A History Of The Breaux Family

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
A History Of The Breaux Family
Addendum To The Allendom Papers

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
PART 3

The Acadian Exile...

The Acadian exile was a nightmare of hellish proportions. In England, children were wrenched from their "papist" parents and placed in "good" English homes in order to learn English and become upstanding protestants. Nearly 3,000 were returned to France where they were given the choice of returning to the feudal system they’d fled four generations before or starve in the streets -- take your pick.

The timing of those exiled to New England could not have been worse. Recent French-inspired Indian raids on the colonists’ homes and villages, which signaled the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1755-1763), had terrorized the colonists and ignited waves of anti-French, anti-Catholic hysteria. Rumors flew that the Acadians were French zealots "so attach’d to the French King, that sooner than deny his power over them they have quitted all they have in the world

At virtually the same time that ALEXIS, Honoré and their young families their cousins and their children and two of their aunts were being driven from their ancestral homeland onto the transport ships for deportation to Maryland, the following editorial appeared in
The Maryland Gazette:

"We are now upon the great and noble Scheme of sending the
Neutral French out of this Province, who have always been secret
Enemies, and have encouraged our Savages to cut our throats. If we
effect their Expulsion, it will be one of the greatest Things that ever
the English did in America; for by all the Accounts, that Part of the
Country they possess, is as good Land as any in the World: In case
therefore we could get some good English farmers in their Room,
this Province would abound with all Kinds of Provisions."

One can only imagine the shock and horror the Braud family must have endured during the deportation. In an age when events moved slowly, (remember, it had taken four years for the Acadians to respond to the English demands for unconditional surrender and another six for Governor Phillipps to get back to them with the mendacious Conventions of 1730), their world disappeared almost overnight. In a matter of days, 913 Pisiquid and Grand Pré Acadians were torn from their homes and force-marched under guard to the four ships waiting offshore. Their farms and possessions were torched to insure they did not escape and return. One wonders if they could still see the dense smoke on the horizon as they were herded aboard the vessels, divided into four groups of approximately 250 people each.

Although later legends of the Dispersal would tell tales of nuclear families torn apart, current scholarship suggests that although extended families were purposefully broken up in exile, at least among the Braud deportees the families were left intact. Indeed the brothers, Amand, ALEXIS, and Honoré were traveling with their Uncle Charles (55) and Aunt Claire (5) and their grown children (and very young families) on one side, and their Uncle Pierre (55) and Aunt Marguerite (50) and their grown children( and young families) on the other.

At a time when records indicate that women bore children from their early twenties until well into their mid-forties (it was not at all uncommon for siblings to be separated by 25 years, or for aunts to be younger than their nieces), our ancestors who boarded the transport ships appear to have been surprisingly stratified in ages. In addition to the aunts and uncles (4) already mentioned who were separated by only five years, the cousins and their wives were virtually all in their twenties. Uncle Charles and Aunt Claire had a few teenagers, but the group contained 14 children under the age of 10, (most between birth and 5 years.) Cousin Jean Charles and wife, Marie Benoit, were carrying their newborn, first child, Michél, while cousin Joseph Charles was newly-wed to Marie Josette -- the youngest of the wives at seventeen.

There were 7 toddlers under 5-years-old in the group, including ALEXIS’s sons, Joseph and Charles, (his oldest son, HONORE was only 6), brother Honoré’s only child, Magdeleine, and Amand’s only son, Joseph. ALEXIS and Honoré’s name, ALEXIS’s wife’s name was Marie Marguerite and Honoré would have three daughters named respectively Marie, Marguerite and Magdeleine. Later, the two would enter the history books As the leaders (or "chiefs" of their extended families of 130 individuals who came to Louisiana.

Bound together by age groups, they were also closely united by family ties. Aunt Claire was a Trahan, as were ALEXIS’s wife and both of Honoré’s wives, his first, Anne, and his second, Magdeleine Trahan. (We are still confused about the timing of his marriages. By 1763 - eight years later - he was married to Magdeleine but it is unclear whether Anne died before or after deportation, or which of them was the mother of Magdeleine (1). Meanwhile, brother Amand and no less than three of his cousins were married to Landry girls in their early 20’s.

Nightmare at Sea...

The four ships limped into the harbor at Annapolis between November 10th-30th of 1755. The exiles had been packed into the dreadfully crowded vessels for a month during the nightmare voyage from Acadia. Food was limited - some reports cite a diet of primarily bread and water. Many were sick. Those who died en route were thrown overboard. Violent storms tossed the ships about and it became necessary to put into Boston for awhile to wait them out. It is unlikely that the exiles were permitted to leave the ships in Boston for more than brief periods, if at all. The city was not equipped to deal with nearly 1,000 refugees and they were not exactly in a position to look after themselves. As a result, the ships arrived in Annapolis with the ships’ stores complete depleted, the passengers starving, and the local citizens in no mood to take pity on their plight.

On the contrary, the December 4, 1755 edition of The Maryland Gazette carried an editorial by the editor, Joseph Green (also the author of the aforementioned Francophobic editorial of a few months earlier),in which he whined,

"While they have lain in this Port, the Town has been at
considerable charge in supporting them, as they appear very needy,
and quite exhausted in Provisions; and it cannot be expected that
the charge or Burden of maintaining such a Multitude can be supported
by the inhabitants of Annapolis...it will be necessary soon to disperse
them to different Parts of the Province."

And so they were. This group of 913, driven from the Mimes region of the Bay of Fundy, were returned to the ships and dispatched to ports at the Patuxant, Choptank, and Wicomico Rivers. From there they were further dispersed throughout Maryland to Newton, Georgetown, Snowhill, Annapolis, Marlborough, Oxford, Baltimore, and a rural tobacco growing region known as Portabaco.

The luck of the draw dictated survival or extinction for many; able-bodied men in the port cities were able to find work as longshoremen or sailors. On the other hand,

"...in Somerset County, Maryland, the exiles ‘betake themselves
for shelter to the swamps, now and for a long time full of snow, where
they sicken and die."

Not all of the Marylanders were hardened to the plight of the exiles, although the social and political pressure against the humanitarians who tried to help must have been enormous. Brasseaux tells us of one Henry Callister, a local tobacco farmer and staunch supporter of the Acadian dispersal, who nonetheless not only provided money for clothes and food at a general store in Oxford, but sent over 60 exiles to the Wye River area where he housed them for the winter at his own expense. His expenditures were so heavy that they caused the collapse of his prosperous business but, as he confided to a business associate in London in a letter written on Christmas day in 1755:

"...these poor wretches have been here since the 8th current, and
nothing has been done for them by the public...Nobody knows what to
do; and few have charity on them. I see no one interested for them but
myself...There’s a number of them now about me in tears, craving relief
for their sick, etc."

On that same day, he drafted a letter on the Acadian’s behalf to none other than King George III, himself, requesting relief and redress for their plight. But with the exception of a handful of humanitarians in Baltimore, Annapolis and Oxford, the Protestants watched the Acadian "papists" die of exposure and malnutrition without lifting a finger.

Portabaco...

Our research has not yet uncovered the details of our family’s exile in Maryland, but we do know that they were sent to the Portabaco region, although the cousins were broken up and there is evidence that ALEXIS and Honoré were separated within the region. Their nuclear families appear to have remained intact, however, and they were most likely to have been among the numbers who found paid work as field hands on the tobacco plantations.

There are two important points that emerge from this period of exile -- one regarding our family in particular and one pertaining to the exiles in general -- that provide valuable pieces to the puzzle of our later family history in Louisiana. We’ll address the more general issue first:

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Acadians in general, both in Acadia and during exile, was that they "(did) not go gentle into that good night." Anyone who took their peasant/agrarian economy and limited literacy as evidence of stupidity were in for a surprise. The French Neutrals knew the law and were tenacious in pursuing what they believed were their rights and the protection of their cultural identity. (Even within the Acadian community, for example, disputes over property boundaries and other legal issues were rigorously argued and defended, and they marched off to court at the drop of a bad fence.) Also, their petitions appear to have been directed straight to the top -- we suspect that Henry Callister’s appeal to King George was initiated at the Acadians request. (We also suspect an Acadian origin of the phrases, "let me talk to your supervisor" and "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"!)

Despite arriving in the English colonies penniless, homeless, and in may cases starving, their stubborn resistance to the will of their oppressors did not dim. They remained acutely aware of their position in the global-Colonial chess game of the era, and determined that they would not be swept under the rug or, worse yet, forced to melt into someone else’s culture.

As far as the colonial government was concerned, they were legal British subjects and therefore nothing more than impudent immigrants who deserved no special treatment or assistance. The Acadians, meanwhile, expelled from their homeland by force of arms, considered themselves prisoners of war -- which made them wards of the State -- and demanded repatriation. Throughout New England, England, and France, the propagandists labeled them as "jobs" that would only absorb them into the local culture at a subsistence level. Sassy stuff indeed!

Their position was not without support. In another letter from Henry Callister to Horatio Sharpe, he recounted,

"The simple French at Annapolis call themselves prisoners of
war. They did likewise here (Oxford) at first; but when one considers
that they were treated as prisoners of war by Governor Charles Lawrence
...they might have thought themselves duty-bound to declare themselves
prisoners, but also in that character to be entitled to better treatment
than they have met with as faithful subjects."

Maryland was having none of it. As the winter of their discontent melted into the spring of 1756, the colonial legislature passed the "Act Regulating the French Neutrals’ Conduct." Among other things, it forbade travel to the west of the colony, and an Acadian could be shot on sight if caught trying to make it to the French-held territory on the frontier. Children would be taken from their parents if the family

"...was determined to be incapable of providing for them,"

and no Acadian could travel more than ten miles from his or her residence without a "passport" and a damned good reason for wanting one. The Act continued to be the law of the land for three years.

Caught between a rock and a hard place -- survival meant assimilation but assimilation meant the death of their cultural identity -- some Acadians embraced a third workable but dangerous alternative: Capitulate on the surface while maintaining an underground (and treasonable) connection with their widely dispersed families, and continue putting the pressure on anyone with the power to change their circumstances. As long as France and England remained at each other’s throats, the Acadians knew they had a chance.

Approximately 35 nuclear families were dispersed throughout the Portabaco area. ALEXIS, his brothers, uncles, aunts and cousins represented about one-third of the total (9) families or about 40 people). In Portabaco we find the second of the two points that may echo in our future family history.

Brasseaux tells us,

"...only the exiles in Maryland had an intimate acquaintance with
slavery. Detained in the tobacco plantation areas of that English colony,
Acadians came into contact with the local slave population and able-bodied
exiles worked side-by-side with slaves in the tobacco fields. Contact bet-
ween exiles and bondsmen was of sufficient extent to occasion fears of a
pro-French slave insurrection among Anglo-American colonists. The
experience profoundly influenced these Maryland exiles...".

It is a defining moment in our family’s history. The fact that the Marylanders feared a pro-French slave uprising hints that despite the fact that the Brauds and other exiles were paid day-laborers, while the slaves were owned by masters, a kinship and bond must have formed as they worked side-by-side in the fields. It is possible that some of the slaves’ standard of living actually exceeded that of the exiles, but in many ways they had much in common; both had been torn from their native land and transported on ships in hellish conditions; were hated simply for what they were rather than who they were, had families who’d been torn apart; were forced to work for someone else with little hope of rising higher; had a limited understanding of the English language; their freedom of movement was restricted and both were subject to being shot on sight for trying to escape -- essentially, a colonial power was doing its best to annihilate the culture and sense of history of both groups.

Could the seeds of understanding which led to the love between EDOUARD and CELESTINE have been sown a hundred years before in the tobacco fields of Maryland? This speculation is supported by the observation that the French Creoles later looked down on the Mississippi "Cajun" farmers because, especially in the early 19th century, they bought slaves only supplement the family labor pool and continued to work their own land, side-by-side with their bondsmen.

We need not whitewash our ancestors’ involvement with slavery -- they prospered on the Mississippi River plantation because they were willing to purchase slaves. The Acadian immigrants to Louisiana who settled in the plains and bayous and took to ranching (much less labor intensive), rejected slavery even though in the pre-Civil War South this decision kept them on the lower rungs of the economic (social, educational, political) ladder for generations. It is a fact of our history that the family of one of our ancestors had once owned the family of another of our ancestors. But like all black and white issues, closer examination reveals many shades of gray.

Deliverance...

The Breaux family’s exile in the tobacco fields of Maryland lasted twelve years and two months. During that tie, they never gave up hope of reuniting with their "countrymen", and continued to pursue any avenue -- political or subversive -- to reach their goal. The beginning of the Seven Years War in 1755 had destroyed their lies in Canada and just when it appeared that the Acadian cause was lost, the close of that war opened the door for their reunification, albeit in a new land thousands of miles away.

As the war came to an end in 1763, the exiles knew they must seize the moment or all would be lost. The French ambassador to the English court (Louis Jules Barbon Mancini Mazarini, duc de Niverois - phew!), was in the final stages of negotiation for the war-ending Treaty of Paris (1763) when he sent a secret dispatch to the exiles incarcerated in England, promising them Louis XV’s protection. Copies of this communique were smuggled to the French Neutrals’ friends and relatives in New England. When this ray of hope reached them, the Maryland exiles sprang into action

We are once again indebted to Jack Pastorek of the Catholic Diocesan Archives in Baton Rouge who, as we were leaving, pressed a copy of an 8 page document, written in French, into our hands and said maybe we’d "find something useful in here." The latter part of the document contains 9 lists, divided by region, of the exiles in Maryland who wished to leave, further divided into families. We found ALEXIS and Honoré on the Portabaco list, but not until recently did we realize that the document is actually a letter dated July 7, 1763, addressed to "Monseigneur Le duc de Nivernois" in London. The Maryland exiles had fired off a letter to none other than the King’s representative to the Paris Peace Talks of the age, reminding him who they were, how many they were, and telling him (as best my poor high school French can decipher) that they think he’s wonderful and the King is even more wonder and of course they’re only poor subjects but their hearts had leaped in their little ole bosoms when they heard his grandness had not forgotten the poor French Neutrals and, by the way, could he please get them the hell out of there?

(NFS: The history books refer to one Joseph Landry who was a mover and shaker among the Maryland exiles representing them to Governor Sharpe and appearing before the Maryland legislature on their behalf. Recently, we noticed in the Nivernois letter his name appears on the Portabaco list and it makes one wonder . . .with all those Landry women married to all those Breaux cousins, coupled with fact that ALEXIS and Honoré appear to be the leaders of the group of Breauxs and other families on arrival in Louisiana, might not some further sleuthing uncover more information on our family’s role in Acadian deliverance?)

Nine hundred and thirteen Acadians were shipped to Maryland. Six hundred and sixty-seven survived to make the trip to Louisiana. Allowing for births occurring during exile, at least a third of their number had succumbed to smallpox, viral-pneumonia epidemics and the rigors of the ordeal. (Greater horrors were suffered by the Pennsylvania exiles where over half of the five hundred Acadians there had died.)

The Nivernois letter opens an invaluable window on our ancestors’ story. All-in-all, things could have been worse, indicating that ALEXIS and the other Breaux were relatively lucky to find themselves exiled on the tobacco plantations, where there appears to have been work and some means of maintaining a normal life. Even if they were separated from siblings and cousins, they must have been in the same general area and managed to stay in touch through what appears to be a well-functioning underground. Still the exile has taken its toll.

ALEXIS and MAGDELEINE are now in their late 30’s and all three of their sons have survived, (HONORE (16), Joseph (12) and Charles (9). They have a new daughter, Marie (5) and MAGDELEINE is pregnant again. The family now includes an orphan named Vivienne (20)

Honoré and Magdeleine have reached their early 30’s, and have added two more sisters, Marie and Marguerite, for the 2-year-old toddler Magdeleine who is now 9. They, too, are caring for an orphan.

The family has not been untouched by tragedy, however, both Amand and his wife, Marie Joseph have perished, probably explaining the orphans in ALEXIS and Honoré’s care. (It is not clear whether either of the brothers’ parents were living when the family was deported but if they were, they are no long alive.) Uncle Charles (63) and Aunt Claire (58) and nine of their ten children (ages 13-33) and wives are doing fine. Simon (24 at deportation) has been lost, but his wife,Marguerite Landry survives and is caring for their 13-year-old son. The "newly-weds", Joseph Charles and Marie Josette Landry (25) have born three children in exile, while Jean Charles (31) and wife, Marie Benoit (33), who carried their newborn son on board the transport ship, have watched him thrive (Michél is now 8) and added another little girl to the family.

Uncle Pierre is gone but Aunt Marguerite Gotrot (58) survives with their children, Jean (28), Marguerite (?), Mary Josette (18) and Mary Rose (16).

Considering the mortality rate among the rest of the Grand Pré and Pisiquid deportees, this branch of the Breauxs has done very well; other than the loss of Armand and Marie Joseph, the death rate is not too much above what one might expect in any 8 year period in a mid-eighteenth century family of this size. Their isolation from one another and refusal to be assimilated, however, is reflected in the number of men and women in their mid to late twenties -- all still unmarried.

The Nivernois letter contains one final listing on the Portabaco list that will figure prominently in our family story a couple of generations down the line in Louisiana: included are GEORGE CLOATRE and his wife, CECILE (25), their children, JOSEPH (2), MARIE (1), and an orphan in their care, Joseph Braud (10) (very likely Armand’s orphaned son.)

To On The Shoulders Of Giants Part 4

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