APPENDICES

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

BONNEVIE dit Beaumont

[BAWN-uh-vee]

ACADIA

Jacques Bonnevie dit Beaumont of Paris, a corporal in the King's service, married Francoise, daughter of Philippe Mius d'Entremont, at Port-Royal in c1701.  By 1732, Jacques, age 72, was on  the list of retired disabled veterans of the French army on Île Royale, having served for 17 years and suffered a wound to his thigh, which disabled him.  Jacques and Francoise had five children, including two sons, only one of whom seems to have grown up and started a family of his own:  Jacques dit Jacquot dit Beaumont, born at Port-Royal in c1704, became a blacksmith and married three times, first to Maguerite, daughter of Alexandre Lord, in c1729 probably at Port-Royal, next to Francoise, daughter of Jean Comeau, in c1745, then in c1755 to Anne dite Nannette, daughter of Paul Melanson, and widow of Jacques-Francois Thebeau.  The elder Jacque's children, including Jacques dit Jacquot dit Beaumont, moved to Île St.-Jean, now Prince Edward Island.

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

Since they lived in territory controlled by France, the Bonnevies of Île St.-Jean escaped the British roundup in Nova Scotia in the fall of 1755.  Their respite from British oppression was short-lived, however.  In late 1758, after the fall of the French stronghold at Louisbourg in July, the victorious British rounded up most of the Acadians on Île St.-Jean and deported them to France.  Sadly, two of the old corporal's daughters, Francoise, married to Jean Helie dit Nouvelle (her second husband), and Marie, married to Francois Duguay, never made it to France.  In December 1758, they perished with their husbands and children and dozens of other Acadians aboard the Violet, an English transport that sank in a mid-Atlantic storm on its way to St.-Malo.  

Meanwhile, Jacques dit Jacquot dit Beaumont and his family managed to elude the British roundup in 1758 and fled to Restigouche, at the head of the Baie de Chalours, where they joined other Acadian refugees who had escaped earlier deportations.  Three of Jacques dit Jacquot's children married during the family's stay at Restigouche:  daughter Rose married widower Jean Gousman, an Andalusian sailor who had lived at Port-Royal, in January 1760; son Amand married Catherine Gaudet in July 1760; and son Joseph married Marguerite Haché-Gallant in May 1761.  The British attacked Restigouche in the summer of 1760, and Jacques dit Jacquot, his wife, and five of their children were among the Acadians who fell into British hands when this last French stronghold surrendered.  They were held at Fort Edward, formerly Pigiguit, in Nova Scotia before being transferred to the larger prison at Halifax.  

When the French and Indian War finally ended, the surviving Bonnevies moved from Halifax to the French island of Miquelon, off the southern coast of Newfoundland, but not all of them stayed there.  Some of them moved to Chezzetcook, near Halifax; some to Menoudie in Nova Scotia, near the old Acadian settlement at Chignecto; and others to nearby Cap-Pelé on the western New Brunswick shore.  One of Jacques dit Jacquot's sons, Amand, outdid all his siblings in his wanderings.  He was at Port-Louis, France, in 1768, back on Miquelon later in the year, took his family back to France on the brigantine La Jeanette in November 1778, and died at St.-Servan, near St.-Malo, in c1779.  His widow returned to Miquelon in c1785 then moved on to the Îles-de-la-Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the early 1790s.  Typical of most, if not all, Acadian families, these Acadiennes of Canada lost touch with their Cadien cousins hundreds of miles away, and until the Acadian reunions of the mid-twentieth century, they may even have forgotten the others existed. 

Meanwhile, Rose Bonnevie and her husband Jean Gousman joined other members of her family on the French island of Miquelon after they could leave the prison at Halifax.  They, too, moved to France and were counted at Le Havre in 1772.  But, unlike brother Amand's widow, they remained in France with the hundreds of other Acadians there.  Evidently life in the mother country did not suit them, however, for when the Spanish offered the Acadians in France the chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana, Rose Bonnevie and her husband agreed to take it.  

LOUISIANA:  RIVER SETTLEMENTS

After crossing with their son and daughter aboard L'Amitié, the fifth of the Seven Ships from France, which reached New Orleans in early November, Rose Bonnevie and her husband, Jean Gousman, settled probably downriver from the city at Nueva Gálvez, or San Bernardo, in present-day St. Bernard Parish, an Islenos, or Canary Islander, community, where a number of other families from L'Amitié chose to settle.  ...

CONCLUSION

Since Rose was the only Bonnevie who settled in Louisiana, the Acadian branch of the family, except perhaps for its blood, did not take root there.

The family name also is spelled Bonnery, Bonnevy.

Sources:  Arsenault, Généalogie, 437-41, 1654-55, 2209, 2271; White, DGFA-1, 178-79; White, DGFA-1 English, 37.

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, 39 (pl. 10L), calls her Rose BONNEVY, & lists her with her husband & 2 children; Arsenault, Généalogie, 2209, the Île Miquelon section, calls her Rose BONNEVIE, says she was born in 1743 but gives no birthplace, gives her parents' names, spells her mother's surname LAURE, gives her husband's name but not the date or place of their marriage, says he was from Port-Royal, does not gives his parents' names nor his first wife's name, says she was at Miquelon in 1767, at Le Havre in 1772, & LA in 1785, & lists no children; Robichaux, Acadians in Chatellerault, 45-46, Family No. 89, calls her Rose BONNEVIE, says she was born in c1741 but gives no birthplace, gives her parents' names, details her marriage, including her husband's father' name & his first wife's name, includes the birth/baptismal & death/burial records of daughter Ludivine GOUSMAN, baptized 24 Apr 1774, Cenan, goddaughter of Dominique GIROIRE & Ludivine MOULAISON, died age 17 days & buried 11 Sep 1774, Cenan, & details the family's participation in the Leigne-les-bois settlement in Poitou in the early 1770s; Robichaux, Acadians in Nantes, 71, Family No. 134, calls her Rose BONNEVIE, says that she was born in c1741 but gives no birthplace, gives her parents' names, details her marriage, including her husband's father's name & his first wife's name, included the birth/baptismal record of son Jean-Thomas GOUSMAN, baptized 13 Aug 1783, St.-Martin-de-Chantenay, & details the family's participation in the Leigne-les-bois settlement in Poitou in the early 1770s as well as its voyage to LA in 1785; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 66-67, calls her Rose BONNERY, sa femme [of Jean GUSMAN], age 42, does not include her on the debarkation list, calls her Rose BONNEVIE, his [Jean GOUSMAN's] wife, age 42, on the complete listing, says she was in the 1st Family aboard L'Amitié with her husband & 2 children, &, calling her Rose BONNEVIE, details her marriage, including her & her husband's parents' names, substitutes his first wife's name for his mother's name, & says she married her husband in 1760 but gives no place of marriage.     

Why did she & her husband leave Île Miquelon & move to France in the late 1760s or early 1770s?

She & her husband going to San Bernardo is only a guess based on the fact that they are not in the census records at Ascension & the Lafourche valley in the 1780s & 1790s with other passengers from their ship & that some passengers from their ship went to "Nueva Galvez."  See <thecajuns.com/1785acad.pdf>.  

A note on her family in Acadia:  Arsenault, Généalogie, 438, lists a son Jean of Jacques BONNEVIE dit Beaumont & Francoise MIUS, who is not listed in White, DGFA-1, 178.  White lists a son Charles, younger than Jacques dit Jacquot, but gives no marriage information for Charles, which implies that only Jacques dit Jacquot created a BONNEVIE family in Acadia.  Arsenault's information should always be used with caution, but until Stephen A. White publishes the second installment of his magisterial Dictionnaire Généalogique des Familles Acadiennes, or DGFA-2, covering Acadian marriages from 1715 to 1780, we are stuck with Arsenault and what he gives us.   

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Copyright (c) 2007-08  Steven A. Cormier