Acadia Parish, LAGenWeb
Famous (and Infamous) Uncles
Researched and compiled by Gene Thibodeaux
History, like literature, is filled with the dramatic exploits of heroes, villains and those who lay somewhere in between. The distant past of North America was peopled by fascinating characters who appear when they are most needed or who would have left the world a better place had they never stepped upon it. But what truly makes thumbing through yellowed pages worthwhile is that every once in a while I stumble across one of those notable characters who actually happens to be closely related to me. Here are some of my uncles who have – for better or for worse – graced the pages of history books:
Pierre Gaulter de Varennes et de La Vérendrye
One of the greatest explorers of North America is little known in the United States. Pierre Gaultier was born in Trois-Rivières, Canada in 1685, the son of René Gaultier de Varennes and Marie Boucher. He joined the French army, fought against the English in Newfoundland and Massachusetts then went to Europe in 1708 to take part in the War of the Spanish Succession. There he was wounded by bullets and sabers and taken prisoner.
Gaultier then returned to Canada, where the sirens of the unexplored far west took control of him. The soldier married and for a while eked out a meager existence farming and fur trading. As middle age approached, his brother, Jacques René, was appointed commandant of the Poste du Nord, which encompassed the lands bordering Lake Superior. The commander also formed a fur trading business and brought Pierre into it. Europeans still hoped to find an easy water route to the Pacific and La Vérendrye (as Pierre Gaultier is called in history books) thought it lay to the west of the Great Lakes.
Hearing tales from the Indians about a huge western lake (this turned out to be Lake Winnipeg) La Vérendrye convinced officials to send him on an expedition to found a post there in 1731. But the distances were actually much further than the Indians had told and it was not until 1734 that the Lake Winnipeg fort was built, along with interim forts at Rainy Lake and the Lake of the Woods. But distance was not the only cause of delay; government intransience, commercial financing, Indian wars and the goal to make exploration pay for itself through fur trading also slowed things down. Economic and political reasons for the exploration were foremost in the minds of the French Canadians; getting into the west first was not only to find a path to Asia but also to thwart English territorial and fur trading expansion from Hudson’s Bay.
Thereafter, the exploration work ramped up. La Vérendrye continued in his multiple rolls as fur trader, fort builder and explorer, sending out expeditions, usually lead by his sons, who became the first Europeans to see the Missouri River, the Rocky Mountains and the lake country of Manitoba. They filled in empty spaces on the maps from Lake Winnepeg to the lands as far south as Wyoming. The cost of this knowledge was personally great for La Vérendrye; one of his sons was killed by the Sioux Indians during the explorations. He died in Montréal in 1749 as he was preparing for another journey to the far west. Keep in mind that these exploratory ventures took place sixty years before Lewis and Clark made their famous trek into the west.
Nicholas Chauvin de LaFrénière
The French and Indian War turned out very badly for France. She would be forced out of North America, losing their hard-earned settlements in Québec, New Brunswick, Illinois, Ohio, Alabama and Louisiana. To forestall the victorious English from taking control of all of its former territories, and to compensate their ally for the loss of Florida to the British, France gave all of the territory west of the Mississippi River (in other words, Louisiana) to Spain.
Spain was slow to take possession of Louisiana and when it finally sent Governor Antonio de Ulloa, the former French inhabitants were less than thrilled. They wanted to remain French. Ulloa only brought along 75 soldiers to maintain Spanish authority.
Perceiving the Spanish as weak, a number of wealthy Louisianans decided to throw them out. Among the ringleaders of this band was Nicholas Chauvin de LaFrénière, the Attorney General of Louisiana.
Born near New Orleans in 1728, he was the son of the wealthy merchant Nicholas Chauvin de LaFrénière and Marguerite LeSueur. The younger LaFrénière was educated in Paris and was then appointed as Procurer General du Roi in 1763. Little did he know that France had already secretly ceded Louisiana to Spain. But he returned to his homeland and served in the position until – and after – Ulloa arrived.
In 1768 Louisiana revolted. Riots erupted in New Orleans. LaFrénière spoke eloquently to the Superior Council and turned them into revolutionaries. The former French governor tried to dissuade them, but in defeat he warned Ulloa to take his soldiers aboard a frigate for his own personal safety. This ship hoisted sail and fled to Cuba.
But in 1769 the Spanish came back in force. Irish-born General Alejandro O’Reilly returned to Louisiana with two thousand Spanish troops. The revolution withered and some of the leaders, including LaFrénière, met with O’Reilly to plead clemency. General O’Reilly must have been a great poker player, for the failed rebels thought that they were forgiven and did not even try to flee. The day after his arrival in New Orleans, the wily general gave a grand reception in the Governor’s Palace, inviting a number of prominent citizens – including the conspirators. There he had them arrested.
O’Reilly pardoned most of the population, but five of the leaders were sentenced to death and five were sent to prison in Cuba. Nicolas Chauvin de LaFrénière was one of those executed by firing squad the following day. All of the convicted revolutionaries had their property seized and sold to cover colonial debts. Thus ended the Louisiana Rebellion of 1768.
Jean Crevier de Saint François
In the earliest years of the history of French Canada, fur trading with the Indians was the principal economic activity. It also produced a great debate on whether business should be tied to morality.
The issue at hand was whether alcohol should be given to the Indians in exchange for the animal pelts. Bargaining with the inebriated was certainly profitable, but was it ethical? The governor of Trois-Rivières was against the practice, but his brother-in-law, Jean Crevier for decidedly in favor.
Jean Crevier was born at Trois-Rivières in 1642, the son of Christophe Crevier and Jeanne Énard. The Crevier family were fur traders and sold alcohol to the Indians as part of the business. The governor of Trois-Rivières, Pierre Boucher, resigned his office, partially due the stress caused by his in laws’ business practices. But not all of the members of the government were as sure of the wrongfulness of the practice and Québec governor Frontenac summoned 20 principal settlers, including Jean Crevier, to give opinions on the issue. To the charge that Indians become violent and a danger to settlers after drinking, Crevier’s reply was that it was their natural savage disposition, not alcohol, that brought on the violence.
That was not the end of Jean Crevier’s interactions with Indians. In 1693 he was captured in a raid by the Iroquois (English allies). The fur trader was horribly tortured before being ransomed from the Indians by the commander of the British post at Albany. But the ordeal had been too much and Crevier died of his wounds shortly thereafter. A few years after his death, his widow and son donated a part of his land to the Abenaki and the Sokoki Indians, for whom the Jesuits opened a mission which still exists today.
Claude Petitpas
Too closely wedged between the French in Québec and the English in Massachusetts, Acadia (today Nova Scotia) suffered grievously throughout its history due to the games of empire played between the great powers of Europe. A successful Acadian had to walk a tightrope between the two antagonistic countries in order to survive.
Claude Petitpas was a survivor. The son of Claude Petitpas, the clerk of court at Port Royal, Acadia, and Catherine Bugaret, he was born at Port Royal around the year 1663. The Acadians had very close relations with the local Micmac Indians and the younger Claude had especially close relations. He married a young woman of the tribe, who went by the French name of Marie-Thérèse. After her death, the 57-year-old Petitpas took as his second wife a 17-year-old French settler named Françoise Lavergne.
Petitpas settled near Musquodoboit, on the Atlantic coast of Acadia, a place frequented by Boston fisherman. There were complaints about his too-close association with them in 1698, when Acadia was still under French Dominion. The English took over the colony in 1713 and renamed it Nova Scotia.
While living under British rule he showed strong collaborationist tendencies. Because of his intimate knowledge of the Indians, he served as a translator for the British. In return for his ransoming of English prisoners from the Indians, the Legislative Council of Boston agreed in 1720 to pay the tuition fees for one of his sons to attend Harvard.
The French still controlled Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Petitpas moved there sometime before 1728. He English ties were still strong, though. The French governor there wanted to send him to France because he had apparently tried to influence the local Indians to swing their allegiance towards the British.
He died around 1732 and the British definitely missed him. The English crown gave his widow a sum of money for services rendered by her husband in his capacity as interpreter. In 1747 Governor Shirley of Massachusetts called Petitpas a “faithfull subject of the crown of Great Britain. . .[who] had received marks of favour from this government for his services.”
Jacques Dupré
The first decades after Louisiana became a part of the United States were fraught with political competition between the newly arrived Americans of English descent and the older French-speaking residents. The office of governor regularly rotated among members of these two competing ethnic groups.
Originally, there was no office of Lieutenant Governor. If the governor died or resigned the President of the State Senate took over the vacant position. In 1830, Jacques Dupré was the Senate President.
Jacques Dupré was born in New Orleans in 1773, the son of Laurent Dupré and Marie Josephe Fontenot. In 1791 Jacques received a Spanish land grant and became a successful cattleman near Opelousas. He married Theodiste Roy in 1792.
Dupré became an American citizen in the Louisiana Purchase and served as a major in the 16th Regiment of Louisiana Militia at the Battle of New Orleans against the British. Like many victorious soldiers, he turned his military service into elected public office. He won three terms to the State House of Representatives, in 1816, 1822 and 1824. Next came higher office; Dupré was elected to the Senate in 1828.
Governor Pierre Derbigny died in 1830 and Senate President Armand Beauvais replaced him in that office. Jacques Dupré was raised to fill Beauvais’ vacant spot. Then Governor Beauvais resigned two months later. A political furor erupted over the fact that two un-elected governors held the office within a few months. The result was a special election for governor in 1831.
Dupré chose not to run for governor and went back to the senate after the newly elected Andre B. Roman took office. There he kept his seat for another 16 years.
Jacques Dupré’s short stint as governor was quite busy. During his administration new companies were incorporated: the state’s first railroad, a canal company, the Merchant’s Insurance Company of New Orleans and a company to granulate sugar by a new process. Also there was a prohibition of further immigration of free persons of color into the state and the expulsion of all those who entered since 1825. And the seat of government returned to New Orleans from Donaldsonville.
Governor Dupré died on September 14, 1846 and was buried in Opelousas, in a unique grave topped by the sculpture of a sleeping (or dead ?) lion.
Michel LeNeuf du Hérisson
Family is important today to people of French extraction and so it was back three hundred and fifty years ago. Michel LeNeuf landed at Québec in 1636 along with other members of his numerous family, being the clans of LeNeuf and LeGardeur. A native of Caen in Normandy, Michel was the son of Mathieu LeNeuf and Jeanne LeMarchant.
The family settled in Trois-Rivières and attempted to monopolize the politics of the settlement and of the all powerful fur trade.
The family members were principals in the establishment of the Communauté des Habitants, an important fur trading company. Michel acquired a large amount of land, which he filled with tenant farmers, and also owned a flour mill.
French Canadian politics also appealed to him. He was Syndic in 1648, General Civil and Criminal Lieutenant in the Seneschal’s Court of Trois-Rivières in 1661, Royal Judge in 1664 and even temporary Governor of Trois-Rivières in 1668.
His pronouncements as judge seemed to have been marked by fairness and common sense. But he spent a large amount of time on the opposite side of the bench. He was involved in an unusually large number of lawsuits and was noted for his violent temperament. The Conseil Souverain suspended Michel LeNeuf from his post as a judge by a decree dated 29 May 1665 but he was reinstated in this office by 1667.
Michel never married in Canada but brought along a young girl with him when he arrived from France. The records are unclear as to whether she was his adopted, legitimate or illegitimate daughter.
Joseph LeBlanc
When the English took over Acadia in 1713 many writers have stated that the Acadians only wanted to stay out of the imperial struggles of France and England. That is not exactly true; some actively helped the French against their English overlords.
Acadia (Nova Scotia) was ruled by England but its population was ethnically French. A few miles away lay French-controlled New Brunswick and Île Royale (Cape Breton Island). The French wanted the colony back and war erupted from 1744 to 1748.
Joseph LeBlanc was an Acadian, born before English rule. He was the son of Antoine LeBlanc and Marie Bourgeois. Though he lived under English rule, he actively worked on the side of his French brethren.
French troops under François Du Pont Duvivier laid siege to Annapolis Royal in the late summer of 1744. Duvivier used LeBlanc as a courier, delivering messages to the French fortress of Louisbourg on Île Royale. Though Duvivier stated that LeBlanc had been threatened with retribution from the Indians if he didn’t deliver, the latter didn’t seem that unwilling and even brought along sheep and cattle to sell at Louisbourg.
After the unsuccessful siege, the British sought to punish any Acadians who helped the French. LeBlanc was summoned before the Nova Scotia Council. He stated that he was innocent, “not being enlightened enough to distinguish between a time of war and a time of untroubled peace.” Surprisingly, the English only made him post a £100 as a bond of good behavior.
His “good behavior” did not last long. He was actively assisting another French force under Paul Marin de La Malgue the following year. He was captured, convicted and spent six months in prison before escaping. He then assisted yet another French expedition commanded by the Duc d’Anville in 1746. He gathered 230 head of cattle to feed this force but it was defeated before it received the beef. LeBlanc went into hiding and after peace was again established, he relocated to French Île Royale.
The next war was even more of a failure for the French. The initial act came with the forced expulsion of the Acadians living in Nova Scotia. But Louisbourg was not safe either; it fell to the British in 1758 and its inhabitants, mostly Acadian refugees, were also expelled. LeBlanc and his family made it to the French island of Miquelon and eventually settled among displaced Acadians on Belle-Île-en-Mer, an island off of the coast of France where he died in 1772.
Ozemé Carriere
When the American Civil War erupted, not everyone in the south unconditionally supported the Confederate cause. Many men wanted to stay home, tend their fields and raise their families. But war has a way of not allowing peace to reign for anyone.
Ruthless times breed ruthless men. And ruthless men require ruthless leaders. In many areas bands of men fought a bloody war behind the lines. On the prairies west of Opelousas one of these bands was led by Ozemé Carriere.
Ozemé was the son of Ursin Carriere and Carmelite LaCasse. His father died a few months before his birth and it can be imagined that the widow Carriere had a hard time feeding a family in the almost wilderness of the Mallet Woods. It is said that Ozemé Carriere was already an accomplished criminal before the war started, but he did have a natural knack for leadership and guerilla warfare. And also an intimate knowledge of the Mallet Woods, an ideal hiding place for a band of wanted men.
Known as Jayhawkers, these men, for whatever reasons, wanted no part of the Confederacy. Their ranks swelled when the Confederacy enacted a conscription law in 1862. Leaving a family with no man to cultivate the fields and to fend off the ravaging armies could be equivalent to a death sentence for wives and children. Not surprisingly, many poor farmers with no stake in slavery were reluctant to go off to distant battlefields.
This band of draft dodgers, conscientious objectors, free blacks, criminals and whatever else joined their ranks, needed food and protection in order to survive. So they robbed food, horses and guns from local homesteads, particularly those strongly supportive of the Confederacy. And the Confederacy fought back hard. Soon former neighbors were pitted against one another in a merciless fight for survival.
Whatever else can be said about Carriere, he definitely was effective. Union general Nathanial Banks even offered him a commission in the Yankee army. For years he fought off Confederate units sent to annihilate his Jayhawkers.
The end of the war brought and end to Carriere. When conscription ended, much of his army melted away back to their farms. Though in the early days he was considered by some as a “Robin Hood,” as the war dragged on and the desperation and viciousness of the Jayhawkers grew, most of his popular support also melted away. In the final days of the war, Confederate Colonel Amedé Bringier cornered Carriere’s diminished band in May of 1865, and in this skirmish Ozemé Carriere met his maker.
Oscar Guidry
Fifty years ago there was – for all practical purposes – no Republican party in Louisiana. But it was not a one-party state for the Democrats were deeply divided among the Long faction and the Anti-Long faction, a legacy of assassinated Senator and Governor Huey Long and his brother Earl.
The Long brothers and their followers were populists who appealed to the poor and downtrodden. They were also shrewd political manipulators willing to use any means available to gain and hold power. In 1959, one of Earl Long’s closest allies was Church Point’s Oscar Guidry.
Born on April 5, 1897 in Prairie Hayes, a few miles northeast of Church Point, Oscar was the son of Terville Guidry and Cora Savoy. He was a very enterprising young man; he and his father, besides farming, went into the general mercantile business, the T & O Store. Oscar later moved into the nearest town, Church Point, to give his children a better opportunity for schooling.
The political bug then bit Oscar Guidry hard. He served on the Acadia Parish School Board from 1928 to 1940. Following this he won the office of State Senator in 1940 and kept his seat until 1952. There he became one of Earl Long’s right-hand-men.
In 1959, Governor Earl K. Long was coming to the end of his term – and he was not going to leave office without a fight. The Louisiana constitution in effect at that time prohibited a governor from succeeding himself, but “Uncle Earl” figured out a way to get around this annoying issue. He would first run for re-election, and then after winning, resign from office the day before his term ended. In that way, he would not succeed himself; his current lieutenant governor would become governor for one day between Long’s two terms. His chosen running mate for his next term as lieutenant governor would be Oscar Guidry.
The campaign died a stillbirth when the State Democratic Central Committee ruled that he could only run if he would resign before the qualifying deadline was over, meaning seven months out of office. The governor refused to give up seven months of power on the uncertain chance that he would be re-elected. Long didn’t run for governor in 1959, and Oscar Guidry’s shot at the lieutenant governor’s office went down the drain.
Earl Long died a year later so if he and Guidry had been successful in their political scheme, Guidry would have succeeded him into the governor’s chair.
Oscar Guidry left this world in 1968, a time when Louisiana no longer divided itself along the lines of the Longs and anti-Longs.
Charles Juchereau de Saint Denis
The competition for control of the barely explored North American continent was fierce between France and England in the late 1600’s. A race was on to get to and to colonize the Ohio River Valley.
Charles Juchereau de Saint Denis, a Canadian military officer born in Québec in 1655, was the son of Nicolas Juchereau de Saint Denis and Marie-Thérèse Giffard. The Giffard’s and the Juchereau’s were prominent and powerful families in the early days of French Canada. Becoming the Royal Judge of Montréal enabled him to gain knowledge of the fur trading industry, Québec’s life blood. Soon he was well known in the business and even went to Paris twice on fur related business. He also helped found the Compagnie du Canada to export furs to France.
When he returned from his second trip to Paris, he was filled with dreams of empire and profits. His mission was to settle on the Ohio River and there build a tannery. He could prevent the English from moving into this strategic area, stop illegal trade between the few French and English in the region, gain the alliance of the local Indians and become wealthy processing animal skins into finished products for the export market.
Dreams have a way of turning into nightmares, though. Juchereau left Montréal in 1702 and traveled through the Great Lakes to Illinois. He established communications with the infant colony of Louisiana and built a fort on the Ohio River two leagues upstream of its junction with the Mississippi. Indian hunters and French traders began delivering pelts to the tannery.
Then Mother Nature intervened with an epidemic of disease that killed Frenchmen and Indians indiscriminately. It also killed Juchereau and, although others tried to salvage his dreams, the whole enterprise fell apart.
Had he been successful, the English may have been prevented from expanding westward across the Appalachian Mountains and the history of North America could have turned out quite differently.
Arsene LeBleu
The area around Lake Charles was a hotbed of international intrigue, piracy and slave smuggling two hundred years ago. This was definitely the “Wild West.” People able to survive here had to be tough. Arsene Le Bleu was certainly tough.
He was born in the Calcasieu area in 1789. His father was probably a Frenchman named Martin Camersac and his mother was Josette de LaMirande. Josette had been married to a man named Barthelemy LeBleu, but she probably left him and moved in with Camersac. Her children were all baptized as LeBleu, but Camersac claimed them as his illegitimate children in his will. For years, the children and grandchildren used either (or both) surnames, until finally settling on LeBleu.
Arsene was born during the last years of the Spanish colonial period. The United States bought Louisiana in 1803, but where did Louisiana end and Texas begin? The two countries debated this for years (during Arsene’s heyday) and almost went to war over the matter. The U. S. claimed the Rio Grande (today’s Mexico-Texas border) and the Spanish claimed the Calcasieu River. At one point, they agreed to disagree and left the strip between the Sabine and the Calcasieu “neutral.” Rough and tumble characters from both sides fled into this strip where the law couldn’t catch them.
On top of this, Mexico began a long, drawn out revolt against Spain that spilled over into Texas. And after the famed pirate Jean Lafitte was ejected from near New Orleans, he set up shop on Galveston Island. Needless to say, this was a very volatile place and time to live in.
Local lore tells that Arsene LeBleu was on very familiar terms with Lafitte and many legends state that LeBleu served as one of his captains. While this can’t be proved, it is likely that LeBleu did know Lafitte and may well have done business with him.
While Jean Lafitte is today known mainly a pirate, his bread and butter business while in Galveston was smuggling slaves. The United States, while keeping the institution of slavery intact, abolished the importation of them. Therefore prices for enslaved people went up. Lafitte brought slaves to Galveston then took them up the Calcasieu, where they were smuggled to Opelousas for sale. Arsene LeBleu lived on a tributary of the Calcasieu called English Bayou near today’s Chloe, directly in this marketing path. Two men were definitely in the smuggling business with Lafitte: Jim and Rezin Bowie, of the knife and Alamo fame. Rezin Bowie served as godfather to one of Arsene’s children. So it is doubtful that Lafitte was a total stranger to LeBleu.
Arsene LeBleu became a prosperous cattleman as law and order and civilization reached the Calcasieu. Considering his own birth and the general wildness of the country, it is not surprising that he fathered children by three different women, being married to at least one of them. His last note in the history books is that the first police jury meeting in Calcasieu Parish took place in his home on English Bayou.
Charles Michel dit Taillon (or Tayon)
Charles Michel was born in French Colonial Illinois, probably at the Fort de Chartres, around the year 1754. He was the son of Joseph Michel and Marie Louise Boisset, settlers of French-Canadian stock. Many French families of the time also used a second surname, sort of a nickname that was used interchangeably and sometimes supplanted the original name all together. The Michel family often used the name of Taillon instead and, particularly after the Louisiana Purchase, also used the Anglicized version Tayon. In history books, the subject of this sketch is almost always called “Charles Tayon”.
At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, French Illinois became English territory. Most of the inhabitants just crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri on the western bank, now ruled by Spain. Charles’ father, one of the original pioneers of St. Louis, transplanted his French family to the Spanish side of the river and constructed a grist mill at the infant settlement.
To the west of St. Louis, on the Missouri River, lies St. Charles. This settlement was founded under Spanish dominion in 1769 by Louis Blanchette, who was made commandant. At Blanchette’s death in 1793, the position of commandant fell to Charles Tayon. He also held the titles of captain of the militia and sub-lieutenant of the infantry.
One of Commandant Tayon’s first official acts was to declare that Blanchette and the original settlers had no legal title to their lands since their claims had not been approved by the governor-general in New Orleans. He then granted to himself the property on which the government buildings were located, and gave other lands to his followers.
During the American Revolution, when Spain declared war on Britain, he was second-in-command of a 1781 expedition of French militia men and American Indians, which captured the English fort of St. Joseph, in present day Michigan. The fort was ransacked in retaliation for British raids on St. Louis and to impress the Indian tribes into switching allegiance to the Spanish.
In 1801 he travelled to Spain to petition the Crown for a years’ back pay as commandant. Instead of money, he received from the king a three-year prison sentence for being an “impudent imposter.”
He was back in Missouri by 1804. On the night before the Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Charles on its epic journey of exploration, William Clark noted in the expedition journal that he had supper with the former commandant of Spanish St. Charles, Ensign Charles Tayon.
Even under the American regime, Charles Tayon remained a political force. In 1818 he won an election as one of the trustees of the town of St. Charles.
But the powerful also fall sometimes and Charles Tayon died a poor man.
Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard
In 1755, a dreadful crime was committed against an entire people. It was then that the English rulers of Nova Scotia devised and put into action their inhuman plan to rid the colony of the French Acadians, who were living peacefully on these lands first settled by their ancestors over one hundred years earlier. Though no war had yet ignited between the colonial powers of France and Britain, red-coated soldiers tramped through the Acadian villages gathering the astonished and confused inhabitants and forcing them to board ships that became deathtraps for so many. The survivors were unceremoniously dumped upon two different continents to endure hatred and discrimination, and worse, disease and starvation. Our language now has terms for such monstrous inhumanity. Today we would label this crime “Ethnic Cleansing” bordering on “Genocide.”
One wonders today how an entire people could be led into such hardships without fighting back. The truth was that most of them were tricked and surprised by the action, kept a secure British secret until the trap was sprung. The able-bodied men were gathered in churches to hear the King’s latest proclamation, there surrounded and captured by the soldiers, then forcibly loaded onto the waiting ships. What could the women, children and the elderly do but to meekly follow their husbands, fathers and sons into exile?
Another little known fact was that not all of the Acadians were caught in this brutal snare that was set for them. Some suspected the British of the trickery they were planning to execute and fled to the woods. There the beleaguered Acadians fought a guerilla war against the English soldiers who were hunting them down like the wild beasts of the forests.
By far the most famous of these fighters was a man named Joseph Broussard, who carried the legendary nickname of Beausoleil. Broussard, like many great men, was a complex man, part patriot and part scoundrel, but undeniably an outstanding leader.
Joseph Beausoleil Broussard started out as an unlikely hero. He was involved in four civil disputes before he reached the age of twenty-five. He was brought to court for assault and battery, consorting with the Indians against British rules, a land dispute and a paternity claim. In 1747, he also gave aid to the French troops then battling the British and was generally considered a royal pain to the ruling English. Beausoleil obviously had a contentious personality, a trait common to most great leaders.
The Broussard clan lived in the farthest village up the Petitcodiac River in Nova Scotia, an isolated spot that kept them relatively free of British authority. Before the deportation, Beausoleil Broussard was already an active rebel against the British, conducting raids and sometimes diplomacy against the hated Englishmen. Beausoleil was acknowledged as the leader of the mixed Acadian and Indian guerilla band and marked by the English as a serious threat.
In 1755, the men of the Broussard village were rounded up like the other Acadians, but this intrepid group dug a tunnel and escaped the fate of the others. They gathered their families and took to the woods, holding out until starvation caused their eventual surrender in 1759. The band remained prisoners in Nova Scotia until the war between France and England ended in 1763. Defeat was hard on the Broussard clan and they voluntarily abandoned the land of their birth, arriving in New Orleans in 1765.
The now-Spanish colony did not know what to do with these refugees. Help came in the form a Frenchman, Sieur Antoine Bernard Dautrive, who supplied seed cattle to the Acadians in return for a like number of animals to be returned in six years. This was the beginning of the Attakapas (St. Martinville) cattle industry, which spread to all of the southwestern Louisiana prairie country.
Beausoleil Broussard was one of these cattlemen and was appointed Captain Commandant of the Militia for Attakapas. Unfortunately, Broussard died soon after his arrival in south Louisiana but his name and family continued on.