APPENDICES

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

DUPLESSIS

[doo-PLEH-see]

ACADIA

Surgeon Claude-Antoine, son of Claude Duplessis and Marie Derivie of St.-Jean de St.-Quentin, Noyons, Picardy, France, was born in France in c1710.  He reached Acadia by September 1736, when he married Catherine, daughter of Pierre Lejeune and widow of Antoine Lanoue, at Grand-Pré, in the Minas Basin; she was 8 years older than him.  In the 1740s, Claude-Antoine moved his family to Chignecto and were there in 1750 when Abbé Le Loutre's Indians burned the villages south of the Rivière Missaguash.  Claude-Antoine and Catherine moved to Port-Lajoie on Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, in the early 1750s probably to escape the chaos at Chignecto.  In 1752, a French official counted the family at St.-Pierre-du-Nord on the island.  Their children were Anastasie-Adélaïde, born at Grand-Pré in June 1737, Marie-Louise in April 1839, and Francois-Marin born probably at Chignecto in c1749.   

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

Living on an island controlled by France, Claude-Antoine Duplessis and his family escaped the British roundup in Nova Scotia during the autumn of 1755.  Their respite from British oppression was short-lived, however.  After the fall of the French fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758, the victorious British rounded up most of the Acadians on Île St.-Jean and deported them to France.  Claude-Antoine, now age 49, Catherine, age 60, Francois-Marin, age 9, and a 16-year-old surgeon's apprentice made the crossing on one of the Five Ships that left the Gut of Canso in late November 1758 and reached St.-Malo in late January 1759.  For some reason, Anastasie-Adélaïde, age 21, was not with them.  

Claude-Antoine and Catherine survived the terrible crossing, but their son died at sea.  The apprentice, Louis La Bore, died in a hospital probably at St.-Malo several months after they reached the port city.  Claude-Antoine and Catherine settled first at Chateauneuf, at the far eastern edge of Brittany, then moved to St.-Suliac, near St.-Malo, in 1762.  A year later, they moved to nearby St.-Servan, where Claude-Antoine died in September 1772; he was 62 years old.  

Meanwhile, Claude-Antoine's younger daughter, Marie-Louise, had married Pierre Gautrot on Île St.-Jean in c1758.  They, too, fell into the hands of the British later that year and were deported to France aboard one of the Five Ships.  Pierre and Marie-Louise survived the crossing, she despite her pregnancy.  Their son Nicolas was born probably at St.-Malo in March 1759, two months after they reached the city, but he died a few months later.  Pierre worked as a farm hand and a carpenter in France.  He and Marie-Louise had at least 10 more children in France--four sons and six daughters, born between 1761 and 1778.  Most of them died young, two of them, ages 9 and 4, when the family was part of the settlement effort in the Poitou region.  French authorities were tired of providing for the Acadians languishing in the port cities.  A French nobleman offered to settle them on some marginal land he owned in Poitou.  In the early 1770s, the Acadians, including Pierre Gautrot and his family, tried mightily to bring to life the rocky soil in this corner of the region.  After two years of failure, the Acadians gave up and demanded to be returned to the port cities.  In December 1775, Pierre, Marie-Louise, four of their children, and Marie-Louise's widowed mother, Catherine Lejeune, retreated from Châtellerault to Nantes with other Acadians who had endured the Poitou disaster.  There they lived as best they could in a mother country that paid little attention to its neglected Acadian children.  

In the early 1780s, the Spanish government offered the Acadians in France a chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana.  Pierre Gautrot and his wife, Marie-Louise Duplessis, agreed to take it.  

LOUISIANA:  LAFOURCHE VALLEY SETTLEMENTS

Pierre Gautreaux and his wife Marie-Louise Duplessis made the journey to Louisiana in the spring and summer of 1785 aboard Le Bergère, the second of the Seven Ships from France.  Only daughter Marguerite-Adélaïde Gautreaux, called Adélaïde, age 9, accompanied them; all of their other children had been buried in France.  They settled on upper Bayou Lafourchye with most of the other passengers from La Bergère.  Daughter Adélaïde married a French Creole, Francois Freoux, whose mother was a Robichaux, at Lafourche in February 1792.  Pierre and Marie-Louise had no other children.  

CONCLUSION

Marie-Louise Duplessis was the only member of her family to come to Louisiana, so, except for its blood, the Acadian branch of this family did not survive in the Bayou State.  The many Duplessiss of South Louisiana are descended from French Creoles or Foreign French, not Acadians.

The family's name is also spelled Duplecy, Duplesix, Duplessy, Duplicy.

Sources:  Arsenault, Généalogie, 1159-60; BRDR, vol. 1a(rev.); <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/5bateaux.htm>, Family Nos. 72, 97; Robichaux, Acadians in Chatellerault, 44; Robichaux, Acadians in Nantes, ; Robichaux, Acadians in St.-Malo, 310-11, 351-53.

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, 30 (pl. 7L), calls her Marie DUPLESSIS, & lists her with her husband & a daughter; Arsenault, Généalogie, 1159-1160, calls her Anne-Louise DUPLESSIS, says she was born in 1739, provides her parents' names, her grandparents' names, the details of her parents' marriage, & the names & birth years of some of her siblings; BRDR, 1a(rev.):67 (SGA-2, 178), her birth/baptismal record, calls her Marie-Louise DUPLECY, gives her parents' names, says her father signed as C. A. DUPLESSIS, & says her godparents were Éstienne LEBLANC & Euphrasine LANOUE; <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/5bateaux.htm>, Family No. 97, shows that in the crossing to St.-Malo in 1758-59, she & her husband, age 27, survived, but their son Nicolas GAUTROT, born 30 Mar 1759 probably at St.-Malo (which means she was pregnant the entire voyage) died 19 Jun 1759 probably from the rigors of the voyage; Robichaux, Acadians in St.-Malo, 310-11, Family No. 374, her birth/baptismal record, calls her Marie-Louise DUPLESSIS, gives her parents' but not her godparents' names, says her father was born in c1710 & her mother in c1702, gives her grandparents' names & her paternal grandparents' home parish in France, says her mother's first husband was Antoine LANOUE, that her parents married on 3 Sep 1736, at "St.-Charles-des-Mines, Acadie," that she was counted at St.-Pierre-du-Nord, Île St.-Jean, in 1752, with her parents & 2 siblings, brother Francois-Marin & sister Anastasie, that she married Pierre GAUTROT in c1758 but gives no place of marriage, that her father & mother survived the crossing to St.-Malo in 1758-59 aboard one of the Five Ships, that her parents resided at Châteauneuf from 1759-62, at St.-Suliac from 1762-63, & at St.-Servan from 1763-72, & that her father died at age 62 on 16 Sep 1772 & was buried next day, St.-Malo; Robichaux, Acadians in St.-Malo, 351-53, Family No. 426, calls her Marie-Louise DUPLESSIS; Robichaux, Acadians in Châtellerault, 44, Family No. 86, calls her Marie-Louise DUPLESSIS, details her birth/baptism, gives her parents' names, says she married in c1758 but gives no place of marriage, does not give her husband's parents' names, says he was born in c1732 but gives no birthplace, that he was a ploughman, provides the birth/baptismal and death/burial records of son Jean-Pierre GAUTROT, born & baptized 11 Aug 1763, St.-Servan, godson of Jean DAIGLE & Marie COVENANCE, died age 11 & buried 18 Sep 1774, St.-Jean-L'Evangeliste, Châtellerault, daughter Marie-Angélique GAUTROT, born 28 Dec 1770, baptized next day, St.-Servan, goddaughter of Alexandre LEMOTHE & Élizabeth LEJEUNE, died age 3 & buried 20 Aug 1774, St.-Jean-L'Evangeliste, Châtellerault, & daughter Marguerite-Adélaïde GAUTROT, baptized 20 Jul 1774, St.-Jean-L'Evangeliste, Châtellerault, goddaughter of Alexis GAUTROT & Marie LEBLANC, wife of Jean GUÉDRY, & details the family's participation in the Poitou settlement of the early 1770s; Robichaux, Acadians in Nantes, 69-70, Family No. 131, calls her Marie DUPLESSIS; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 18-19, calls her Marie DUPLESSIS, sa [Pierre GOTREAU's] femme, age 47, on the embarkation list, does not include her on the debarkation list, calls her Marie DUPLESSIS, his [Pierre GAUTROT's] wife, age 47, on the complete listing, says she was in the 33rd Family aboard La Bergère with her husband & a daughter, details her marriage, gives her parents' names but not her husband's parents' names, & says daughter Adélaïde GAUTROT was born in 1774 but gives no birth place.

Her sister Anastasie-Adélaïde married Louis-Auguste, son of Bonaventure DARDET & Antoinette BLIN of St.-Jacques la Boucherie Parish, Paris, on 7 Dec 1790 at either St.-Sauveur of Cayenne or Notre-Dame-des-Ardiliers, Île Miquelon, depending on the source.  They did not go to LA.  

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