APPENDICES

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

QUIMINE

[KWIH-min]

ACADIA

Jacques, son of Daniel Quimine and Marie Torel of Pennemart, Nantes, France, born in the late 1690s, came to Acadia by February 1715, when he married Marie-Josèphe, daughter of  Gabriel Chiasson, at Chignecto.  They settled at Chignecto before moving to Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, by the early 1750s.  They had eight children, including two sons, both born at Chignecto, who created families of their own:  

Older son Pierre, born in c1727, married first to Marie-Louise, called Louise, daughter of Michel Grossin, at St.-Pierre-du-Nord, Île St.-Jean, in February 1755, and remarried to Marie-Madeleine Dugas in France.   

Younger son Jean-Jacques, born in c1729, married Madeleine, daughter of Charles Thériot, at Port-Lajoie, Île St.-Jean, in November 1751. 

LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

When the British rounded up the Acadians in Nova Scotia in the fall of 1755, Jacques, Pierre, Jean and their families, living in territory controlled by France, remained unmolested.  Their respite from British oppression was short-lived, however.  After the fall of the French fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758, the victorious British swooped down on the island, rounded up most of the Acadians on Île St.-Jean, and deported them to St.-Malo, France.  Jacques, age 60, Marie-Josèphe, and daughter Francoise, age 23, crossed on one of the Five Ships that left the Gut of Canso in late November 1758 and reached St.-Malo in late January 1759.  Jacques and Marie-Josèphe died at sea, but daughter Francoise survived the terrible crossing.  Another daughter, Madeleine, wife of Jacques Montaury, sailed with her husband and six children aboard the British transport Supply, which did not reach St.-Malo until early March 1759 two of her children, a 3-year-old son and a son born aboard ship, died at sea; the others survived.  Daughter Anne, wife of Louis-Aubin Le Buf, made the crossing with her family aboard one of the Five Ships; one of her children, daughter Marguerite, age 2, died at sea; the others survived.  Daughter Judith, wife of Jacques Douville, sailed aboard one of the Five Ships with two of their children and servant Pierre Cosset; all of them survived.  Pierre, Louise, and daughters Marie, age 3, and Geneviève, age 2, also made the crossing aboard one of the Five Ships; Pierre and Louise survived the ordeal, but their daughters died at sea.  Jean-Jacques and his wife Madeleine do not appear on the rolls of the ships of 1758-59, so they may have escaped the British roundup on Île St.-Jean and made their way to Canada.  

In France, Pierre Quimine made his living as a carpenter.  He and Louise had more children, including daughters Anne, born c1761, and Marie-Pérrine, born c1762.  Louise died in the late 1760s or early 1770s, and Pierre remarried to Marie-Madeleine Dugas, who gave him at least one more daughter, Victoire-Francoise, born probably at St.-Malo c1771.  Pierre and his family remained in France for over a quarter century, enduring along with hundreds of other Acadians the indignities of life in the mother country.  When the Spanish government offered these Acadians a chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana, hundreds of them, including Pierre Quimine, agreed to take it.  

LOUISIANA:  RIVER SETTLEMENTS

Pierre was in his late 50s when he and his family sailed to Louisiana aboard Le Bon Papa, the first of the Seven Ships of 1785, and reached New Orleans in July of that year.  Except for sister Marguerite, wife of Jean-Aubin Fouquet, who came to Louisiana from France aboard L'Amitié in the fall of 1785, Pierre and his daughters were the only Quimines to migrate to the lower Mississippi Valley.  Along with most of the passengers from Le Bon Papa, Pierre, his wife, and their two daughters settled at St.-Gabriel de Manchac, south of Baton Rouge.  Pierre died at Manchac in the late 1780s, close to age 60.  

CONCLUSION

Pierre Quimine brought no sons to Louisiana and fathered no sons after he arrived, so the Acadian branch of the Quimine family never took root in the Bayou State.  But the Quimine blood survived in Louisiana.  Mare-Pérrine had married Pierre-Ignace Usé at Chantenay, France, in April 1785, on the eve of sailing to Louisiana.  By 1798, they had three children, two sons and a daughter.  Victoire-Francoise married Jacques Templet in 1789, probably at Baton Rouge.  Anne married Simon Babin in December 1789 probably at Baton Rouge.  Pierre-Ignace Usé and Jacques Templet, like their Quimine wives, were born in France; Simon Babin was born in England, but, after repatriation to France in 1763, his family also had endured the hard life of the typical Acadian back in the mother country.  In 1797, as part of a growing trend among the Acadian pioneers in Louisiana, Victoire-Francoise remarried to Antoine Ledet, a French Creole from Île de Ré, France.  The wedding took place at Assumption in the upper Bayou Lafourche valley, where sister Marie-Pérrine and her husband Pierre-Ignace also had settled.  

Without realizing it, Acadian immigrants like the Quimine sisters were creating something new.  Mostly they married their own kind, but they also took as husbands and wives French Creoles, Germans, Spaniards, Englishmen, Americans, and people of other nationalities.  And so, along the rivers and bayous east of the Atchafalaya and on the wide, open prairies west of the great basin, the Cajun culture quietly evolved into the thing that still dominates the area today.  

The family's name also is spelled Guemine, Kimmin, Quemine, Quintin.

Sources:  Arsenault, Généalogie, 1006-07, 2136, 2574; <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/Supply.htm>, Family No. 3; <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/5bateaux.htm>, Family Nos. 7, 83, 156, 157.

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, 27 (pl. 6R), calls her Anne [QUINTIN], & lists her with her father, stepmother, sister, & stepsister; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 4-5, calls her Anne, sa [Pierre QUINTIN's] fille, age 24, on the embarkation list, Ana, su [Pedro KIMIN's] hija, on the debarkation list, & Anne KIMINE, his [Pierre KIMINE's] daughter, age 24, on the complete listing, & says she was in the 13th Family aboard Le Bon Papa with her father, stepmother, sister, & stepsister; BRDR, 2:55, 611 (PCP-19, 28), her marriage record, calls her Anne QUEMINE of St.-Malo, France, gives her parents' names, calls her husband Simon BABIN of Angleterre, gives his parents' names, does not mention his first wife, & says the witnesses to her marriage were Servant TEMPLET, Francois BABIN, Mathurin USÉ, & Francois DUGUE.

Although her marriage was recorded at the Pointe-Coupée church, it probably was performed in the Baton Rouge district, where her family settled.  There was no church at Baton Rouge until 1793, so priests from Pointe-Coupée officiated at baptisms, weddings, & funerals in the nearby Baton Rouge district until Baton Rouge got its own priest.

The remarriage record of her husband Simon BABIN, dated 24 Apr 1822, in Hébert, D., South LA Records, 1:31, 260 (Thib.Ch.: v. 1, p. 25), calls her Anne Louise GUIMIRE.  

02.  Wall of Names, 42, calls her Marguerite QUIMINE.  

03.  Wall of Names, 27 (pl. 6R), calls her Marie [QUINTIN], & lists her with her father, stepmother, sister, & stepsister; Robichaux, Acadians in Nantes, 99, 100, Family Nos. 184 & 185, call her Marie-Pérrine KIMINE, gives her birth date, birth place, parent's names, details her marriage, calls her husband Pierre-Ignace HEUZÉ, gives his birth date, baptism date, birth place, & parents' names, details her family's involvement in the Grand-Ligne settlement in Poitou, & says she sailed to LA with her parents & sisters; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 4-5, calls her Marie, sa [Pierre QUINTIN's] fille, age 23, on the embarkation list, Maria KIMIN, su [Pedro USÉ's] muger, & Maria, su [Pedro KIMIN's] hijo, on the debarkation list, & Marie KIMINE, his [Pierre HEUZÉ's] wife, & Marie KIMINE, his [Pierre KIMINE's] daughter, age 23, on the complete listing, & says she was in the 13th Family (also Family 11-A) aboard Le Bon Papa with both her husband & her father, stepmother, sister, & step sister.  

04.  Wall of Names, 27 (pl. 6R), calls him Pierre QUINTIN, & lists him with his wife & 3 daughters; <perso.orange.fr/froux/St_malo_arrivees/5bateaux.htm>, Family No. 157, reveals that in the crossing to St.-Malo in 1758-59 he & his wife Louise, age 25, survived the crossing, but both of their children, daughters Marie, age 3, & Geneviève, age 2, died at sea; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 4-5, calls him Pierre QUINTIN, charpentier, age 65, on the embarkation list, Pedro KIMIN, on the debarkation list, & Pierre KIMINE, carpenter, age 65, on the complete listing, says that he was in the 13th Family aboard Le Bon Papa with his wife & 3 daughters, details his second marriage, including the names of his & his second wife's parents, & says his daughter Victoire-Francoise was born in 1771.

05.  Wall of Names, 27 (pl. 6R), calls her Victoire-Francoise [QUINTIN], & lists her with her parents & 2 stepsisters; Hébert, D., Acadian Families in Exile 1785, 4-5, calls her Victoire-Francoise, sa [Pierre QUINTIN's] fille, age 14, on the embarkation list, Victoria Francisca, su [Pedro KIMIN's] hija, on the debarkation list, & Victoire-Francoise KIMINE, his [Pierre KIMINE's] daughter, age 14, on the complete listing, says she was in the 13th Family aboard Le Bon Papa with her parents & 2 stepsisters, & says she was born in 1771 but gives no place of birth.  

[top of page QUIMINE]

Copyright (c) 2007-09  Steven A. Cormier