Friday, December 25, 2015

Merry Christmas 2015

Merry Christmas!  2016 will be a great year for research!  During December, I was very fortunate to find the two volumes of Stephen A White's "Dictionnaire Généalogique des Familles Acadiennes" for sale on Ebay for a very reasonable price:




With these two volumes I hope I will finally get details about the Acadian ancestors in my families to accurately document births, marriages and deaths from 1636 to 1714.  Merry, merry, merry.


Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far.  This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!


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Sunday, December 13, 2015

La Fédération Franco-américaine du New York


 On Saturday December 12, 2015, members of La Fédération Franco-américaine du New York, based in Cohoes, NY came together to share their holiday spirit. The site of the holiday brunch featuring seaford crepes, chicken français, omelettes, bacon, sausage, fruits, croissants was at the former St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, now "The Venue".  The food was good and the music was great. Traditional Quebec music - up and on the altar - was provide by musicians who played keyboard and hammered dulcimer, "Two Bits String Band" (Vonnie Estes and John Guay), Maurice Mercier who played "everything" including his feet in the Quebec rhythm keeping style and fiddler Nancy Bakemeier.  These musicians often play together for contra dancing events and at the Saratoga DanceFlurry, so it was quite a pleasure to hear them play and stomp for The Federation!



















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Sunday, July 19, 2015

If Smithsonian historians can research PTSD and the Civil War, can we also research the Acadian Deportation and PTSD?


Seems there is a lot out on the internet about the historical basis of PTSD. One of the most interesting articles is Civil War soldiers and post traumatic stress disorder.  If researchers can dig into primary sources from the mid nineteenth century about PTSD,  could it be possible to leap one hundred years before to the period of the Acadian deportation and research the same thing?

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far.  This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!


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"Almost an idiot"



OR 

Did Acadians commonly suffer from what we now call

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) 

after the Grand Derangement?

Or was 

Geoffroi Benoit the only one with documented mental illness 

after the deportation??


Joseph Godefroy/Geoffroi/Godfroi Benoit and his wife, Madeleine Babin are ancestors of the nine Wills children who are subjects of this blog. Documents in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Archives describe Joseph Geoffroi Benoit as 'almost an idiot' and "disordered in his senses."  He and Madeleine just endured 'le grand derangement' - the expulsion from Acadia along with their children. He was arrested along with other Acadian men and boys in the church, marched to a ship in the harbor, probably watched his home being torch and his wife and  children being brutally forced onto boats.  Geoffroi and his sister Marie's families were exiled to Boston without food and material possessions.  His mother, Jeanne Hebert, died on the docks days after the overcrowded ship arrived in Boston.  She had lain sick above a fortnight without ay care'.

A communication from Michael B. Melanson (the Melanson Family genealogist) brought this  description of Geoffroi Benoit to my attention via a FB communication. In his work, "Melanson-Melancon: The Genealogy of an Acadian and Cajun Family". Dracut Massachusetts: Lanesville Publishing. 2004, Michael Melanson cites documents in the Massachusetts Archives (Volume 23) detailing events in the lives of Acadian exiles in Boston. The details include a description of Geoffroi Benoit upon his arrival at Boston harbor.  He was "disoriented in the senses" (pp 358-360). A second description noted "Geoffroi was reported to be almost an idot [sic, idiot]" (p 300).

There's two words we do not commonly use in everyday American speech: derangement from the French and idiot from the Greek "idiotes" meaning "private person" or person lacking a skill or expertise. 

Acadians call the deportation from Acadia "Le Grand Derangement".  In English it calls to my mind words like "deranged", chaos, helter-skelter. The word "Idiot" which was in common usage when I was a child but is seldom used today unless attempting an insult. Below are definitions from an online dictionary.

idiot [id-ee-uh t] noun
1. Informal. an utterly foolish or senseless person: If you think you can wear that outfit to a job interview and get hired, you're an idiot!
2. Psychology. (no longer in technical use; considered offensive) a person of the lowest order in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25.
Synonyms: fool, half-wit; imbecile; dolt, dunce, numskull. Copyright 2015 Dictionary.com

To understand what "idiot" meant in the 18th century, I found this definition online at A Guide to Eighteenth-Century English Vocabulary Jack Lynch 14 April 2006:
Idiot didn’t always have the same insulting tones it has today. An idiot was someone with impaired mental ability (Johnson’s definition is “A fool; a natural; a changeling; one without the powers of reason”). The word could be used in a value-neutral sort of way: when Swift willed money “for building and maintaining an hospital for idiots and lunatics,” he wasn’t being insulting.

derangement
Again from Dictionary.com we find in today's usage it means insanity, disorder, disarrangement or the act of deranging. In medicine it is also used for mental disorder or insanity.

Was Geoffroi Benoit traumatized by the events? Did he struggle against the colonial troops and receive injuries? Was the disorientation temporary? Permanent? We may ever learn if he overcame his trauma.

He and his family were able to immigrate to Quebec when the Quebec colonial administration offered families the option to locate there. 

Geoffroi Benoit died 2 July 1769 in St Charles sur Richelieu, Quebec Province.  He was 49 years old. His widow, Madeleine lived until she was 80.


Here is Geoffroi Benoit on WIKITREE

Here's my line to Geoffroi and his ancestors:

Dorothy Wills, my mother

Marie Elizabeth "Libby" Bissonnette, my grandmother

Celena Beauvais,  1850-1942 married Joseph Bissonnette,  was the daughter of

Solyme Beauvais, 1821-1902, who was the son of

Genevieve Benoit 1799-1832, who was the daughter of

Paul Benoit 1751-1831.  He likely experienced the Acadian Deportation as a small child - 4 or 5 years old. He was the son of

Geoffroy Benoit 1716-1769
He and his wife were exiled to Lancaster in the Massachusetts Colony where they lived until they were able to move to Quebec. He was the son of

Claude Benoit 1686-1743, he was the son of

Martin Benoit 1643-1714. Martin was born in France and came to Acadia to start a life with his wife, Marie in the spring of 1671 aboard l'Oranger.

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Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Lord Family of St Jacques de L'Achigan, Quebec


Last month I took a chance based on a hunch. I bought a book through Abe Books. It wasn't cheap, especially considering it is just a paperback - $85 with the postage from Canada.  It smells a little musty which I don't mind. I am quite at home with with the smell of old musty books. The book title is Le Bas du Ruisseau Vacher by Therese Melancon-Mireault.  It is the story of the eleven founding families of Acadian exiles who were deported to Connecticut and Massachusetts and eventually settling the village of St Jacques de l'Achigan in the seigneury of Saint Sulpice in 1766.  Interestingly, many of these exiles traveled from New England to this new promised land via the Hudson-Champlain-Richelieu WaterwayRiver. (That's more than slightly ironic because their descendants emigrated to this area years later).  The exiled Acadians called this new land "Nouvelle Acadie".  The eleven founding families were:
Amirault or Mirault
Bourgeois
Fontaine
Gaudet
Granger
Jansonne
*****Lord *****
Martin
Melancon
Richard
Robichaud

If you read this blog in past years, you may recall the Lord family are ancestors of the Rivets of Cohoes New York.  Maxime Rivet married Marie Lord in St Jacques de L'Achigan on 11 October 1875. Twenty years later they can be found in Cohoes, NY with most of their children including Paul Emilie Rivet, Joseph "Joe" Maxime Rivet, and Armand Rivet.

Le Bas du Ruisseau Vacher actually has a family photograph of Marie Lord's parents (Salomon Lord and Marie Auralie Gagnon) and her adult siblings. Marie is not in the photograph perhaps because she and her husband, Maxime Rivet, had already emigrated to the USA.


The bearded gent in the center is Salomon Lord, father of Marie Lord, grandfather of Paul Emile Rivet and great grandfather of Joseph Albert Rivet, Claire Rivet Yetto, Raymond Rivet. Salomon is also the grandfather of Louis and Harvey Rivet of Cohoes.

Seated on Salomon's right is his wife Marie Aurlie Gagnon.  She is the grandmother, the great grandmother and the great great grandmother, etc to the descendants of the Rivets of Cohoes, NY.

I wasn't expecting to find a photograph of ancestors in  Le Bas du Ruisseau Vacher.  Though I paid through the nose for this book, I can tell you now it is priceless!


Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far.  This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

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