APPENDICES

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

CHAILLOU

[SHAY-loo]

ACADIA

Jeanne Chaillou, born in c1733, married Jean-Baptiste, son of Abraham Bourg le jeune and Marie Dugas, on Île St.-Pierre, a French-controlled island off the southern coast of Newfoundland, in October 1763.  Their daughter Marie-Geneviève was born on nearby Île Miquelon in c1767.  

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

Soon after Marie-Geneviève's birth, French authorities determined that Îles St.-Pierre and Miquelon were overcrowded and that the Acadian refugees there must be transported to France.  The first of them left in early October 1767 and landed in the ports of St.-Malo, Brest, Lorient, and Rochefort.  More followed in November.  Jean-Baptiste Bourg, Jeanne Chaillou, and their daughter evidently were among the deportees. 

Three more children, all sons, were born to Jean-Baptiste and Jeanne in France--Jean-Baptiste, fils at La Rochelle in c1769, André in c1771, and Charles at Monthoiron in the Poitou region in January 1775. 

The family's presence in Poitou in the early 1770s reveals that it was part of the major Acadian settlement scheme near the city of Châtellerault.  In March 1776, after the venture failed, Jean-Baptiste, Jeanne, and their children retreated with other Poitou Acadians to the port city of Nantes, where they subsisted on government handouts and on what work they could find.  By the time Spanish authorities counted Jeanne and her four children at Nantes in September 1784, Jean-Baptiste, père, was dead.  

In the early 1780s, the Spanish government offered the Acadians in France a chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana.  Jeanne Chaillou and her children agreed to take it.  

LOUISIANA:  LAFOURCHE VALLEY SETTLEMENTS

Jeanne Chaillou sailed to Louisiana aboard La Bergère, the second of the Seven Ships, which reached New Orleans in August 1785.  With her were her four Bourg children:  Marie-Geneviève, age 18, and Jean-Baptiste, age 16, André, age 14, and Charles, age 10.  They followed the majority of their fellow passengers to upper Bayou Lafourche.  Jeanne died probably in the early 1790s, in her late 50s or early 60s.  Her daughter and two of her sons created families of their own along the bayou. 

CONCLUSION

Jeanne, widow of Jean-Baptiste Bourg, was the only Acadian Chaillou to go to Louisiana.  The Acadian branch of this family, then, except for its blood, did not survive in the Bayou State.

The family's name also is spelled Chaillon, Chaillot, Chaillou, Chaillout, Chalou, Challu, Chellon.

Sources:  [see below]

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, 29 (pl. 7L), calls her CHELLON veuve BOURG, & lists her with 4 children; Robichaux, Acadians in Châtellerault, 21-22, Family No. 44, calls her Jeanne CHAILLOU, says she was born in c1733 but gives no place of birth, does not give her parents' names, says she married Jean BOURG in c1762 but gives no place of marriage, & details the family's participation in the Poitou settlement of the early 1770s; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 16-17, calls her CHELLON, veuve BOURG, age 56, on the embarkation list, Jeanne CHELLON, on the debarkation list, & Jeanne CHELLON, widow BOURG, age 56, on the complete listing, says she was in the 24th Family aboard La Bergère with 3 children, details her marriage, calls her husband Jean BOURG, gives her & her husband's parents' names but not the location of their marriage, says son Charles was born in 1775 but gives no birthplace, lists the implements the Spanish gave to her & her family after they reached LA, & details her son Charles's marriage in LA.  See also Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 489; Robichaux, Bayou Lafourche, 1770-98, 40, 172.  

Her & her husband's full names also can be found in son Charles's marriage record in BRDR, 2:120 (ASM-2, 24), which spells her family name CHAILLOU.  The marriage record of their son Jean-Baptiste in BRDR, 2:123 (ASC-2, 54), spells her family name CHALOU.  The marriage record of their daughter Marie in NOAR, 4:38 (SLC, M5, 41), spells her family name CHALLU.  The baptismal record of one of their granddaughters, Juana [Jeanne] MOULARD, in BRDR, 2:559-60 (ASM-1, 88), spells her family name CHAILLOUT.  

According to the marriage record in NOAR, cited above, Jeanne's daughter Marie-Geneviève BOURG was born on Miquelon (c1767, according to other sources).  Although none of the spellings of Jeanne's surname are in either Arsenault, Généalogie, or White, DGFA-1, the fact that her daughter Marie was born on Île Miquelon, which was part of greater Acadia, makes Jeanne an Acadian.  Unfortunately, Marie's marriage record & all of the other church records cited above do not give the names of Jeanne CHAILLOU's parents. 

Note that Jean-Pierre LIRETTE, husband of Acadian Marie-Madeleine DAREMBOURG, who also came to LA in 1785 aboard one of the Seven Ships, was the son of François LIRETTE & Michaela CHAILLOU of Nantes, France.  See BRDR, 2:504.  Was Michaela kin to Jeanne?

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Copyright (c) 2007-12  Steven A. Cormier