APPENDICES

Acadians Who Found Refuge in Louisiana, February 1764-early 1800s

AROSTEGUY

[ah-ROS-teh-gee]

ACADIA

Pierre Arostey or Arosteguy came to Acadia probably from Bayonne, Gascogne, France, by May 1737, when he married Marie, daughter of Charles Robichaux dit Cadet, at Grand-Pré.  He moved his family to Beauséjour in the Chignecto area of Acadia.  

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

The fate of most Chignecto Acadians was exile to Georgia and South Carolina in the fall of 1755.  Some families, however, managed to elude the British roundup at Chignecto and fled north to the St. Lawrence Valley or into the woods of present-day western New Brunswick. ...

LOUISIANA:  RIVER SETTLEMENTS

Six members of this family, including Pierre, Marie, their son Jean, and their daughters Anne, Marguerite, and Marie-Théotiste, found refuge in Louisiana in 1765 and were therefore among the early Acadian immigrants in the colony.  Another Pierre Arosteguy, probably Pierre's son, and his wife Isabelle Comeaux also reached Louisiana and were living in New Orleans in August of that year. ...

CONCLUSION

The family's name also is spelled Apostey, Arostegui, Arostegy.

Sources:  AGE, October 2004, 64; BRDR, 1a:10; NOAR, 2:6, 7, 40; White, DGFA-1, 1405.

Settlement Abbreviations 
(present-day parishes that existed during the War Between the States in parenthesis; hyperlinks on the abbreviations take you to brief histories of each settlement):

For a chronology of Acadian Arrivals in Louisiana, 1764-early 1800s, see Appendix.

The hyperlink attached to an individual's name is connected to a list of Acadian immigrants for a particular settlement and provides a different perspective on the refugee's place in family and community. 

NOTES

01.  Wall of Names, 9, calls her Anne AROSTEGUY; NOAR, 2:6, 40, her marriage record, calls her Anne AROSTELY, native of Beauséjour in Acadia, Diocese of Quebec, gives her parents' names, his parents' names, his place of birth & current employment, & says the witness to her marriage was Pierre ROCHE.  Because she married Bernard so soon after her family reached LA, did she go to Cabanoce/St.-Jacques at all?  Maybe not.  As a senior ship's surgeon, he would have been better located to practice his profession in New Orleans, the colony's major port, not in a remote upriver settlement like Cabanoce/St.-Jacques.  

But there is a mystery here:  Nearly a decade later, beginning in Jun 1775, the name Bernard CAPDEVILLE begins to appear in the church records of St.-Gabriel community, which was even farther removed from the port of New Orleans than St.-Jacques!  See BRDR, 2:174-75.  However, in these birth/baptismal records, Bernard's wife is called Anne CLOITRE/CLOATRE/CLOUATRE, not AROSTELY/AROSTEGUY.  Did Bernard remarry, or is the Anne CLOUATRE in the church records actually Anne AROSTEGUY?  An Anne CLOUATRE, daughter of Pierre CLOISTRE dit CLOUATRE & Marguerite LEBLANC, came to LA in Feb 1768, age 22,  & settled with her widowed mother & siblings at Fort St.-Luis de Natchez.  Most of the Natchez Acadians left that remote settlement a couple of years later & moved to Acadian communities downriver, including St.-Gabriel.  The ARSOTEGUYs were from Chignecto, the CLOUATREs from Minas.  I would venture to guess that these were different women.  Bernard died at St.-Gabriel, age 77, in Sep 1800.  His death/burial record calls his parents Antonio CAPDEVILLE & Catalina COUSAN of Martasi, France, so this is the same fellow, but the record unfortunately says nothing of his wives.  See BRDR, 2:174.  If the age given for him in the burial record is correct, he would have been born c1723.  This means he would have been about age 43 when he married Anne AROSTEGUY in New Orleans in early 1766.  Ship's surgeon or not, he probably was a widower when he married her, though the church record in New Orleans says nothing of a previous wife.  

02.  Wall of Names, 9, calls him Jean AROSTEGUY.  See also Bourgeois, Cabanocey, 161; Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 114, 426.

03.  Wall of Names, 9, calls her Marguerite AROSTEGUY.  See also Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 115, 426.  She could have been the girl in the household of either of the Pierre AROSTEGUYs at Cabanoce in 1766, one her father, the other probably an older brother. 

04.  Not in Wall of Names, 9, with the rest of her family because of the circumstance of her birth.  She is on this list because she was in utero when her mother reached LA.  See NOAR, 2:7, her birth/baptismal record, which calls her Marie-Rose AROSTHY, gives the names of her parents, calls her father "Acadian, resident [of New Orleans at the time]," & says her godparents were Jean DUGUAS, "resident [of New Orleans at the time]," & Agnes HEBERT.  The birth of this child is proof positive that the family reached LA in 1765 with the refugees from Halifax via St.-Domingue.  Too bad the St. Louis Church priest did not record the baby's grandparents, too.

05.  Wall of Names, 9, calls her Marie-Théotiste AROSTEGUY; NOAR, 2:245, her marriage record, calls her Marie-Théotiste ROSTOGUI, dates the marriage as "cir." 10 Jan 1768, & does not give any parents' names.  See also Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 115, 426.  She could have been the girl in the household of either of the Pierre AROSTEGUYs at Cabanocé in 1766, one her father, the other probably an older brother. 

06.  Wall of Names, 9, calls him Pierre AROSTEGUY; AGE, October 2004, 64, calls him Pierre APOSTEY (AROSTEGUI, AROSEGY), & says he was from the diocese of Bayonne in Gascogne, followed here; BRDR, 1a:10, his marriage record, calls him Pierre AROSTEY, gives his & his wife's age at the time of marriage, the names of their parents, the home diocese in France of his parents, & says the witnesses to their marriage were Jean ROBICHAUT (brother of the bride, who made his x), Joseph ROBICHAUT (brother of the bride, who made his x), Ambroise BOURG (who made his x), & Jean LEBER (who signed, indicating literacy), also the bride & groom made their xs.  I have not found the AROSTEGUY family in Arsenault, Généalogie; White, DGFA-1, 1405, gives his name & the names of his parents in the profile of his wife Marie ROBICHAUD.  His marriage record proves conclusively that he was Acadian, which is why he & his family were listed with the Acadians in the Cabanoce census of 1766 & called Acadians in the Spanish report of Jul 1767.  See Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 114-15, 426.  

There are so many questions about this fellow & his family:  What was his relationship with the other Pierre AROSTEGUY who arrived in LA in 1765?  I would guess father & son.  When did the elder Pierre reach Acadia?  My guess would be sometime in the 1730s.  What was his profession?  What compelled him to leave France & settle in a British-occupied colony?  Why were his 3 unmarried children at New Orleans, not Cabanoce, in Jul 1767?  Had Pierre & Marie died by then, leaving them orphans?

07.  Wall of Names, 9, calls him Pierre AROSTEGUY 2.  See also Bourgeois, Cabanocey, 161; Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 115.  The girl in his household at Cabanoce in 1766 was probably one of the daughters of the other Pierre AROSTEGUY, whom I suspect was his father, so she was probably a younger sister.

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