APPENDICES

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

COUSIN

[koo-ZANH, KOO-zan]

ACADIA

Francois Cousin married Isabelle Lafont of St.-André, Bordeaux, France, in c1690, probably at Plaisance, Newfoundland.  They had only two children, a daughter and another child whose gender has not been determined.  Francois died probably at Plaisance by September 1710, when Isabelle remarried.

Jean Cousin, son of Guy Cousin of Dol, Brittany, France, probably no kin to Francois, was born in Brittany in c1716.  He reached Acadia by the fall of 1737, when he married Judith, daughter of Paul Guidry and Anne Mius d'Azit, at Port-Royal.  Jean and Judith settled at Ministigueshe, near Cap-Sable, where their daughter Marie-Blanche was born in c1748.  

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

During Le Grand Dérangement, the British deported Jean Cousin and his family to France.  In c1768, Marie-Blanche married Michel Doucet probably at Le Havre.  In the early 1770s, the couple and three of their children were part of the attempt by French officials to establish an Acadian settlement in the Poitou region at La Leigne-les-bois, near Châtellerault.  When the venture failed, the Doucets retreated to the port city of Nantes with dozens of other Poitou Acadians.  

In the early 1780s, the Spanish government offered the Acadians in France the chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana.  Michel and Marie-Blanche jumped at the chance, but they almost did not make it.  They booked passage aboard L'Amitié, the fifth of the Seven Ships of 1785, but for some reason they did not cross onthat vessel.  

LOUISIANA:  RIVER SETTLEMENTS

Marie-Blanche Cousin, age 37, her husband Michel Doucet, age 45, and three of their children crossed to Louisiana aboard La Caroline, the last of the Seven Ships of 1785, which did not reach New Orleans until December of that year.  They chose to settle with a few other passengers from La Caroline in a community called Nueva Gálvez or San Bernardo, in what is now St. Bernard Parish, below New Orleans.  San Bernardo had been settled by Islenos from the Canary Islands six years before, and the population of the settlement remained largely Islenos even after a dozen Acadian families settled there.  

CONCLUSION

Since Marie-Blanche was the only member of her family to reach Louisiana, the Cousins of the Bayou State are not Acadians but French Creoles or Foreign French.  Only her family's blood survived in her children fathered by Michel Doucet.  

Sources:  Arsenault, Généalogie, 1593; Robichaux, Acadians in Chatellerault, 36-37; Robichaux, Acadians in Nantes, 58; Voorhies, J. Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 505; White, DGFA-1, 427-28; White, DGFA-1 English, 95.

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, 46 (pl. 12R), calls her Marie-Blanche COUSIN, & lists her with her husband & 3 children; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 70-71, calls her Marie-Blanche COUSIN, sa [Michel DOUCET's] femme, age 37, on the embarkation list, does not include her on the debarkation list, calls her Marie-Blanche COUSIN, his [Michel DOUCET's] wife, age 37, on the complete listing, says she was in the 25th Family aboard L'Amitié with her husband & 3 children, details her marriage, including her but not her husband's parents' names, & says she & her husband were married in 1768 but gives no place of marriage.  

As the debarkation list of L'Amitié & the embarkation/debarkation lists of La Caroline reveal, she & her family sailed to LA on the later ship, not the earlier one.  Her going to San Bernardo is only a guess based on the fact that she is not in the census records at Ascension & the Lafourche valley in the 1780s & 1790s with other passengers from her ship & that some passengers from her ship went to "Nueva Galvez."  See <thecajuns.com/1785acad.pdf>.  

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Copyright (c) 2007-08  Steven A. Cormier