The Acadian Exiles by Arthur George Doughty (free ebook reader TXT) 📕

became Protestants and gave two ministers to the Presbyterian Church—the Rev. John Lanneau, who afterwards went as a missionary to Jerusalem, and the Rev. Basil Lanneau, who became Hebrew tutor in the Theological Seminary at Columbia.

Among the refugees who put out from Minas on October 13, 1755, were some four hundred and fifty destined for Philadelphia. The vessels touched Delaware on November 20, when it was discovered that there were several cases of smallpox on board, and the masters were ordered to leave the shore. They were not permitted to land at Philadelphia until the 10th of December. Many of the exiles died during the winter, and were buried in the cemetery of the poor which now forms a part of Washington Park, Philadelphia. The survivors were lodged in a poor quarter of the town, in 'neutral huts,' as their mean dwellings were termed. When the plague-stricken people arrived, Philadelphia had scarcely recovered from the panic of a recent earthquake. Moreover, there was a letter, said to have been written by Lawrence, dated at Halifax, August 6, and published in the Philadelphia Gazette on September 4, not calculated to place the destitute refugees in a favourable light. This is the substance of the letter: We are now forming the noble project of driving the French Neutrals out of this province. They have long been our secret enemies and have assisted the Indians. If we are able to accomplish their expulsion, it will be one of the great achievements of the English in America, for, among other considerations, the lands which they occupy are among the best in the country, and we can place good English farmers in their stead. A few days later another letter was published to the effect that three Acadians had been arrested charged with poisoning the wells in the vicinity of Halifax. Their trial, it was stated, had not yet taken place; but if guilty they would have but a few hours to live.

Robert Hunter Morris, the governor at this time of Pennsylvania, wrote to Shirley of Massachusetts saying that, as he had not sufficient troops to enforce order, he feared that the Acadians would unite with the Irish and German Catholics in a conspiracy against the state. He also addressed the governor of New Jersey [Footnote: Jonathan Belcher, governor of New Jersey and later of Massachusetts. He was the father of the chief justice of Nova Scotia.] to the same effect. The governor of New Jersey, in his reply, expressed surprise that those who planned to send the French Neutrals, or rather rebels and traitors to the British crown, had not realized that there were already too many strangers for the peace and security of the colonies: that they should have been sent to Old France. He was quite in accord with Morris in believing there was a danger of the people joining the Irish Papists in an attempt to ruin and destroy the king's colonies.

The Acadians had arrived at Philadelphia in a most deplorable condition. One of the Quakers who visited the boats while they were in quarantine reported that they were without shirts and socks and were sadly in need of bed-clothing. A petition to the governor, giving an account of their conduct in Acadia and of the treatment they had received, fell on deaf ears. An act was passed for their dispersion in the counties of Bucks, Lancaster, and Chester. The refugees, however, were not without friends. To several Quakers they were indebted for many acts of kindness and generosity.

Among those deported to Philadelphia was one of the Le Blanc family, a boy of seventeen, Charles Le Blanc. Early in life he engaged in commerce, and in the course of a long and successful career in Philadelphia amassed an enormous fortune, including large estates in the colonies and in Canada. After his death in 1816 there were many claimants to his estate, and the litigation over it is not yet ended.

The Acadians taken to New York were evidently as poor as their fellow-refugees at Philadelphia. An Act of July 6, 1756, recites that 'a certain number have been received into this colony, poor, naked, and destitute of every convenience and support of life, and, to the end that they may not continue as they now really are, useless to His Majesty, to themselves, and a burthen to this colony, be it enacted … that the Justices of the Peace … be required and empowered to bind with respectable families such as are not arrived at the age of twenty-one years, for such a space of time as they may think proper.' The justices were to make the most favourable contracts for them, and when their term of service expired, they were to be paid either in implements of trade, clothing, or other gratuity.

In the month of August 1756 one hundred and ten sturdy Acadian boys and girls made their appearance in New York. They had travelled all the way from Georgia in the hope of finding means to return to Acadia. Great was their disappointment when they were seized by the authorities and placed out to service. Later some of the parents straggled in, but they were dispersed immediately in Orange and Westchester counties, and some on Long Island, in charge of a constable. The New York Mercury of July 1757 reported that a number of the neutrals had been captured near Fort Edward while on their way to Crown Point. Between the arrival of the first detachment in New York and the month of August 1757 the colony was compelled to provide for large numbers who came in from distant places. To prevent any further escape the sheriffs were commanded to secure all the Acadians, except women and children, in the county gaol.

At a later date these unfortunates were put to a strange use. Sir Harry Moore, governor of the colony of New York (1765-69), had designs upon the French colony at Santo Domingo, in the West Indies, and desired plans of the town and its fortifications. So he entered into correspondence with the French Admiral, Count d'Estaing, offering to transport thither seventy Acadian families in order that they might live under the French flag. The count accepted the offer and issued a proclamation to the Acadians inviting them to Santo Domingo. Moore had arranged that John Hanson should conduct the exiles to their new home. Hanson, on arriving at the French colony, was to take a contract to build houses and make out the desired military plans while so engaged. He succeeded in transporting the Acadians, but failed in the real object of his mission. He was not allowed the liberty of building houses in Santo Domingo. The Acadians who went to the West Indies suffered greatly. The tropical climate proved disastrous to men and women who had been reared in the atmosphere of the Bay of Fundy. They crawled under trees and shrubs to escape the fierce rays of the sun. Numbers of them perished and life became a burden to the others.

Far different was the lot of the Acadians who were sent to Maryland. [Footnote: The Maryland Gazette, Annapolis, December 4, 1755, said: 'Sunday last [November 30] arrived here the last of the vessels from Nova Scotia with French Neutrals for this place, which makes four within this fortnight bringing upwards of nine hundred of them. As the poor people have been deprived of their settlements in Nova Scotia, and sent here for some political reason bare and destitute, Christian charity, nay, common humanity, calls on every one according to his ability to lend assistance and to help these objects of compassion.'] There they were kindly received and found, no doubt, a happier lot than in any of the other colonies. Those landed at Baltimore were at first lodged in private houses and in a building belonging to a Mr Fotherall, where they had a little chapel. And it was not long before the frugal and industrious exiles were able to construct small but comfortable houses of their own on South Charles Street, giving to that quarter of the city the name of French Town. Many of them found employment on the waterside and in navigation. The old and infirm picked oakum.

Massachusetts at one time counted in the colony a thousand and forty of the exiles, but all these had not come direct on the ships from Nova Scotia. Many of them had wandered in from other colonies. The people of Massachusetts loved not Catholics and Frenchmen; nevertheless, in some instances they received the refugees with especial kindness. At Worcester a small tract of land was set aside for the Acadians to cultivate, with permission to hunt deer at all seasons. The able-bodied men and women toiled in the fields as reapers, and added to their income in the evening by making wooden implements. The Acadians were truly primitive in their methods. 'Although,' says a writer of the time, 'they tilled the soil they kept no animals for labour. The young men drew their material for fencing with thongs of sinew, and they turned the earth with a spade. The slightest allusion to their native land drew forth tears and many of the aged died of a broken heart.'

As French Neutrals began to come into Boston from other towns, the selectmen of that city protested vigorously and passed the people on to outlying parishes, promising, however, to be responsible for their maintenance should they become a public charge. Several instances are recorded of children being sent to join their parents. A certain number were confined in the workhouse and in the provincial hospital. But on December 6, 1760, the authorities gave instructions for the hospital to be cleared to make room for the colonial troops who were returning home, many of them suffering from contagious diseases; and the Acadians were forthwith turned out.

Although none of the Acadians appear to have been sent direct to Louisiana, large numbers of them found their way thither from various places, especially from Virginia, where they were not allowed to remain. Finding in Louisiana men speaking their own tongue, they felt a sense of security, and gradually settled down with a degree of contentment. There are to-day in various parishes of the state of Louisiana many thousand Acadian-Americans.

Of the Acadians who succeeded in escaping deportation and went into voluntary exile, many sought shelter in New Brunswick, on the rivers Petitcodiac, Memramcook, Buctouche, Richibucto, and Miramichi, and along Chaleur Bay. The largest of the settlements so formed was the one on the Miramichi, at Pierre Beaubair's seigneury, where the village of Nelson now stands. For several years these refugees in New Brunswick bravely struggled against hardship, disease, and starvation; but in the late autumn of 1759 the several settlements sent deputies to Colonel Frye at Fort Cumberland, asking on what terms they would be received back to Nova Scotia. Frye took a number of them into the fort for the winter, and presented their case to Lawrence. It was decided to accept their submission and supply them with provisions. But when the people returned they were held as vassals; and many of them afterwards were either sent out of the province to France or England, or left it voluntarily for St Pierre and Miquelon or the West Indies.

Other fugitives of 1755, fifteen hundred, according to one authority, [Footnote: Placide Gaudet, 'Acadian Genealogy and Notes,' Canadian Archives Report, 1905. vol. ii, part iii, Appendix A, p. xv.] succeeded in reaching Quebec. Here their lot was a hard one. Bigot and his myrmidons plundered everybody, and the starving Acadians did not escape. They had managed to bring with them a little money and a few household treasures, of which they were soon robbed. For a time they were each allowed but four ounces of bread a day, and were reduced, it is said, to searching the gutters for food. To add to their miseries smallpox broke out among them and many perished from the disease. After Quebec surrendered and the victorious British army entered the gates, some two hundred of them, under the leadership of a priest, Father Coquart, who apparently had a passport from General Murray, marched through the wilderness to the headwaters of the St John and went down to Fort Frederick at the mouth of that river. Colonel Arbuthnot, the British commandant there, treated them generously. In 1761, however, many Acadians at the St John were seized and deported to Halifax, where they were held as prisoners of war, but were provided with rations and given 'good wages for road-making.' [Footnote: MacMechan in Canada and its Provinces, vol. xiii, p. 115.] Of those who escaped this deportation, some established themselves on the Kennebecasis river and some went up the St John to St Anne's, now Fredericton. But even here the Acadians were not to have a permanent home. Twenty years later, when the war of the Revolution ended and land was needed for the king's disbanded soldiers, the lands of the Acadians were seized. Once more the unfortunate people sought new homes, and found them at last along the banks of Chaleur Bay and of the Madawaska, where thousands of their descendants now rudely cultivate the fields and live happy, contented lives.

The deportation did not bring