Acadian Expulsion II: Exile brings my 5th great grandparents together

It was a clear fall day in Port Royal, L’Acadie (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) when Anne Doucet age five , my 5^th great grandmother, stood on the deck of the ship that would take her, her parents Jean Doucet and Anne Bourg and her two younger siblings Joseph three and Jean Baptiste less than one year old, away from all that was dear and familiar to them. Did she stand tall straining to see over the rail as their world went up in smoke? Did she tearfully cling to her mother’s skirts as her parents held her younger siblings? Little did she know that day what more changes would come in her young life. Oddly enough if her family had not been exiled she probably would never have met her future husband Charles Dupuis, age 9, who was being deported from Grand Pre the same year.  Exiles they would be brought together by fate in the British colony of Connecticut. There they would exchange wedding vows about 8 years from now.

The ship, possibly the Experiment, was bound for New York under a British order expelling over 6,000 Acadians from their home which they had occupied for over 150 years. They were being scattered all over the British colonies in North America and the Antilles. For some reason this ship stopped in St. Christophe, an island in the Antilles held by the British. There her father Jean would die of the chicken pox at age about 30. Her mother would continue with her small children to New York and eventually Connecticut where she met and married another deportee, Joseph Herbert who  had lost his spouse Madeleine Dupuis, sister of Charles Dupuis my 4^th great grandfather. Anne is listed with him there in 1763 and their combined family of nine children. By the time they would be free to leave exile Joseph Herbert and wife Anne would have five more children. Did Charles and Anne meet when Joseph and her mother married and there were relatives of his first wife in attendance? Charles Dupuis, an orphan, was also living in Connecticut with his brother Simon-Pierre and his family. Connecticut was more prepared and hospitable to the deportees and the legislature made provisions for the Acadians of whom 700 eventually wound up on their shore.

They were civilians caught up in Le Grand Derangement – the Great Expulsion of neutral Acadians during what is called in North America, the French and Indian War and in Europe, the Seven Years War. They had lived under British rule since before Anne and her parents were born. (See my blog Acadian Expulsion I for explanation of the reasons for the expulsion and the story of Charles and his 10 siblings)  

The British victory in the  battle on the Plains of Abraham, near Quebec City, in 1759 and the treaty  of 1763 gave the refugees from L’Acadie another hard choice. There was little possibility of returning to their farms confiscated and given to British settlers. A few stayed in the colony to which they had been deported but most sought to find more culturally congenial places to live. Those deported to England where conditions were harsh asked to be sent to France. There was a promise of land but the French King failed them and most left again to immigrate to a new territory. Louisiana had passed from French to Spanish rule by 1762 and the Spanish were welcoming to new settlers especially Catholics. The first Acadians arrived in Louisiana in April 1764 and a flood would follow them as news got back about the area. Some who went to the Caribbean to the island of Dominique, French territory eventually wound up in Louisiana.

Charles and Anne exchanged their wedding vows privately before two witnesses around July of 1768 in Connecticut, since there was no priest present to witness their marriage. Perhaps they  were already preparing to go back together to Canada. Daughter Marie Anne would be the only of their 11 children born in Connecticut. Nine months later, in the parish church of Laprairie in the Richelieu valley south of Montreal, they renewed those vows in April 1769. Charles was the only one of his siblings who would return to Canada – perhaps because of his marriage to Anne as most of the Herberts would return to this area as well as her mother and step-father Joseph Herbert and her half siblings. Only Anne’s brother Joseph appears to have decided to follow other Acadians south, perhaps via the Isle of Dominique to finally settle in Louisiana. In 1772 at age 20 he marries Anne Landry, a fellow Acadian,  in St. Martinsville, Louisiana and they settle and raise a family in Opelousas where he dies in 1803.  Jean Baptiste disappears from the records and may have died during the expulsion or while in Connecticut. In a list of Connecticut residents in 1763 Joseph Herbert and second wife Anne Bourg are listed with nine children only, Jean Baptiste would have made 10 if he was still alive.

Anne Doucet’s family now merged with that of Joseph Herbert decided to return to French speaking lower Canada (now under British rule) and settle in the Richelieu valley and join her daughter and her husband. There was no hope of returning to L'Acadie and reclaiming confiscated lands. They probably were homesick for their own language, customs and religious tradition. They arrived in 1774 when her mother’s 1762 second marriage in Connecticut was blessed in the church of Laprairie.  They brought five small children born in Connecticut between 1763 and 1773 which may account for their longer stay in Connecticut. Did tensions between the American and their British rulers influence their move?Joseph died six years after they had their marriage blessed and recorded in the parish records. Members of Joseph’s family including his father had settled in Laprairie area after 1763.

Charles Dupuis and Anne Doucet would have  10 more children in Lacadie and in Laprairie where they moved in the 1780's. Anne died 10 days after giving birth to their youngest child in 1790 and Charles in 1798. Both are buried in Lacadie. They never saw Salome their  granddaughter my 2nd great grandmother born there to their son Antoine and his wife Josephte Montminy in 1822.