APPENDICES

Acadian Arrivals in Present-day Louisiana, 1764-early 1800s

From <thecajuns.com/acadians.htm>, "Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana," & other sources cited.

Acadian settlements in Louisiana
(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):

CHRONOLOGY

NOTES

01.   Mobile is the site of one of the oldest French settlements on the Gulf Coast & is, in fact, the oldest permanent French settlement in the region.  As Mobilians are proud to point out, the establishment of a French settlement near present-day Mobile, AL, predated the establishment of New Orleans, LA, by nearly 2 decades.  Fort Louis de la Louisiane was founded in 1702 by Pierre LEMOYNE, sieur d'Iberville, 26 miles up the Mobile River from the site of today's city.  In 1711, Iberville's younger brother, Jean-Baptiste LE MOYNE, sieur de Bienville, the commander at Fort Louis, moved the settlement to the mouth of the Mobile River, site of the present city.  Old & New Mobile served as the capital of French Louisiana from 1702 until 1723, when Bienville, recently restored as LA's governor, moved his headquarters to the newly-established post at New Orleans on the lower Mississippi.  In Feb 1763, France ceded Mobile & the rest of French LA east of the Isle of Orleans & the Mississippi River to Britain in the Treaty of Paris, & Mobile became a part of British West Florida.  As a result of this transfer of territory, in 1764, French settlers by the score left their homes in what is now MS & AL & migrated to the Mississippi Valley.  Creole families such as the FONTENOTs & the GUILLORYs were among the AL refugees escaping the hated British.  Called Alibamons by the French Creoles in LA, they were the first permanent settlers in the Opelousas & Atakapas districts of Spanish LA.  See Higginbotham, Old Mobile, passim.  

The first Acadian families to reach LA--the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party of Feb 1764--came to New Orleans via Mobile.  Perhaps they would have remained at Mobile if the place had not become a British possession.  See Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 125, 126; note 02, below.

02.  In Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 421-22, is a list of 169 Acadian farmers who were counted by the French "around Fort Toulouse," which was on the upper Alabama River near present-day Montgomery.  The census, as Ms. Voorhies points out, was not dated, but she states that "it is generally believed that this census was taken in 1758."  None of the Acadians on this list emigrated to present-day LA.  Stanley Le Blanc in <thecajuns.com/correct.htm> notes that "Stephen A. White has determined that the year 1758 in the section entitled Census of Acadian Farmers Living Around Fort Toulouse 1758 [printed in Voorhies, J.] was actually about 1716; and, it was Fort[sic] Toulouse, Cape Breton.  The material was inadvertently filed in the 1758 section of the microfilmed records."  So there you have it ... the "Fort Toulouse" list has nothing to do with the LA colony.

The story of the first documented Acadians to reach what is now the State of LA, the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party, can be found at <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>, "Acadians Who Arrived in New Orleans in 1764"; Faragher, A Great & Noble Scheme, 430-31; Oubre, Vacherie, 59, 60, 68-69; & Appendix.  See also Dr. Carl Brasseaux's essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>.  

White, DGFA-1, 406, notes that the eldest member of the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party, Jean-Baptiste CORMIER, père, was recorded in GA in 1763.  Eight years before, British forces had packed CORMIER & other Chignecto Acadians aboard English vessels and exiled them to that faraway English colony.  There, as Faragher writes on p.430, "these interrelated families remained close, assisting one another, saving what little money they were able to make."  One of them, Olivier LANDRY, "had a distant relative who was serving in a French regiment in Louisiana--Joseph DES GOUTIN de Ville, the son of Mathieu DES GOUTIN, who had been treasurer at Port Royal during the last years of the French regime" in Acadia.  From this cousin, LANDRY may have learned that the French would welcome his family to LA.  In 1763, the families left GA for Charleston, SC, where most of  them were counted in late Aug of that year.  See Jehn, Acadian Exiles in the Colonies, 231.  According to what LA administrator D'ABBADIE told his superior in Apr 1764, however, the 20 Acadians who appeared suddenly at New Orleans "last February" came to the colony "from New York," where," Faragher goes on, "they booked passage on a vessel bound for the port of Mobile...."   However, the 22 Dec 1763 edition of the Georgia Gazette, published in Savannah, states:  "Yesterday more of the Acadians in number about 21, went in a vessel for Mobile, from which place they are to go to New Orleans."  See "Acadians Sail to New Orleans December 21, 1763," in <acadian-home.org> (I have not seen this article, only references to it on this website).  Despite what D'ABBADIE's letter relates, the Georgia Gazette writer reveals that the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party (who else could it have been?) returned to GA from SC in late 1763 & then set their sights on going to New Orleans not via NY, which would have been far out of their way, but straight from GA to Mobile.  Arsenault, Généalogie, 2568, claims that Jean POIRIER married Madeleine, daughter of Jean-Baptiste RICHARD, on 22 Jan 1760, at Mobile, which makes no sense in light of other evidence.  However, White, DGFA-1, 1336, & Stanley LeBlanc's <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>, "Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana," clear this up by showing that the marriage had existed since c1759, when the couple lived in GA, and was blessed by a priest at Mobile on 22 Jan 1764.  By then it was well known that the Treaty of Paris, signed nearly a year before, had awarded Florida & all French possessions east of the Mississippi River to Britain.  If the CORMIER-LANDRY-POIRIER-RICHARD party had remained in Mobile, they would again be subject to British authority.  They were determined to live in French territory again, & they believed, like most of the rest of the world, that western LA still belonged to France.  As French administrator D'ABBADIE's 6 Apr 1764 letter to his superior reveals, the Acadians were welcomed at New Orleans.  

As to the numbers of individuals in the party, the Georgia Gazette article counts 21, & D'ABBADIE's letter counts 20.  The list in <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>, "Acadians Who Arrived in New Orleans in 1764," counts 18, leaving out Marie-Anne, called Anne, CORMIER & Joseph LANDRY, who later married one another.  My list includes these 2 & also another CORMIER daughter, Madeleine, but does not include Michel POIRIER, who is on the list in <thecajuns.com/acad1764.htm>, making my total 20.  See Appendix.

To illustrate the consanguineous nature of this group, not one of the 4 heads of families was married to a woman from outside the extended family.  CORMIER was married to a RICHARD, LANDRY to a POIRIER, POIRIER to a RICHARD, & RICHARD to a CORMIER.  Moreover, several of their children married within the clan:  3 of the 4 CORMIER girls married a LANDRY, a POIRIER, & a RICHARD, all sons of the other family heads, &, as mentioned earlier, 1 of the 2 LANDRY sons married a CORMIER. 

MOUTON family legend says that several MOUTONs were in the group that reached LA in early 1764, but no creditable evidence confirms this.  As D'ABBADIE's letter said, there were 4 families in the group.  The MOUTONs were not one of them.  

Faragher, p. 431, makes the interesting speculation that the second group of Acadians to reach LA, the extended family of resistance fighter Joseph BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil, could have been alerted to the fine qualities of the Mississippi River colony by the father of one of Beausoleil's young partisans, Jean-Baptiste CORMIER, fils.  After settling in LA, the elder CORMIER may have communicated with his son in Nova Scotia via the amazing grapevine of Acadian seamen who worked on ships that sailed the Atlantic, the Caribbean, & the Gulf of Mexico.  When BROUSSARD & the other Acadian party leaders decided in late 1764 to leave Nova Scotia & find a new home in French America, they may have chosen the lower Mississippi Valley because of what they had heard from the hand full of Acadians who already settled there.  

03.  See Appendix.

04.  Professor Carl A. Brasseaux, the best informed scholar on the Acadians in LA, says that "Numerous published sources, based entirely on speculation, had suggested that many of the Saint-Domingue Acadians left the colony for Louisiana in the mid-to-late 1760s.  The documentary record in Louisiana, however, makes it clear that few, if any, Saint-Domingue Acadians migrated to the Mississippi Valley."  See Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind, 45 (italics added); Appendix.  This study largely agrees with Brasseaux's assertion; only a few dozen St.-Domingue Acadians emigrated to LA.  See Appendix.  For an analysis of why hundreds of Acadians from the British-Atlantic colonies went to St.-Domingue in 1763-64 & their sad fate in the French sugar colony, see Professor Gabriel Debien's essay, translated by Glenn R. Conrad, in Conrad, ed., The Cajuns, 19-78.  See also <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>.

That the BROUSSARD party, at least, changed ships at Cap-Français is attested to by the birth of Jean, son of Victor COMEAUX, one of the heads of family in the party, in the Haitian city.  See Jean's marriage record in Hébert, D., Southwest LA Records, 1-A:199, 498 (SM Ch.: v.3, #91), which calls him Jean COMEAUX du Cap-Francois, Isle St.-Domingue.  

05.  See Appendix.  In April 1766, a year after his arrival, Jean-Baptiste SEMER, a young member of the BROUSSARD party, dictated a letter to his father in France.  The letter miraculously survived in a French archive.  According to SEMER, the order of arrival of the Acadians from Halifax was:  "'... in the month of February 1765 ... 202 Acadian persons ... After us, there arrived yet another 105 in another ship and then eighty, forty, [and] some twenty or thirty, in three or four others.  I believe there are about 500-600 of us Acadians, counting women and children."  See Mouhot, ed., "Letter by Jean-Baptiste Semer," p. 224; Bernard, Cajuns & Their Acadian Ancestors, 30.  This implies that the 38 Acadians who went to Opelousas and the 80 Acadians under Jean-Baptiste BERGERON dit d'Amboise who went to Cabanocé arrived on the same vessel, at least most of them.  SEMER does not say in what months the subsequent vessels arrived.  Approximate arrival dates of the 1765 refugees from Halifax via St.-Domingue are best gotten from the official French correspondence found in Brasseaux, ed., Quest for the Promised Land, 31-54.  See Appendix. 

06.  Details from Stanley LeBlanc's <thecajuns.com>, "Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana."  Bourgeois, Cabanocey, 14, gives the date of arrival as 16 Nov 1766, & says that 216 individuals came "directly from Halifax, Nova Scotia...."  She bases her statement on a letter from former French Commissary FOUCAULT to his superior, the duc de Praslin-Stainville, dated 18 Nov 1766, in which the commissary says that the 216 Acadians who arrived in LA "approximately one-and-a-half months ago" came from "Halifax on an English boat chartered at their own expense."  See Brasseaux, ed., Quest for the Promised Land, 80.  LeBlanc, however, bases his information on a letter from Spanish Gov. ULLOA to the marques Jeronimo GRIMALDI, the Spanish minister of state, dated 29 Sep 1766, in which ULLOA says that the English sloop carrying Acadians who had arrived at New Orleans the day before had departed "Maryland, New England" in late Jun & numbered 224 men, women, & children.  See Brasseaux, ed., p. 77.

07.  The nature of the vessel taken by the Jul 1767 arrivals from Baltimore is just a guess based on the following facts & assumptions:  The British would not have allowed French Neutrals, as the Acadians were still being called, to leave a British colony on any kind of vessel but British unless there was a special diplomatic arrangement with France or Spain allowing the vessels of those nations to transport refugees from their colonies; this happened with Acadians who went from English colonies to French St.-Domingue on French merchant vessels after 1763.  

The ship from Baltimore did not sail directly to New Orleans but went to Guárico, the older, Indian/Spanish name for Cap-Français, St.-Domingue, where the Acadians lingered for 17 days, perhaps changing ships before they sailed on to New Orleans.  The voyage from Baltimore to New Orleans lasted 78 days.  See Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 430, which quotes a Spanish official who notes:  "That during the 78 days of navigation (including the 17 days at Guárico) from the harbor of Baltimore, Province of Maryland till here [New Orleans], Armand HÉBERT,  head of a family and Maria LANDRY, a child, died and Oliver BABIN and Margarita HERNANDEZ were born."  It's entirely possible that Acadians living in St.-Domingue could have come to LA with this group as well.  See Appendix.

08.  Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 430-34, a Spanish report entitled "List of Acadian Families Who Came to Louisiana to be Established in the Year 1767," dated 27 Jul, is followed here because it is the only one of the Spanish reports that includes every individual Acadian's name & age who went to St.-Gabriel in Aug 1767.  The report in Voorhies, J., p. 428, entitled "Document Concerning the First Acadians to Arrive in this Province in the Year 1767," also dated 27 Jul, counts 200 individuals in 45 families.  Still another report, in Voorhies, J., p. 429, entitled "Acadians Who Settled at St. Gabriel in the Year 1767," with the notation, "List of the farms which were assigned to the chiefs and heads of Acadian families who were going to be established among the people of St. Gabriel," undated, counts 47 heads of families.  A hand full of Acadians from the Jul 1767 arrival may have stayed in New Orleans.  See Voorhies, J., pp. 426-27, a report entitled "List of Acadians Who Are in the City in the Month of July 1767," dated 23 Jul 1767, not quite 2 weeks after the arrival of the ship from Baltimore & 2 1/2 weeks before the 40-plus Acadian families left for St.-Gabriel.  Since there obviously were dozens more Acadians in New Orleans at the time of the 23 Jul report, the Acadians in that report may have reached the city earlier, some in Sep 1766, & for some reason were still lingering there.

Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 80-81, says that the Jul 1767 party from MD wanted to settle at Cabanocé, where many of their relatives lived, but, for strategic reasons, Gov. ULLOA was determined to send them to a new post, Fort San Gabriel, 2 dozen miles above Cabanocé.  The MD Acadians went to St.-Gabriel reluctantly but soon realized that communication with the other Acadian communities upriver was relatively easy by boat. 

09.  Stanley LeBlanc's <thecajuns.com>, "Arrival of the Acadians in Louisiana," does not name their ship, nor does he mention who their leaders were, but he does cite a Pennsylvania Gazette article of 8 Apr 1768, which says the ship carrying the "neutrals from Maryland" was a brig under Captain RIDER.  Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 82, says that the party led by Alexis & Honoré BREAUX reached New Orleans in Feb aboard the Guinea.  Voorhies, J., Some Late Eighteenth Century Louisianians, 200, offers a copy of "a consular certificate granted at N. Potomack, Maryland to the vessel Jane sailing to the Mississippi with 'one hundred and fifty French neutrals with baggages,' December 17, 1767."  The ship reached New Orleans the following Feb.  In a letter to his superior, the Marqués de GRIMALDI, dated 11 Feb 1768, LA Gov. ULLOA mentions "the recently arrived Acadians."  See Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81," 40.

Also accompanying the BREAUX party from MD was James WALKER, who came to LA to scout out possible settlements for English Catholics.  A letter from MD Catholic leader Henry JERNINGHAM, M.D., dated 14 Dec 1767, introducing WALKER to LA Gov. ULLOA, indicates that the ship carrying WALKER, & probably also the BREAUX party, left MD soon after that date.  See Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81," 39.

After hassling with Gov. ULLOA about settling at Cabanocé, where the BREAUXs wanted to go but where ULLOA refused to send them, the disgruntled Acadians left the New Orleans area for Fort San Luìs de Natchez on 20 Feb 1768, without the BREAUX brothers, who had gone into hiding after the governor threatened to deport them for insubordination.  The MD Acadians finally reached Fort San Luìs de Natchez on 20 Mar after a month of moving up the river, stopping at various settlements along the way for replenishment of food & fresh water.  Revolt against the hated ULLOA followed in late Oct 1768.  Late the following year, ULLOA's successor, General Alejandro O'REILLY, allowed the Natchez Acadians, including the BREAUX brothers, to resettle at Cabanocé, St.-Gabriel, or Ascension, where they could still be of service in the Spanish scheme of defense along the lower Mississippi.  Both Brasseaux & LeBlanc say there were 149 Acadians in the group when it reached New Orleans; Brasseaux, p. 82, also says 152.  For the Spanish reports of Feb 1768, one of which lists every person in the BREAUX party, see Voorhies, J., pp. 435-39.  See also Appendix.

10.  No group of Acadians who came to LA suffered as much as these folks to get to the promised land.  The Britannia (sometimes spelled Britania) left Port Tobacco, MD, for New Orleans on 5 Jan 1769, with 7 Acadian families aboard.  Also aboard the Britannia were 8 German Catholic families.  The crew of the Britannia sighted the coast of Louisiana on 21 Feb, but the captain of the ship, an Englishman named Philip FORD, either through bad luck or incompetence, missed the mouth of the Mississippi because of heavy fog.  Strong winds drove the ship westward, & a few days later the Britannia ran onto the Texas coast at Espiritu Santo Bay.  The crew went ashore & located a Spanish officer, who suspected them of being spies or smugglers.  Instead of giving them food & fresh water, he arrested them & ordered his men to escort everyone on the ship to the interior post of La Bahía at present-day Goliad.  The passengers & crew of the Britannia remained at La Bahía for 6 long months, waiting for the Spanish authorities to decide their fate.  While at La Bahía, they were forced to work as semi-slaves around the presidio & on nearby ranches.  Finally, in early Sep, a Spanish officer arrived at La Bahía with instructions for the commandant there to send the captives overland to Natchitoches in LA. They could not return to the abandoned Britannia because the coastal Indians had stripped the vessel so thoroughly it was no longer seaworthy.  On 11 Sep, the Acadians joined the other passengers & the English crew on the 420-mile trek to Natchitoches, which they reached in late Oct.  LA Gov. O'REILLY, meanwhile, had decided that the Acadian families in the group would settle at Natchitoches because of their familiarity with the growing of rye & wheat.  Natchitoches settlers welcomed the newcomers & supplied them with food, tools, & animals.  The German families were told that they could continue on to New Orleans via the Red & Mississippi rivers, pick up supplies, & then settle at St.-Gabriel d'Iberville on the Mississippi.  The Germans accompanied the English crew to New Orleans & arrived there on 9 Nov.  Most of the Acadians, meanwhile, refused to remain at Natchitoches, which was too far away from their compatriots to the south.  They, too, left the Red River valley & joined their relatives in the established Acadian communities of St.-Gabriel & Opelousas.  See <thecajuns.com>, Glenn R. Conrad, "German Settlers in Louisiana"; <thecajuns.com/britania.htm>, "Passengers on the Ship 'Britania',"; Kinnaird, "The Revolutionary Period, 1765-81." 135-43; Robichaux, German Coast Families, 60, who points out that these were the last Germans to migrate to LA during the colonial period.  For some reason, Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind, 67, & <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>, say that the Britannia incident occurred in 1770.  No other source uses this date.  See Appendix for a list of Acadian individuals & families aboard the Britannia.

If I may be allowed a personal note:  One of the German families aboard the Britiannia was that of Jacob MILLER & Anne-Marie THEIN, both natives of Alsace & my mother's paternal ancestors.

11.  Glenn R. Conrad, in his article "German Settlers in Louisiana," <thecajuns.com>, says there were 32 Acadians on the Britannia; Brasseaux, Scattered to the Wind, 67, says 30 & uses the date 1770; the article "Passengers on the Ship 'Britania," <thecajuns.com/britania.htm>, which lists individuals passengers, has 31 in 7 families.  I count 30 Acadians because one of the women, Susanne PLANTE, wife of Pierre PRIMEAUX, was not an Acadian despite her inclusion on the Acadian Memorial's Wall of Names.  See Appendix for a list of Acadian individuals & families aboard the Britannia.

12.  Also called Costa de Manchac, it was located on the east bank of the Mississippi along the present-day boundary of East Baton Rouge & Iberville parishes, south of Baton Rouge & just north of the Acadian settlement of St.-Gabriel d'Iberville.  Manchac was so close to St.-Gabriel, in fact, that these settlements should be considered the same community.  St.-Gabriel was sometimes called St.-Gabriel de Manchac.  See Appendix; map.

13.   The 7 Ships families sent to the Lafourche area went to what the Acadians called Ascension, now the Donaldsonville area of Ascension Parish, and to Valenzuéla, later called Assumption, a few miles down the bayou from Ascension.  See Appendix; map.  Dr. Carl Brasseaux, in his essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>, says that these Lafourche Acadians settled in the area "between present-day Labadieville and Raceland."  That probably happened later.  

14.  Officially, 1,574 Acadians, representing 375 families, came on the 7 ships to LA, but 28 stowaways raised the number of individuals to1,602; the official number of deaths for the enterprise was 85, desertions 12, total 97, these losses partially balanced by 39 births & 15 "immigrants", total 54.  See Winzerling, Acadian Odyssey, 154-56; Kinnaird, "Post War Decade, 1782-91," 169.  Even after noting the subtraction of "last minute withdrawals and failures of others to appear" from Count ARANDA'S official report to King Charles III of Spain to get a total of 1,574/1,602, Winzerling still uses the too-large figure 1,596/1,624 as the official total of Acadians & stowaways associated with them.  My figure of 1,534 Acadians who took the 7 ships to LA is based on a strict definition of which families were or were not Acadians.  For instance, when the stowaways on Le St.-Rémi & L'Amitié married their Acadian sweethearts in LA, Intendant NAVARRO generously granted them status as "Acadians", though the grooms' families had never lived in Acadia.  See Winzerling, pp. 145-46, 155.  If a child's father was non-Acadian but his/her mother was Acadian, the child is listed here as non-Acadian because of how it goes with surnames; Acadian-ness here & most other places is determined by patrilinearity, remember.  Also, my list contains over a dozen Acadian newborns who were not counted by the Spanish.  All dates & places of settlement are from Winzerling unless otherwise noted.  

15.  Family distribution figures are from Winzerling, Acadian Odyssey, chap. 10, specifically pp. 133 (Le Bon Papa), 136 (La Bergère), 138 (Le Beaumont), 143 (Le St.-Rémi), 146-47 (L'Amitié), 150 (La Ville d'Archangel), & 151 (La Caroline).  A slightly more detailed record of 1785 family distribution in LA, followed here, is "A Report on Acadian Immigrants Who Came to Louisiana from France in 1786[sic]," in Kinnaird, "Post War Decade, 1782-91," 169, & <thecajuns.com/1785acad.pdf>.  

16.  See Appendix; map.

17.  According to Din, Canary Islanders of LA, 52, Nueva Gálvez was an Islenos, or Canary Islander, community along Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs in present-day St. Bernard Parish, on the left bank of the Mississippi below New Orleans.  Founded in 1779 by the Spanish after they recruited settlers from the Canary Islands, Nueva Gálvez should not be confused with the Islenos community called Galveztown in present-day Ascension Parish, also founded in 1779, as T. Hébert does in <acadian-cajun.com>.  Galveztown lay 15 miles southeast of the Acadian community of St.-Gabriel in a district also called Manchac & was abandoned in the early 1800s.  The site of Galveztown lies across the Amite River from present-day Port Vincent in Livingston Parish.  Nueva Gálvez, on the other hand, survived & even thrived as a community, & today is known as St. Bernard.

Why is Nueva Gálvez not even mentioned in Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia?  Was the community that obscure?  It was certainly the smallest of the Acadian communities created in the 20 years between 1765 & 1785.  Din, cited above, p. 55, says that 75 Acadians, "many of them passengers on the ships Amistad and Carolina, settled on the Mississippi's left bank below New Orleans."  I have counted only 56 passengers from L'Amitié & La Caroline who likely went to St. Bernard in 1785, & several of them were not Acadians but French spouses of Acadians.  See Appendix.  Din's 75 Acadians is from the official Spanish report of 1786, which can be found in <thecajuns.com/1785acad.pdf>.  Note that the official Spanish report differentiates Nueva Galvez from the "Manchac Coast," near where Galveztown was located.

18.  This larger number of families compared to the official number sent over on the 7 Ships reflects the many marriages & thus the creation of new families at New Orleans soon after the ships arrived.  It also reflects the generosity of the Spanish authorities, particularly of Intendant NAVARRO, in granting head-of-family status to Acadians who arrived in LA ahead of other members of their families.  Winzerling, Acadian Odyssey, 142, writes:  "NAVARRO did all in his power to reunite families and relatives.  Many Acadians became separated from one another in their haste to be among the first to leave for Louisiana.  When Spain's humane treatment of the exiles in Louisiana was learned abroad, family heads would make any sacrifice to leave France as fast as possible in order to be among the first to receive Spain's grant of arable land in Louisiana.  As a consequence [Manuel] D'ASPRES [the Spanish consul at St.-Malo, who essentially organized the embarkation of the Acadians in France] reported that there was considerable confusion at times among the Acadians awaiting transportation.  They knew that ultimately they would find their respective families, but until then the loneliness was heavy, and eagerness to get settled made it all the more so.  To heal all wounds NAVARRO granted these lonesome persons the rights of family head, which meant a subsidy of ten cents [per day] instead of seven and a half cents."

19.  Here is another story of Acadian fortitude & determination.  Joseph GRAVOIS of Chignecto married Marie-Madeleine BOURG & fathered at least 8 children by her, 2 sons & 6 daughters.  Joseph & his family ended up in exile at St.-Malo, France, either via VA & England in 1755-63, or directly from greater Acadia in 1758-59.  They were among the Acadians in France repatriated to St.-Pierre & Miquelon, French-owned islands off the south coast of Newfoundland.  Dissatisfied with conditions on the desolate, wind-swept islands, Joseph secured command of  the schooner Brigite, filled it with 17 of his kinsmen, including his wife & 8 children, left Île St.-Pierre on 16 Oct 1788, & reached the mouth of the Mississippi at Balize nearly 2 months later.  "Armed with a passport from Ygnacio BALDERAS, a Spanish official they encountered, they ascended the Mississippi to New Orleans and evidently secured permission to join relatives in present-day Ascension Parish."  According to Dr. Carl A. Brasseaux, this small party of Acadians was the only group "known to have migrated to Louisiana from Canada after the first migration (1764-1770)."  See Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia, 105.  For the GRAVOIS's association with Chignecto & St.-Malo, see Arsenault, Généalogie, 2498-99; BRDR, 2:298-99, 333-34.  Why doesn't the GRAVOIS family appear in the Ascension census of 1791?  See Robichaux, Bayou Lafourche, 1770-98.  See Appendix for a list of names in the GRAVOIS party.  Dr. Carl A. Brasseux in his essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>, says there were 19 Acadians in this party, while in Founding of New Acadia, 208, he lists 18, followed here.  The missing person was family head Joseph BABIN, who died before the Brigite left St.-Pierre.  The excellent chronology of Le Grand Dérangement compiled by Paul Delaney in <acadian-home.org>, states, under the heading of 6 Oct 1788, that "Joseph GRAVOIS & Joseph BABIN and their families (19 people) are authorized to leave Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon to go to Louisiana."  So it took them 2 months to get there.    

21.  Wall of Names, 1, says that Acadian immigrants came to LA as late as 1813, but the vast majority of the 2,800+ Acadians who found refuge in LA had reached the colony by the end of 1785.

22.  Dr. Brasseaux, in his essay at <www.acadianmemorial.org/english/ensembleencoreset.html>, says:  "An undetermined number of Acadians were undoubtedly among the approximately 10,000 refugees from Saint-Domingue who arrived en masse in New Orleans in the summer and fall of 1809.  The evidence indicates, however, that these latter-day Acadian immigrants had already lost much of their ethnic identity and, when forced by circumstances to remain in New Orleans, they were quickly absorbed into the Crescent City's flourishing Creole community."  I have documented very few Acadian immigrants who came to LA in the early 1800s.  See Appendix.  

23.  See Paul Delaney's "The Chronology of the Deportations and Migrations of the Acadians 1755-1816," in <acadian-home.org>.  I have not found a list of these 38 Acadians.  Perhaps their names can be found in my Appendix entitled "Undetermined Acadian Arrivals," but good luck figuring out which ones they are. 

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