Beaubassin, Acadie
Tree: Famille Boucher
Notes: Lasers over Beaubassin
The history books tell us that Jacques Bourgeois, Jeanne Trahan, and their extended family moved from Port-Royal to Beaubassin in the early 1670s, thus beginning the Acadian story at Chignecto. Concurrently, Michel Leneuf de la Vallière, a merchant from Trois-Rivières and business partner of Nicolas Denys (in fact, he was married to Nicolas' daughter, Marie), set up an independent trading post and colony nearby, populated largely by immigrants from the St. Lawrence Valley. This made Beaubassin, from its inception, something of a hybrid settlement: a fusion of Canadiens and Acadiens. What both groups shared, furthermore, was a devotion to the fur trade, which necessitated engagement and alliance with Mi'kmaw partners. No surprise, then, that they positioned themselves at the west end of the Chignecto portage, the well travelled overland route linking the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was very much a cultural crossroads.
Dyking the vast tidal marshes of this region began, as was common in old Acadie, as a piecemeal process governed by kin and clan. In time, the French inhabitants developed large cattle herds that also became a valuable trade commodity, both to New England and, later, to the fog-bound citadel of Louisbourg as well.
One of these traders, Robert Hale of Beverly, Massachusetts, made a voyage to Beaubassin in 1731 and recorded his observations in a journal. There are several descriptions of the settlement in the pre-Deportation period, each offering its own insights, but I've always found Hale's among the most well-rounded and insightful, despite its often judgmental tone.
Hale refers to the Beaubassin village as Mesequesh, a reference to the creek - or river - that borders the site and still bears this name, and says it was the largest village in the bay. He and his crew had difficulty guiding their vessel into the muddy creek on account of the high wind, and were ignominiously "bedaubed with Clay in coming ashore." Either the wharves were full, or there were no wharves. The local tavern keeper, Guillaume Cyr, "let us in & gott water to wash our Legs & feet."
Hale saw Chignecto as very different from his home. The inhabitants spoke French and were Catholics, and even this small community had two churches, "on one of which they hang out a Flagg Morning & Evening for Prayers."
The land itself seemed alien, verging on hostile. His journal is attentive to the perils of navigation in this extremely tidal environment, swept as it was by capricious winds, and he remarks that even the diminutive trees were often "blown up by the Roots." As a Maritimer who has driven to Massachusetts several times, I have often observed the way in which the roadside forest gradually changes character as one moves south. The conifers fall back in favour of the deciduous varieties, the trunks grow stouter, and the canopy reaches higher and higher. Hale would have experienced this process in reverse, and he seems to have found the effect slightly unsettling.
To Hale's eyes, even the architecture seemed to cower from the dominant winds, and "the people build all their Houses low, with large Timber & sharp Roofs (not one house being 10 feet to the Eves)." On his first morning in Beaubassin he "walk’d about to see the place & divert myself," noting "There are but about 15 or 20 Houses in this Village." We can imagine him casually strolling the length of the community, observing roof line, glancing into doorways and over fences.
"The women here differ as much in ye Cloathing (besides wearing of wooden Shoes) from those in New Engld as they do in Features & Complexion," he writes, "wc is dark eno' by liuing in the Smoak in ye Summer to defend ymselves against ye Muskettoes, & in ye winter against ye Cold." The persistent torment of the mosquito is frequently encountered in primary accounts of the early colonial period. Remarkably, Capt. John MacDonald commented on the smoake-blackened interiors of Acadian houses at neighbouring Minudie in 1795. The houses MacDonald described seem to have changed little from those described in the pre-Deportation period, or indeed from those archaeologists have excavated: "The premises of every one seem to be a house from 18 to 25 feet long & as many in breadth without porch or partition but the outer door opening immediately into the sole room."
The houses Hale saw at Beaubassin seem to have been built to a similar plan. "They have but one Room in yr Houses besides a Cockloft, Cellar, & Sometimes a Closet," he wrote, and "Their Bedrooms are made something after ye Manner of a Sailor's Cabbin, but boarded all round about yr bigness of ye Bed, except one little hole on the Foreside, just big eno' to crawl into before which is a Curtain drawn & as a Step to get into it, there stands a Chest."
Hale is less impressed by the material wealth of the settlement, which he seems to regard as rather limited. "They have not above 2 or 3 chairs in a house, & those wooden ones, bottom & all. I saw but 2 Muggs among all ye French & ye lip of one of ym was broken down above 2 inches." We know from archaeological excavations that the inhabitants had access to a range of imported ceramics and glass object, so this observation of Hale's has always struck me as somewhat puzzling. It is probably best read in reference to Hale's social context and expectations, for he came from a place with perhaps better access to, and interest in, European ceramics.
For all of this, what may have been odd or occasionally disquieting for the visitor was home to the inhabitants, and creature comforts could readily be found. At Cyr's Hale dined on "Bonyclabbler, soop, Sallet, roast Shad, & Bread & Butter," and at Pierre Arsenault's he remarked on the "roast Mutton, & for Sauce a Sallet, mix'd with Bonyclabber Sweetned with Molasses." Bonny clabber, a kind of thickened, sour milk, was apparently a commonplace of early colonial cookery. The Rev. Dr. Andrew Brown, who in the late 18th century compiled evidence of pre-Deportation Acadian traditions by interviewing many visitors to old Acadie, wrote "Supper was a lighter meal, consisting wholey of different preparations of milk in which cream was not spared." We certainly see plenty of coarse earthenware milk pans in the archaeological ruins of the inhabitants' houses.
As a Protestant from New England, it is understandable that Hale also took an interest in the religious practices of his Catholic hosts, some of which were communal, while others were more personal. "Just about Bed time wee were surpriz'd to see some of ye Family on their Knees paying yt Devotions to ye Almighty, & others near them talking, & Smoaking &c. This they do all of them (mentally but not orally) every night & Morning, not altogether, but now one & then another, & sometimes 2 or 3 together, but not in Conjunction one with the other."
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Beaubassin is a storied community in a storied landscape. Today it is a wind-swept field and a national historic site of Canada. Archaeological investigations of the site began in 1967 and continue to the present. In recent years, LiDAR imagery has been captured that offers a new perspective on the site. The high land to the right contains the village, while the old map, dating to 1755, shows the site after the village had been destroyed and Fort Lawrence built nearby.
Facebook 22/04/2018
OpenStreetMap
Location : Latitude: 45.84066376381272, Longitude: -64.237060546875
Birth
Matches 51 to 78 of 78
Last Name, Given Name(s)  |
Birth  |
Person ID | ||
| 51 |  Bourgeois Pierre | 21 Jan 1742 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3294 |
| 52 | Bourgeois Pierre | 2 Jan 1745 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I2052 |
| 53 | Bourgeois Pierre | 7 Jul 1745 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I2171 |
| 54 | Bourgeois Pierre | 3 Nov 1745 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I2168 |
| 55 | Bourgeois Rosalie | 29 May 1732 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I1499 |
| 56 | Bourgeois Scholastique | 10 Feb 1743 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I2053 |
| 57 | Bourgeois Scholastique | 10 Feb 1743 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3281 |
| 58 | Bourgeois Theotiste | 28 Aug 1742 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I2169 |
| 59 | Bourgeois Théotiste | 11 Mar 1745 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3282 |
| 60 | Caissy Baptiste Claude | 31 Aug 1741 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3260 |
| 61 | Caissy Jean | Abt 1703 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I606 |
| 62 | Cormier Pierre | 1695 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I5553 |
| 63 | Cotard Pierre | Abt 1713 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I636 |
| 64 | Cyr Anne | 1 Jan 1735 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3258 |
| 65 | Cyr Hosine | 10 Feb 1746 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3263 |
| 66 | Cyr Jean - Chrisostome | 17 Jun 1744 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3268 |
| 67 | Cyr Marguerite | 9 Feb 1741 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3272 |
| 68 | Cyr Pierre - Pol | 22 Nov 1733 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3279 |
| 69 | Girouard Françoise | 4 Oct 1745 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I9112 |
| 70 | Girouard Germain | Est 1656 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I538 |
| 71 | Migneault Alexis | 1686 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I1128 |
| 72 | Mirande Madeleine | 12 Jul 1685 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I1136 |
| 73 | Morin Pierre | 23 Dec 1683 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I10143 |
| 74 | Nuirat Jean - Jacques | 1 Jan 1734 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3269 |
| 75 | Nuirat Marguerite | Abt 1722 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3237 |
| 76 | Nuirat Marie | 27 Nov 1740 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3273 |
| 77 | Poirier Jean Baptiste | Abt 1702 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I1147 |
| 78 | Poirier Michel | Abt 1674 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I430 |
Christened
Matches 51 to 53 of 53
| Last Name, Given Name(s) |
Christened |
Person ID | ||
| 51 | Cyr Pierre - Pol | 24 Nov 1733 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3279 |
| 52 | Nuirat Jean - Jacques | 3 Jan 1734 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3269 |
| 53 | Nuirat Marie | 27 Nov 1740 | Beaubassin, Acadie | I3273 |