ACADIE - Prelude to Derangement

About the Book

The story begins with arrival of the first French settlers at the Bay of Fundy in 1604. It depicts the events of the next one and one half century, sheds light on the origins of Acadian families, and culminates with the mass expulsion of their descendants from Acadia in 1755.

The story was created around events that are true. With few exceptions the characters are real. Their names and occupations were lifted from the pages of ancient censuses and other historical documents. The focus is on the events that shaped the history of their time.

Introduction

In the late summer of 1755 the Boston firm of Athorpe & Hancock began dispatching transport ships. They were freight vessels, and their empty holds reeked with the stench of old cargoes; cotton, tobacco, livestock, fish—and slaves. They sailed from Boston Harbor in groups of twos and threes, as availability permitted, and set a northerly course. Their destination was the Minas Basin, in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy.

The final struggle for control of North America was at its peak. War between England and the French/Indian alliance raged on many fronts. In Halifax, Nova Scotia’s newly appointed Governor Charles Lawrence was concerned with the exploding population of his French ‘Neutrals’. There was fear that these Acadians might break their tentative allegiance to the English Monarch and join the French cause.

Governor Lawrence, with his friend Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, had a plan. The entire population of his country would be forcibly removed and dispersed throughout the colonies from Maine to Georgia. Colonial troops from Massachusetts, under the command of Colonel John Moncton, were in place at strategic villages around Nova Scotia. Their officers anxiously awaited arrival of the transports from Boston.

The plan, however, was flawed. Governing councils of the other twelve ‘participating’ colonies had not been consulted on the matter.

From coastal villages around the Minas Basin French inhabitants watched with curiosity the unusual gathering of ships about a mile off shore. The sea had been a source of bounty. Their forefathers had tamed the tidewaters with dykes, and turned thousands of acres of salt marshes into some of the most productive land on earth. Families multiplied and farms prospered. An earlier French Governor once reported to his King that he believed his charges must be the happiest people in the world.

The Acadians of 1755 were several generations removed from those which had immigrated from France more than a century earlier. Beyond maintaining the French language and Catholic religion, remaining ties to the mother country were sparse. These Acadians had lived under the English Monarch, in relative peace and prosperity, for over forty years.

Now, as the inhabitants watched the growing flotilla in the Minas Basin, there was no way for them to comprehend the magnitude of impending derangement and the immeasurable suffering soon to be unleashed. Families were about to be torn apart and separated forever.

Twilight was racing across the countryside. Clouds of uncertainty turned crimson above flames of destruction. Their civilization was being extinguished by encroaching darkness.

A generation of Acadians would drift on tides of exile and slavery in search of a new homeland. They could take with them little more than fading memory of another time; an era born more than a century earlier from their ancestors’ tentative boot steps on the shores of a primeval forest; steps that led to a time of hope, prosperity and ‘joi de vie’—-a time long before the onset of this ‘Grand Derangement’.

About the Author

Peter N. Coleman is a painter, writer, and hospital nurse. A veteran world traveler, he makes his home in Southern rural Vermont. A covered bridge and his family’s heirloom blacksmith shop are nearby. He is a descendant of English Vermont Colonists and French Acadian settlers. Lineages that are nascent in a story of Acadian conflict with Colonial England. Andre R. Dupuis is a retired electronics specialist, an amateur cellist and student of history. His home is Northeast Texas. He and his wife have traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada, and enjoy cultural festivals around the Acadiana region of Louisiana. Both men find genealogical roots among the ancient familes of Port Royal