APPENDICES

The BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil Party to the Attakapas District, 1765

Ages are as of 1765.  Many of the birthplaces are sheer speculation.01  Individuals with surnames in bold are male family heads or the eldest sons of widows.  

                                                                                   SYMBOLS:
#        Family heads who signed the DAUTERIVE agreement with Joseph BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil in early Apr 1765  
$        Individuals who appear on the 30 Apr 1765 card money exchange list in New Orleans <thecajuns.com/cardmoney.htm>
+        Individuals who died at Attakapas in the first months of settlement, primarily those who perished in the epidemic of 1765
*        Individuals who left Attakapas, some to escape the epidemic of 1765

Hyperlinks take you to individual histories in the Acadian family pages, which contain many more details of each person's life.  Death/burials are in 1765, unless otherwise noted, and documented in Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records, vol. 1-A.

NOTE:  Many of the individuals who survived the epidemic of 1765 can be found in the Apr 1766 Attakapas militia list/census found in Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 124-25.

Chronology of Burials

recorded by Father Jean-François de Civray at La Nouvelle-Acadie on the Teche, 1765;
d. means death date, not burial date;
SB/FR# refers to Father Jean-François's original "parish" records, later called the St. Martinville Church Slave Baptismal (B) and Slave Funeral (F, SFR) registers;
au premier camp d'en bas means at the first place lower down, and au dernier camp d'en bas mean at the last place lower down from Poste des Attakapas (present-day St. Martinville). 
Both camps lower down, plus Camp Beausoleil, were located at present-day Fausse Pointe, above & below the town of Loreauville--called by Father Jean-François La Nouvelle-Acadie. 

NOTES

01.  In his essay entitled "Metamorphosis of Acadian Society in Late Eighteenth-Century Louisiana" at <acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>, Carl A. Brasseaux, the leading authority on the Acadians in LA, says:  "Most Attakapas Acadians (77.7 percent) were former residents of the Chignecto Isthmus area....."  But Brasseaux does not tell us how he arrived at this precise figure.

02.  In the burial record for Joseph dit Beausoleil in Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records, 1-A:137 (SM Ch.: v.1, p.78; SM Ch.: Folio B-1, Funeral), Fr. Jean-François says that the old resistance fighter was buried "at the Camp (place or location) named Beausoleil," & "at place called Beausoleil."  Interestingly, Joseph dit Beausoleil's burial, recorded over a month after it occurred, is the only one not numbered in Fr. Jean-François's precisely-kept burial records, at least not in the edited version of these records.  Why not?  Notice that there is no lacuna in the numbers of this part of the St. Martinville church's Slave Funeral Register, implying that Joseph's burial was not recorded like the others.  Why was Joseph's burial recorded so long after the fact? 

Was the place the Attakapas Acadians called camp Beausoleil the same place as premier camp d'en bas (the first place lower down) or dernier camp d'en bas (the last place lower down), terms used by Fr. Jean-François in several of the 1765 Attakapas funeral entries?  How far apart were these first & last places below the Poste des Attakapas?  And where were they located exactly?  Arsenault, History, 195, says "Camp Beausoleil" was "near the present site of the town of Broussard, bearing his name."  The town of Broussard is in an area the Acadians called Côte Gelée, or Frozen Hills, & lies on the prairie between Bayou Tortue & the Vermilion River, not on the lower Teche, where the BROUSSARD party settled. [map]   As the Attakapas census of 25 Apr 1766 shows, Côte Gelée was settled after that time.  See Arceneaux, D. J., "A New Look at the Initial Acadian Settlement in Attakapas"; Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth-Century Louisianians, 124-25; Book Eight.  Joseph dit Beausoleil was buried along the Teche with the others who died in 1765.  The question is where?  See <www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~mar4160/nap.html>, the New Acadia Project, for the current effort to find out. 

03.  According to epidemic survivor Jean-Baptiste SEMER, who wrote a letter to his father in France dated 20 Apr 1766, New Orleans:  "We went to Attakapas ..., but as it was already the month of May, the heat being so intense, we started to work in too harsh conditions. ... Finally, we had the finest harvest, and everybody contracted fevers at the same time and, nobody being in a state to help anyone else, thirty-three or thirty-four died, including the children. ..."  Italics added.  See Mouhot, ed., "Letter by Jean-Baptiste SEMER," 224; Bernard, Cajuns & Their Acadian Ancestors, 30.  Subtract the first 2 deaths on this list (Madeleine BROUSSARD, who died from complications of childbirth, & her newborn daughter Marguerite-Anne THIBODEAUX, who died at age 5 days); Marie DUGAS, wife of Mathurin LANDRY, who also seems to have died from complications of childbirth; & 3 other newborns, that is, 6 of these burials, & you have 34 other deaths recorded by Fr. Jean-François from Jul to late Nov, smack dab on the numbers given by Jean-Baptiste SEMER for the Bayou Teche Acadians who died of "fevers."  This speaks to the careful recording keeping of the good priest & to the completeness of this list. 

04.  Assuming that Marguerite-Anne THIBODEAUX was #1, Isidore LANDRY #4, & Marianne BERGERON #4-A--who were burials #3, #12, & #16 in Father Jean-François's funeral register?  Evidently the good priest overlooked those numbers when he recorded the burials in the BROUSSARD party during the spring, summer, & fall of 1765.  Note that 2 burials--those of Jean DUGAS & François ARCENEAUX, both orphaned infants buried on Sep 19--are given the same number. 

And then there is the question:  How did Fr. Jean-François's baptismal & funeral registers become the St. Martinville church's Slave Baptismal & Slave Funeral registers?  The answer can be found in the Introductory Notes to Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records, vol. 1-A.

05.  Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records, 1-A:750 (SM Ch.: Slave Funeral Register, v.1, #20), records the burial of Joseph THIBODEAUX, died on 4 Sep 1765, buried the next day "in the cemetery in the lower section," burial recorded on 7 Sep 1765.  Compare this to the details of Marguerite THIBODEAUX's burial record in Hébert, D., 1-A:752 (SM Ch.: Slave Funeral Register, v.1, #20), & you will see that they are the same record.  There was no Joseph THIBODEAUX at Attakapas. 

06.  Here is a mystery for family historians to solve.  See Bernard family page. 

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Copyright (c) 2006-24  Steven A. Cormier