, see
Arsenault, Généalogie, 2498-99; BRDR, 2:298-99, 333-34. Why
doesn't the GRAVOIS family appear in the Ascension census of 1791? See
Robichaux, Bayou Lafourche, 1770-98. See
Appendix
for a list of names in the GRAVOIS party. Dr. Carl A. Brasseux in his essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>,
says there were 19 Acadians in this party, while in Founding of New Acadia,
208, he lists 18, followed here. The missing person was family head Joseph
BABIN, who died before the Brigite left St.-Pierre. The excellent
chronology of Le Grand Dérangement compiled by Paul Delaney in <acadian-home.org>,
states, under the heading of 6 Oct 1788, that "Joseph GRAVOIS & Joseph BABIN and
their families (19 people) are authorized to leave Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon to
go to Louisiana." And so they did.
21. Wall of Names,
1, says that Acadian immigrants came to LA as late as 1813, but the vast
majority of the nearly 2,900 Acadians who found refuge in LA had reached
the colony by the end of 1785.
22. Dr. Brasseaux, in his
essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>,
says: "An undetermined number of Acadians were undoubtedly among the
approximately 10,000 refugees from Saint-Domingue who arrived en masse in New
Orleans in the summer and fall of 1809. The evidence indicates, however,
that these latter-day Acadian immigrants had already lost much of their ethnic
identity and, when forced by circumstances to remain in New Orleans, they were
quickly absorbed into the Crescent City's flourishing Creole community."
I have documented very few Acadian immigrants who came to LA in the early
1800s. See
Appendix.
23. See Paul Delaney's
"The Chronology of the Deportations and Migrations of the Acadians
1755-1816," in <acadian-home.org>.
I have not found a list of these 38 Acadians. Perhaps their names can be
found in my
Appendix
entitled "Undetermined Acadian Arrivals," but good luck figuring out
which ones they are.