In 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow pub- 2 lished an epic poem titled, ‘, A Tale of Acadie’. The poem follows a young Acadian woman named Evangeline and her fiancée Ga- briel. The story takes place during the time of the and the “Grand Dérangement” or great expulsion in 1755 from their homeland in present-day . The poem was very popular in and as a result, many pictures of Evangeline hung predomi- nantly in American and Canadian homes. Here is the opening passage of Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline’. The epic poem is written in the language of 19th century America1.

“This is the forest primeval. The mur- Slide 2. "Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie", engraving, muring pines and the hemlocks, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1847. Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, — Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflect an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré. Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.”

1 It is classified as an epic poem that is written in an unrhymed dactylic hexameter. 1

It took many years for the history behind this poem to be published. Details of the his- 3 tory of were kept from historians by the provincial government in Nova Scotia. It is unfortunate that this history still is not routinely taught today by our teachers. It is a story that is relevant to us in America because it includes so many important lessons. By 1900, only one American historian, Francis Parkman, had written about the Acadians or French Neutrals, as they were called then. A few other historians like our town histo- rian, Henry Nourse covered some of the history in his ‘Military Annals of Lancaster’ in 1889 and in his ‘History of Harvard’ in 1894. But Longfellow was the first to bring this story to the attention of America with his poem, almost one hundred years after the ex- pulsion. SETTLING THE FIRST COLONY IN .

4 So, where was Acadia? France referred to the set of their colonies in North America as ‘New France’, of which the first colony in 1604 was Acadia. As highlighted in Slide 4, the geography of Acadia included all the present-day Canadian Maritimes which in- clude the Gaspé peninsula, , Île St Jean / , Île Roy- ale/ Cape Breton , Nova Scotia and the eastern third of . Mount Desert Island with Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park and that quaint down-east village of Castine and Fort Pentagoët formed the extreme southwestern corner of Acadia. Many visitors of

Slide 4. Acadia in 1604, first colony in New France. 2

Acadia National Park climb the 1500-foot summit of Mount Ca- dillac to witness the first sunrise in the United States. From that summit on a clear day, you may see Passamaquoddy Bay and 5 the St Croix River where the Acadian settlers first landed in 1604. The other colony in New France was Québec which was settled four years later in 1608. As men- tioned earlier, Acadia was set- tled in 1604, 3 years before Jamestown, and 16 years before Plymouth. Acadia was actually the second colony in North Figure 3. St Croix Island, Calais, Maine America after Spain’s St. Au- gustine. 5 The Acadians first landed on St Croix Island (See Figure 3 N45.128923° W67.133787°) on Thursday, June 26, 1604. The leadership team of the expedition included Pierre du Gua (Sieur, or Lord du Mont), Samuel de Champlain, Jean de Biencourt (Lord de Poutrin- court), and Marc Lescarbot. On board with them were some 75 male settlers, a mix of hunters, trappers, fishermen and wood workers. Pierre du Gua led the expedition, while Samuel de Champlain was the navigator and cartographer and Lescarbot was the notary, historian and recorder. Jean de Biencourt stayed with the settlers as head of the colony. Their plan was to stay on St Croix Island as an in- terim base until they found a suitable permanent settlement. They quickly constructed their shelters and cleared some land for a few late crops. The settlers largely came from the La Rochelle area of western France (See Figure 4) as did many of the settlers that arrived later. It is noteworthy Figure 4. Home of the Acadian and Settlers.

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that the other colony, Québec was later settled largely by people from the Normandy area of north- eastern France. The two regions are distinctly different in genetics and culture which explains some of the differences in the two colo- nies. As it turned out, the winter of 1604-1605 was an extremely rough winter and the settlers’ choice of location for their landing was not

Figure 5. Port Royal Habitation. good. Fresh water was very diffi- cult to find, and the winter weather was extreme. As a result, the expedition lost 35 of their settlers. The remaining 40 settlers were saved largely due to the good deeds of the local Mi’kmaq’s. The follow- ing spring, they found a better location on the south side of the on the An- napolis Basin. See Figure 5. The new location was sheltered and easy to protect. The Port Royal Habitation was built in the next years. Over the next 25 years, the development of the colony was hampered by the constant back and forth fighting between the French and the English and also between the French explorers themselves. Much of the activity was on the exploration and discovery of the natural resources of the area and on developing a working relationship with the local Mi’kmaq Indians. The colonials soon learned about the area’s 50-foot tides and ex- pansive marshes all along the Bay of Fundy. These marshes were very similar to those of western France where dykes were used to turn those marshes into rich farmlands. THE GOLDEN YEARS. The leadership of the colony changed several times during this period until 1630 when Charles de Menou, Lord d’Aulnay de Charnisay was named Governor. D’Aulnay owned a large ‘seigneurie’ or fiefdom in Charnisay, France from which he recruited some 100 men for an expedition to Acadia in 1632. The expedition included the progeni- tors of many future Acadian families including Jean Terriot, a peasant farmer known for his skills in building the ‘aboiteau’, a wooden device that allowed the marshes to drain at low tide but kept the seawater out at high tide.2 As a matter of colonial policy, the

2 Researchers later found some inaccuracies in Longfellow’s beautiful poem which was published before most historians were able to fully research the details of Acadian history. In ‘Part The First’ of his poem, Longfellow writes: Longfellow in his poem, Evangeline says: 4

dykes were jointly owned as common prooperty by the settlers who were each required to work on the dykes a certain amount of time every year.

Figure 6. Acadia's Founding Families. Many of the peasants were known for their skills in farming, milling, dyke building, wood working, orchards and others. Over time, the 100 settlers were encouraged to go home to France and return with their wives as did Jean Terriot around 1635. D’Aulnay and later governors adopted policies that allowed the settlers to own their properties and to trade with the local natives and later, with other colonies like Quebec and Massa- chusetts. As the colony population grew, the settlers spread out to settle new villages like Grand-Pré on the Minas Basin and at the eastern end of the Bay of Fundy. At the first census taken in 1671, there were some 40 family names in Port Royal. One of those families was the Forêt family whose descendants would emerge one hundred years later in the town of Harvard. See Figure 6. At some point, the colony established a system of representation to make collective de- cisions that affected the entire colony. Each village, parish or neighborhood chose a rep- resentative or ‘délégué’ (delegate) who would meet with the Governor periodically to

“…Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant, Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o’er the meadows….” To the contrary, the ‘aboiteaux’ in the dykes opened at low tides to allow the marshes to drain and closed at high tides to present the seawater from flooding the marshes. 5

administer the colony. Clive Doucet, a Canadian writer and politician wrote in his book “Notes from Exile, On Being Acadian”: “The independent, democratic ethic of the Acadians presaged the modern era, which arrived powerfully almost a generation later (after the expul- sion) with the American and French revolutions.” So, this egalitarian custom of the Acadians was foreign not only to the English and the French but also foreign to their cousins to the north in their sister colony of Québec which continued the feudal customs of France.

MOVING TO THE ENGLISH ERA.

In the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, King Louis XIV consolidated his gains and losses in the New World and ceded the to England along with Newfoundland and Labrador. This left France with Québec and the rest of the Acadian colony which included the Gaspé peninsula, present-day New Brunswick, Île St Jean / Prince Edward Island, Île Royale/ Cape Breton and the eastern third of present-day Maine. England’s plan was to use the former Acadian peninsula as the new home of the settlers coming

Figure 7. Nova Scotia in 1754. Source: Wikipedia.

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from Scotland and so, they named the peninsula “Nova Scotia”, or New Scotland. (See Figure 7) Initially, there were only the Acadians to manage and the English set out to establish new rules and laws for their new subjects which included loyalty to the English crown. The Acadians were reluctant to swear allegiance to the King, fearing that this oath would interfere with the practice of their Catholic faith. But in general, the Acadians managed to get along with their new English rulers while never fully agreeing to swear allegiance to the English crown. Longfellow summed it up well in Evangeline: “… Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow.” The Acadians continued to persevere. As the Acadians started into their second century in the New World, their population was approaching 15,000 people. They had settled a dozen villages including: Beaubas- sin, Canso, Cap de Sable, Chipoudie, Cobequid, Grand-Pré, La Hève, Les Mines, Louis- bourg, Pigiquid, Pobomcoup, and Port Royal. They had cleared some 250,000 acres of land which included 100,000 acres of cultivated land. They owned their homes, barns and livestock including about 130,000 head of cat- tle. They had a well-established fishing industry that had been fishing off the Grand Banks since before the settlement of Acadia. They were trading with their Indian friends of course, the Mi’kmaqs and their sister colony, Québec along with some of the English colonies including and the . There is a long and detailed history of this period between the Acadians and the English which is beyond the scope of this article. For more information on this topic, read Pro- fessor John Mack Faragher’s book on Acadian history; “A Great and Noble Scheme”. At this point, the Acadians felt that their best years were coming to an end. While they continued to try to get along with the English, the disagreements were complicated and difficult. Their relationship with the Mi’kmaq Indians was a liability because the Eng- lish could not get along with the native Americans and the Mi’kmaqs did not trust the English. As with their faith, turning against their Mi’kmaq friends was out of the ques- tion. Many families started feeling a need to perhaps move to other places if not outside of Nova Scotia, perhaps somewhere in Nova Scotia close to the borders where escape would be possible. A new village named Beaubassin was settled close to the Isthmus at the border with present-day New Brunswick where the French had built . Joseph Terriot, the 5th generation grandson of Jean, chose to make his home in Beaubassin with his new bride in 1746. Other families did the same in Port Royal and Grand Pré. Beaubassin became a very large settlement over that time.

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”LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT”…THE EXPULSION. On April 14, 1755, the Governors of the English colonies convened at the Council of Al- exandria (Virginia) and decided to attack the French in four locations, one being, Fort Beausejour in Acadia (present-day New Brunswick) just inside the border. The two countries were at peace at the time. Two thousand provincials were mustered at ; they were formed up in two battal- ions; one under Colonel John Winslow and the other, under Colonel George Scott. The battalions were then sent off to report to Colonel Monckton in Nova Scotia after which the French at Fort Beausejour were engaged. In June, the French quickly surrendered. Monckton renamed the fort, Fort Cumberland. On his own authority, Governor Lawrence, operating out of Halifax, decided to in- struct Monckton to break off a number of his troops and to send them under Winslow to Grand Pre. He ordered transport ships up from Boston. The Acadians were to be gathered together at several points throughout the province, loaded onto ships and sent away; to be dis- persed among the English colonists, south, along the Atlantic seaboard. Once the commanders implemented the deportation, then, the Acadian homes and all of their possessions, other then what the Acadians were permitted to carry away with them, were to be Figure 8. Deportation Order. Painting by Claude Picard. torched. And so, it was that on Sun- day, August 10, 1755, the then Governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, along with Governor Shirley, the Colonial Governor of Massachusetts ordered Colonel Handfield to Annapolis Royal, Winslow to Grand Pré, Murray to Piziquid and Monckton to the three settlements of Isthmus, Tatamagouche and Cobequid to meet with the Acadians. At that time, meetings took place in the village churches. After the Acadian males (fa- thers and sons) reported to their churches, the doors were locked, and the men were placed under arrest. They were then read their orders which was that all Acadians would be arrested and placed on ships that were waiting elsewhere and then shipped to destinations all along the eastern seaboard.

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Figure 9. Acadian Deportation. Painting by Claude Picard.

Later, the Acadian females were arrested and shipped as well. Then, the homes and barns were burned and destroyed, and their livestock was left abandoned. This process of searching for and expelling Acadians continued for nine years. From his “Military Annals of Lancaster”, Section titled “Lancaster in Acadia and the Acadians in Lancaster”, (pages 41-52), Henry Nourse records this part of Acadian his- tory as follows: “It is one hundred and thirty years" Since the burning of Grand-Pré, When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed, Bearing a nation, with all its household goods, into exile; Exile without an end, and without an example in story.” Nourse continues: “Of the numerous Lancaster readers of ‘Evangeline’ few now suspect how nearly the sad tale of ravaged Acadia touched our town history. Upon the crown officials then in authority over the Province of Nova Scotia, histo- rian and poet have indelibly branded the stigma of a merciless edict of ex- pulsion, which devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven thousand simple peasants from a scene of rural felicity rarely 9

surpassed, to scatter them in the misery of abject poverty among strangers who speak a strange tongue and hate their religion.” Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow organized a combat force of about two thousand men, that formed two battalions. Their mission was to remove the French (not specifi- cally the Acadians) from Fort Beausejour in present-day New Brunswick near the isth- mus between Acadia and Nova Scotia. (See Figure 10) Their vessel was a sloop called “Victory” which transported several companies including the one that was made up mostly of Lancaster and Harvard men and was part of Lieutenant-Colonel Scott’s bat- talion. One of its officers was Captain Abiˈjah Willard who was the brother of Colonel Samuel Willard, both natives of Still River. His younger brother, Joshua Willard and Moses Haskell were his lieutenants, and Caleb Willard his ensign. The Harvard men in his company included Benjamin Atherton, aged 20, laborer. Daniel Harper, aged 21, la- borer. Jonathan Creasy, 25. Elias Haskell,19, cooper. Isaac Day, 24, cooper. Joseph Metcalf, 21 and John Farnsworth, 30, laborers. Silas Willard, 19, laborer. We know that Captain Willard kept a journal that began on the day that his company marched from Lancaster on April 9, 1755. We know from his journal that his company participated in the capture of the French fort, . Some of his comments make clear that there was a “…hearty dislike between the Massachusetts soldiers and the [English] Regulars.” Captain Willard evidently thought that by far the largest share of hard and disagreeable tiring work was allotted to the Massachusetts men. Nourse says …" Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, who commanded the entire expedition for England, appears in Willard's pages as a cold-blooded military leader, caring little for the comfort of his soldiers. For example, with plenty of cattle roaming wild on the meadows about them, the soldiers were forbidden fresh meat. Several were arrested for going out to gather some green peas, a great abundance of which were growing on the marsh, and the [Captain Willard] writes in his journal: “There was a grate uprore in the Camp concerning the peese, for it was thought that Coll. Monckton had much Ra- ther the Cattle should Eat the peese, than the soldiers that Came from or his one troops, which by Credi- ble Information of our officers. I thought it very hard.”…

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On August 5, Captain Willard was placed in charge of some 250 men and was given sealed orders to proceed to Minas Bay. Nourse says: “Captain Willard's march along the shore of-Minas Bay (See Figure 11) came near ending in a tragedy, which would have carried mourning into many a home in Lancaster. He had been traversing the beach, the banks of which were precipitous and nearly one hundred feet in height, when the

Figure 11. Minas Basin and its 5o-foot tides.

increased roaring of the tide attracted attention and a Frenchman [Aca- dian] warned them that their lives depended upon swift retreat.” Captain Willard writes in his journal: “I ordered the party to return back as fast as they could; the men being frightened traveled as fast as possible. We were 11

obliged to travel 2 miles before we could escape the tide and before we got to the upland where we could get up the Banks which we were obliged to wade up to their middles and just escaped being washed away and when come to this case some of the men were very much fatigued and at this place by the best observation the tides rose 80 foot.” “When the expedition reached Tatamagouche, Captain Willard, ac- cording to instructions, opened his secret or- ders, he said — " sur- prising to me for my orders were to burn all the houses that I found on the Road to the ‘Baie Vertes’. The Captain made suitable disposi- tion of forces and be- gan to carry out his dis- Figure 12. Order of the Day: Burn the Houses. Paint by Claude Picard. agreeable duty. All the inhabitants of the district were summoned to assemble, and when collected and surrounded by the soldiers he went among them… “…and told them that they must go with me to Fort Cumberland (formerly Fort Beauséjour) and burn all their buildings which made the inhabitants look very somber and dejected. One of the French asked me for what reason? For he said he never had taken up arms against the English since they had the fight at Minas, and since swore by the Bible that he never would, be- fore Major Philips of Annapolis; and he was ready to swear now and all the rest made the same reply; I told them they might carry their families with them if they thought best; and upon that they asked me to have the liberty to go with their families to the Island of Saint Johns (present-day Prince Edward Island) but I soon answered them that it did not lie in my power to do it, and they asked me liberty for two hours to consult whether they though best to carry their families. I granted them the Lib- erty and after they had consulted with each other, they sent for me and they made this reply that they had chosen to leave their families, which I readily granted for I did not want the trouble of the women and children.

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This afternoon, I ordered the whole to be drawn into a body and bid the French men to march of and set fire to their buildings and left the women and children to take care of themselves with great lamentation which I must confess it seemed to be something shocking. And thus the pillage and destruction, the wailing of women widowed and children made fatherless went on from hamlet to hamlet, and when the torch had desolated the district assigned to him, Captain Willard marched back to Fort Cumberland and reported to Colonel Monckton.”

Figure 13. Divide and Disperse the Acadians.

In his “Military Annals of Lancaster”, (page 49) Nourse tells us that: “The Lancaster soldiers, ill clad, often inefficiently provisioned, and suf- fering much from the rigors of the climate, spent the dreary Canadian winter in barracks at Fort Cumberland. In April 1756, they were allowed to return to their homes. And then Nourse gives us some shocking news: “As we have seen, this was not Captain Willard’s first experience with Nova Scotia, nor was it to be his last. Little more than twenty years passed from the time when he assisted in forcing the broken-hearted Acadian farmers into exile,

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and again he sailed for Nova Scotia, himself a fugitive, proscribed as a Tory [during the Revolution], his ample estate confiscated and his name a reproach among his life-long neighbors. As thousands of French Neu- trals, from Georgia to Massachusetts Bay, signed away their lives with grieving for their lost Acadia, so we know that Abijah Willard, so long as he lived, looked westward with yearning heart toward that elm- shaded home so familiar to all Lancastrians. On the northern coast of the Bay of Fundy, about ten miles west of St. John, New Brunswick is a locality yet called Lancaster. Colonel Abijah Willard gave it the name. It was his retreat in exile, and there he died in 1789.” So, of the two thousand Acadians that were assigned to the colony of Mas- sachusetts, , three families, including twenty persons. Were assigned to Lancaster. These were: Benoni Melanson, his wife Mary, and children Mary, Joseph, Simeon, John. Bezaleel, Carrè, and another unnamed daughter; Geoffrey Benway, Abigail his wife, and children John, Peter, Jo- seph, and Mary; Theal Forre, his wife Abigail, and children Mary, Abigail and Margaret. The Forre family were later transferred to Harvard. These exiles arrived in February 1756, and the accounts of the town's selectmen for their support were regularly rendered until February 1761. According to Nourse, they were destitute, sickly, and apparently utterly unable to support themselves, and were moved now here, now there, among the farmers, at a fixed price of two shillings and eightpence each per week for their board. Sometimes a house was hired for them.

In the end, these unhappy people suddenly disappeared from their habi- tation. Wracked with homesickness, some had stolen away and made a bold push for the sea, in the vain hope that on it they might float back to the Basin of Minas. This was in the depth of winter, February 1757…

From that date, these refugees from Acadia no longer appear in the annals of Lancaster or Harvard.”

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THE ACADIAN DIASPORA.

Figure 14. The Diaspora, 1763-1767

While Nourse’s best information in 1890 was that 1000 Acadians were received by Mas- sachusetts, today we know that number was 2000. (See Figure 13) Connecticut received 700, New York; 250, Pennsylvania; 500, Maryland received another 1000, Virginia; 1100, North Carolina; 500, South Carolina; 500, and Georgia; 400. Of course, several ships were involved in storms and were forced to land in Santo Domingo and other points in the West Indies. Many of those Acadians much later went to as arranged by Spain. Today, we know them as , a contraction of Acadian. In addition to those Acadians who were arrested and evicted, about five thousand oth- ers fled Nova Scotia to Québec and other parts of New France like Ile Royale (Cape Bre- ton) and Ile St Jean (Prince Edward Island). After hiding, staying with the Mi’kmaq’s and otherwise evading the English, Jean Terriot’s fifth-generation grandson, Joseph fled Beaubassin to the colony of Québec with his wife and seven children in mid-January of 1759. His wife, Marie Agnès Cormier had just given birth to a daughter when the situa- tion became very dangerous and so they decided to take flight. Camping in the forests of present-day New Brunswick and Quebec, they traveled on foot and by canoe in some stretches. Eleven months later, they arrived in St François de Sales de la Rivière du Sud on the St Lawrence on the first of November of the same year. The first thing they did upon arriving was to take their new infant daughter to their parish church to have her baptized. Joseph was one of about 1500 Acadians who fled to Québec.

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Finally, there were some Acadians that after having been shipped to a colony, asked to be returned to France. Some for a variety of reasons wound up in England and were imprisoned. The Acadian diaspora continued well through 1767.

Today, two-hundred and sixty-five years later,

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LINEAGE OF TWO HARVARD ACADIANS

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In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French- speaking Acadians ("the neutral French") from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumera- ble families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality; to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England; had been one of the founding values of Acadia; its settlers traded and intermarried freely with native Mikmaq Indians and English Protestants alike. But the Acadians' refusal to swear unconditional alle- giance to the British Crown in the mid-eighteenth century gave New Englanders, who had long cov- eted Nova Scotia's fertile farmland, pretense enough to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.

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