APPENDICES

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

BELLIVEAU

[BELL-ih-voh]

ACADIA

Antoine Belliveau, a laborer perhaps from La Chaussée, near Blois, in the Orleanais region of the Loire valley in France, arrived in Acadia by 1645 and married Andrée Guyon at Port-Royal in c1651.  Their daughter married into the Bourgeois family.  Their only son, Jean, born at Port-Royal in c1652, became a carpenter as well as a farmer.  He married twice, first to Jeanne, daughter of Antoine Bourg, at Port-Royal in c1673, and settled on the north shore of Rivière-au-Dauphin, today's Annapolis River, below Port-Royal.  He also owned land at Chignecto in 1701.  Jean and Jeanne had four children.  Their daughter married into the Boudrot family.  Their three sons, all born at Port-Royal, created families of their own:

Oldest son Jean, fils, born in c1674, married Madeleine, daughter of Charles Melanson, at Port-Royal in c1696.  They had five children, including three sons who married into the Granger and Gaudet families. Their daughter married into the Landry family.  Jean, fils died at Port-Royal in c1707.  

Charles dit Bideau, born in c1678, married Marie, sister of his older brother's wife Madeleine, at Port-Royal in c1698.  They had 13 children, including two sons who married into the Gaudet and Blanchard families.  Five of their daughter married into the Gaudet, Lanoue, and Poirier families. 

Youngest son Antoine dit Blondin, born in c1680, married Marie, daughter of Claude Thériot, at Port-Royal in c1701.  They had nine children, including three sons who married into the Dugas, Gaudet, and Melanson families.  Their three daughter married into the Bourg and Granger families.  Antoine died at Port-Royal in c1740, age 61.  One of his sons, Joseph, the one who married into the Gaudet family, moved to Chignecto.  The others remained at Port-Royal.  

Jean, père remarried to Cécile, daughter of Charles Melanson and widow of Abraham Boudrot, in c1703.  She gave him three more children.  Their two daughters married into the Boudrot, Fougère, and Dugas families.  Their only son created a family of his own:

Louis, born at Port-Royal in c1708, married Louise, daughter of Michel Haché dit Gallant, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, in June 1735. 

In c1721, Jean, père left Port-Royal and took his second wife and their children to Port-Toulouse on Île Royale, now Cape Breton Island, far from the hated British.  He moved to Île St.-Jean in c1728, where he died at Tracadie in the mid-1730s, in his 80s.  Some of his descendants remained on the island, at Port-Lajoie and St.-Pierre-du-Nord.  

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

Le Grand Dérangement of the 1750s scattered this family to the winds.  Some Port-Royal Belliveaus escaped the British roundup in late 1755 and made their way north to Rivière St.-Jean and then across present-day New Brunswick to Restigouche, at the head of  the Baie des Chaleurs.  There they managed to elude a second British roundup in late 1760 and moved even farther north into Québec.  The Port-Royal Belliveaus who fell into British hands in late 1755 were shipped to Massachusetts and North Carolina.  

The British transport sailing from Port-Royal to North Carolina in December 1755, the Pembroke, under command of a Captain Milton and seven officers and crewmen, with 232 Acadians aboard, did not make it to its destination.  The ship fell into the hands of the exiles led by Charles, son of Jean Belliveau, fils.  Charles was a pilot.  He and his compatriots sailed the Pembroke first to Baie Ste.-Marie, on the western shore of Nova Scotia, where they hid for a month, and then crossed the Bay of Fundy to the mouth of Rivière St.-Jean in January.  In early February, they fought off a British attack in the lower St.-Jean, burned the vessel, and retreated upriver to the Acadian settlement at Ste.-Anne-du-Pay-Bas, today's Fredericton, New Brunswick, where they spent the rest of the winter.  That summer, food having run low in the upper St.-Jean settlements, the Belliveaus and other Pembroke passengers made their way north to Québec, while others, including Charles's daughter Marguerite and her husband, surgeon Philippe de St.-Julien Lachaussée, whom she had married on the St.-Jean, went to Miramichi and Restigouche on the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore.  Charles Belliveau died at Québec in early 1758.  

After the French and Indian War finally ended, the Belliveaus exiled to Massachusetts joined their cousins in present-day Québec Province, where they settled at Trois-Rivière; at Bécancour, Maskinongé, St.-Grégoire-de-Nicolet, and Nicolet between Trois-Rivières and Montréal; at St.-Jacques-de-L'Achigan, St.-Sulpice, and L'Assomption near Montréal; and at Grande-Rivière on the southern shore of the Gaspé Peninsula. 

Before Le Grand Dérangement, some of the Belliveaus of Chignecto, including Louis, moved first to St.-Pierre-du-Nord on Île St.-Jean and then to Île Miquelon off the southern coast of Newfoundland.  When Le Grand Dérangement came to Chignecto in the fall of 1755, some of the Belliveaus escaped the British roundup and moved north to the St. Lawrence valley.  At least two Chignecto families were transported to South Carolina, and one ended up in Massachusetts.  After the war ended, Belliveaus could be found not only in Québec, but also at Memramcook in present-day New Brunswick; at Rustico on Prince Edward Island; at Pubnico, Grosse-Coques, Ste.-Anne-du-Ruisseau-de-l'Anguille, and at St.-Bernard and Pointe-de-l'Église, now Church Point, on the Baie Ste.-Marie in Nova Scotia.  One community along the eastern shore of the Baie Ste.-Marie became L'Anse-aux-Belliveau, now Belliveau Cove.  

The few Belliveaus left on Île St.-Jean during Le Grand Dérangement were deported to France after the British captured the French fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758.  One of Louis's daughters, Louise-Félicité, died at La Rochelle in 1779.  

LOUISIANA

Only one Belliveau seems to have made it to Louisiana, Pierre dit Bideau.  Judging by his dit, he was probably a descendant of Charles dit Bideau of Port-Royal, one of Jean, père's sons by his first wife.  The date of Pierre dit Bideau's arrival in Louisiana, where he settled, and who he married, if he married at all, remain a mystery to this researcher.  I have found him only in Wall of Names, in which he is listed singly with the Acadians who came to Louisiana between 1764 and 1785.  A perusal of the church records of the New Orleans, river, and prairie parishes where the first Acadian arrivals settled, turns up no one named Belliveau.  Neither have I found anyone by that name in the censuses listed in this study or on the passenger lists of the Seven Ships of 1785 from France.  So it is safe to say that this old Acadian family, whose descendants up in Canada can be numbered in the thousands and whose blood can be found in so many South Louisiana families, did not establish roots in the Bayou State. 

The family's name also is spelled Beliveau, Belivo, Belyvo.  

Sources:  Arsenault, Généalogie, 408-27, 842-45, 2206-07; Historical Atlas of Canada, 1: plate 29; <landrystuff.com/ExpulsionShips.html>; White, DGFA-1, 96-104; White, DGFA-1 English, 19-20; Milling, Exile Without End, 41-42; Wall of Names, 11. 

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, 11 (1R), calls him Pierre BELLIVEAU dit Bideau, & lists him separately.  I have found him in no other source.

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Copyright (c) 2006-12  Steven A. Cormier