Early Merligueche and the Guédry and Petitpas Families
Presented at the Guédry-Petitpas Reunion
Merligueche
August 7, 2004
Welcome home to Merligueche! And thank you for inviting me to take part in this family reunion of the Guédrys and the Petitpas and their friends. As a neighbour from LaHave, where I have a summer cottage, I feel I have known your family for a long time from my research into the local history of this lovely area. Their history goes back a long way. And it is concealed in a number of documents which include censuses, church registers and various other papers in different archives. Over the years I have put together in my mind a picture of the small communities of LaHave, Petite Riviere and Merligueche, and their inhabitants, which I should like to share with you. Many of the people's names may be familiar to you, but I hope that now you are here you will see them in the context of this landscape of forests and hills and the sea which beats on our shores.
Before the earliest European fishermen came to the coasts of Nova Scotia, the native Mi'kmaq people lived here at Merligueche, meaning "milky" waters, and French fishing vessels soon began to bring back not only fish but also furs which they traded for with the First Nations people. When Pierre Du Gua de Mons and Samuel de Champlain arrived on these shores in 1604, they found bands of Mi'kmaq living just to the west of here, near the LaHave river, and at Petite Riviere, a little farther to the west on Green Bay. They were not only commercial partners in the fur trade; the French learnt from the native inhabitants how to travel by canoe in summer and snowshoes in winter through a densely forested land with no roads, and how to find adequate food to survive the bitter winters. The Mi'kmaq will come back into our story at a later date.
In 1632, Isaac de Razilly arrived at LaHave, a few kilometers down the shore. It was his intention to establish a permanent colony at LaHave, which was for a while the capital of New France, and he began to bring over not only soldiers and artisans, but also families. Many Acadian families can trace their roots back to those early days at LaHave. The community there consisted of a fort, a chapel and houses for the inhabitants. The settlement lasted until Razilly's death in 1636, when the settlers were transferred to Port Royal. The fort and the buildings were destroyed in 1654 during fighting between rival French factions.
Nicolas Denys, a French entrepreneur who had accompanied Razilly's expedition, was the first Frenchman to establish himself here in the Merligueche area. He had decided to settle on this side of the LaHave River, and he set up a lumbering operation on the shores of Lunenburg Bay not far from here. He describes in his book how he brought Razilly to view his lumber camp, which produced beams and barrel staves for sale in France. A magnificent feast was set up in a hall that he had constructed near the lumberyard, with game from the woods and water, and fruit gathered by the Mi'kmaq children of the neighbourhood. The governor was delighted, as were Denys' men, who hoped that Razilly would visit often. Denys was not so sure about that; not because of the expense of the feast, he said, but because of the time lost from work!
One of the men known to have worked for Nicolas Denys was named Bernard Bugaret . He was a carpenter, and he came over here in 1636 on the ship St-Jean, whose passenger list was signed off by Nicolas Denys. He seems to have returned to France at the end of his contract, but in 1638 we find him coming back again, under contract to Denys to cut wood at LaHave - which of course included Merligueche. It was his daughter Catherine Bugaret who married Claude Petitpas, the "greffier" or town clerk at Port Royal, who had come to Acadie in about 1645. So Bernard Bugaret was the first of your ancestors with connections to Merligeche nearly 370 years ago.
The mid seventeenth century was a very unsettled time in Acadie. After Razilly's death in 1636, rival French merchants fought amongst themselves for the control the fishery and the fur trade. Not only that, but Britain and France were both trying to lay claim to what the British called Nova Scotia, and for a while the British gained control. Merligueche was not spared from these disputes, and in 1664 an English vessel came to the settlement and carried off the inhabitants and all their goods to Port Rossignol (now Liverpool) and then to Boston. But the Treaty of Breda in 1667 returned Acadie to the French, and by 1670, peace had returned to the Acadian settlements. Soon afterwards, Claude Guédry came to Port Royal from France. Here he met Marguerite Petitpas, who by the end of the 1670s was a widow. Claude and Marguerite were married some time around 1681.
Let us take a few moments to look at who was living in this area during the last quarter of the 17th century. The records are rather vague, because they sometimes include Merligueche and Petite Riviere with LaHave, and it is not always clear who lived where. But in 1686, we know that Claude Guedry, known as LaVerdure, with his wife and small child, were here at Merligueche. Claude Guédry's wife, as you know, was Marguerite Petitpas, daughter of Claude Petitpas, and the granddaughter of Bernard Bugaret. The child they had with them was little Jean-Baptiste Guédry. There was also a man of the Petitpas family who would have been Marguerite's brother, probably Bernard, with his wife. The wife is unidentified and may have been a native woman. We do not know exactly when the Guédry and Petitpas families first came to Merligueche, or why they made that choice.
Their neighbours at LaHave and Petite Riviere included Jacques Provost and his wife Jeanne Fauveau, Jacques Petit, who lived in their household - we'll hear about him again later; Jean LaBat also known as LeMarquis, who was at Petite Riviere, Jean Vesin, Pierre LeJeune (also known as Briart) and his wife Marie Thibodeau; Martin LeJeune and his Mi'qmak wife Jeanne with their two children. The Lejeunes appear from other records also to have lived at Petite Riviere. They were related to Jean Labat by marriage; his wife was a first cousin of Pierre and Martin. Franéois Michel and his wife Madeleine German, and Charles Gourdeau, a servant, also lived in the LaHave area at that time.
These lists are interesting for two reasons: First, we have an example of a Frenchman, Martin Lejeune, with a wife who is identified as a Mi'kmaq. Intermarriage between the races was not unusual in the families of this region, probably because of its isolation from the main French population and a shortage of women who were not close relatives. Secondly, later records show the families at Merliguesche, LaHave and Petite Riviere as a close social group, who intermarry, witness each other's weddings and stand sponsor at their children's baptisms.
By 1708, nearly twenty years later, we find eight French families in the LaHave area. Pierre and Martin Lejeune (now listed under the name Briart) are still at Petite Riviere, with their wives and numerous children, one of them, Marie, married to Joseph Boutin, and another, Anne, to René Labauve. Jeanne Briart, sister to Pierre and Martin, has joined the community with her husband Jean Godet and their grown-up daughter Catherine. And Jeanne Fauveau, formerly married to Jacques Provost, has buried her first husband and is now married to "Jean" Petit, who must surely be the "Jacques" Petit who lived with them in earlier days. And at Merligueche, Claude and Marguerite Guédry now have nine children, of whom the eldest, Jean-Baptiste, the baby of the 1686 census, is now married to Madeleine Mius and has his own home.
And who was Madeleine Mius? In 1701 Simon Pierre Denys de Bonnaventure, Nicolas Deny's great nephew, came to the area which he was later to receive as a seigneurie, and spoke of the area just north of Lunenburg known as Chichimiscadie. Here lived a man he described as "Mr. Mieuss, son of Mr. D'Entremont". Mr D'Entremont was the Baron Philippe D'Entremont, founder of Pobomcoup, or Pubnico, and later an official at Port Royal. His son, known as Philippe Mius D'Entremont, often just Mius, was married to a Mi'kmaq woman, and Madeleine was their daughter.
Missing from the 1708 census are the Petitpas couple who were there in 1686. In 1714, however, a couple known again simply as "Petitpas and his wife" are living at Le Cap, a suburb of Port Royal. So, interestingly, are another couple identified as "La Verdure and his wife", the original description of Claude Guidry and Marguerite Petitpas. Perhaps as they grew older both couples decided to return to a more comfortable life at Port Royal.
So what do we know about the lives of the Acadians of Merligueche? They lived in close proximity to more than twenty Mi'kmaq families, and probably shared many aspects of their life style. Clearly they were isolated from the population centre of Port Royal. The only ways to travel between Merligueche and Port Royal were by canoe and portage from one side of the country to the other, or to sail around the coast, both long and arduous journeys. You didn't go there just to buy your groceries. The French families were much closer to their Mi'kmaq neighbours than they were to their more conventional relatives who farmed the dykelands around Port Royal. They lived chiefly by the fur trade. A visiting French official in 1686 had deplored the fact that the people of the area traded furs rather than cultivating farms, because he feared they would not develop an affinity for the land and might move on at any time. There were at that time only three acres under cultivation, at LaHave and Petite Riviere. The families at Merligueche still had only cleared half an acre by the following year, but by the time the British began to take an interest in the place there was a fair amount of cleared farmland, reflecting a peak in population during the 1740s. By 1745, there were eight families here (presumably this means French families and does not count the Mi'kmaq) of which Paul Guédry's was one. The women raised their children in houses built of wood and roofed with bark, which Cornwallis described, when he passed through Merligueche in 1749, as very comfortable. In 1753, when the Lunenburg settlers came, Hopson reported that there were over 300 acres of cleared land, but we do not know if they were all in the immediate vicinity of the present town. It seems unlikely. Only one farm was being actively worked, as most of the Acadians had moved away in the late 1740s to French-controlled Ile Saint-Jean or Ile Royale.
Despite their isolation, the Guédry family maintained the religious traditions of larger French communities. There was no question of having a resident priest in the area. There had been none since Charles de Menou moved the settlement from LaHave to Port Royal, taking with him the priests who served the settlers. Baptisms could be conducted by laymen, and in isolated places such as Merligueche this was not unusual. In 1701, Jean-Baptiste Guédry, now a young man of about 16, was godfather at the lay baptism of his baby brother Paul, while Marie Thibodeau of Petite Riviere was the godmother. Paul was baptised by Jean-Baptiste Duon, of Port Royal, who seems to have baptised several children during his travels on the South Shore. Occasionally a visiting priest would come to baptise recently born children or regularise the unions between the young people with a marriage ceremony. In between these visits, people had to do the best they could. In 1703, little Franéoise Guédry was baptised on the day of her birth by her brother Jean-Baptiste, probably because they feared for her life. But she survived, and was christened more officially two years later when Father Félix Pain visited the South Shore and conducted baptisms for the Guédry family at Merligueche and the Lejeunes at Petite Riviere. The family marriages are entered in the Port Royal registry, and we see that, inevitably, the small group of families at Merligueche and LaHave intermarried: Paul Guédry was married to Anne Mius, and the young Claude Guédry to Anne LeJeune.
The occasions when families from the two communities got together to celebrate the traditional ceremonies of the church must have been great occasions for all concerned. We can imagine families piling into their boats or canoes and travelling along the coast to the neighbouring community to attend the services. These would probably have been held in one of the houses, as there was no church except for the ruined chapel at LaHave. The families would then enjoy a festive meal together. In 1705, as Father Pain travelled along the South Shore, the parents, the godparents and their families would have spent several days attending ceremonies at Merligueche, Petite Riviere and as far away as Port Maltois.
On sadder occasions, the dead were buried in the old French graveyard near the shore in Lunenburg, in the French/Mi'kmaq cemetery at Petite Riviere, or perhaps at Fort Point near the ruined chapel.
Life at Merligueche was precarious at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1710, the British had taken Port Royal and in 1713 by the treaty of Breda they assumed control of the whole of Nova Scotia. But the Guédrys in Merligueche did not enjoy a peaceful life. Raids and piracy continued even after the peace treaty was signed. In 1722 a ship from New England came ashore, seized four of the French families at Merligueche, and took them as prisoners to Boston. Two of the Guédry women, Augustin's wife Jeanne Hébert, and Paul's wife Anne Mius, were pregnant and gave birth before they were able to return to their home. Jeanne had twins, Marie-Josephte and Héléne, while Anne's daughter was named Judith or Judique. It appears that they were not held captive for too long, as we know that the twins were baptised at Port Royal in September of th following year.
Four years later, the inhabitants of Merligueche sought their revenge in what was described as an act of piracy. Philippe Mius, his son Jacques, his son-in-law Jean-Baptiste Guédry and his son Jean-Baptiste, along with some Mi'kmaqs, paddled out and boarded and tried to seize the ship of a Plymouth merchant, Samuel Daly in Merligueche Bay. The two Guédrys and three of the Mi'kmaqs were captured, taken to Boston and hanged for piracy. Madeleine Mieuss, left a widow, was later married again to a Mi'kmaq named Jean-Baptiste Pierret.
Among the children of Claude and Marguerite who remained in Merligueche for some time was Paul. He was sometimes known as Grivois, meaning cheery or saucy. He had the reputation of being a good coastal pilot, and unlike the rest of his family, he seems to have got along with the English, despite having been among those captured and taken to Boston in 1722, with his wife Anne Mius. Another family, the Benoits, was at Merligueche by the mid 18th century. Josette Benoit was married to Joseph Guédry, and a man by name of Benoit along with two other inhabitants - perhaps including Jean Guédry, son of Pierre - acted as pilots on board the Sphinx when Cornwallis was travelling to Halifax in 1749.
Paul Guédry and his family were still living at Merligueche in 1745, but after the late 1740s a number of the Guédrys spent some years first on Isle St-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and then at Baie d'Espagnols on the Isle Royale (Sydney, Cape Breton), as a result of the renewal of tensions between the French and the English with the capture of Louisbourg.
Their stay in Cape Breton had an unexpected and dramatic consequence. One of Paul's daughters, Marguerite, was the cause of a considerable scandal. In 1754, at the Baie d'Espagnols, she married a French officer of aristocratic birth, one Jules César Félix de la Noue, against the wishes of the secular authorities. Marguerite's mother Anne was described as the illegitimate daughter of Philippe Mius D'Entremont, making Marguerite an unsuitable match for the well-born LaNoue. LaNoue offered his resignation to his commandant, who was unwilling to accept it, and Father Hyacinthe LeFévre, a Recollet priest at Port Dauphin, married them in defiance of the authorities. The commandant declared the marriage clandestine and scandalous, and annulled it, and sent LaNoue back to France along with the priest. There is no evidence that Marguerite ever saw her husband again.
When Colonel Lawrence brought the Foreign Protestants, German, Swiss and French, to settle Lunenburg, they found an old man called Labrador living here. "Old Labrador's Farm" can be seen on one of the early British maps of the area, and on another it is described as "The House of a Frenchman, the only remaining inhabitant." The name "Labrador" may have been a corruption of "LaVerdure", the name by which the Guédrys were also known. I have not been able to identify him definitely, but he was clearly related to your family. A number of members of the Guédry family who had moved to Louisbourg in the late1740s were given permission to return in 1754 to settle in Lunenburg "by reason of their close relationship with Old Labrador." These included Pierre and Joseph Guédry, Paul and Charles Boutin, whose mother was a LeJeune, Julien Bourneuf from St-Malo who was married to Jeanne Guédry, and his brother Sébastien, along with a few others whose connection with Merligueche is obscure. In one record of 1762, a Paul Labrador is named as having been the previous owner of the farm, so perhaps Paul Guédry eventually returned home.
I have often wondered whether "Old Labrador", apparently older than the known children of Claude Guédry and Marguerite Petitpas, was possibly Claude's son from an earlier relationship with a Mi'kmaq woman. Claude was twelve years older than Marguerite, and had been in Acadie for about ten years before their marriage. "Old Labrador," seems to have been of mixed blood, as he is described in different records as French, Native or Métis. It is possible that he was a half-brother to Jean-Baptiste and the other Guédry offspring. He was apparently well thought of by the newcomers as he had some influence with the British in obtaining permission for other family members to return to Lunenburg. After the Expulsion, some of the Labradors remained in Acadie, and there have been Mi'kmaq Labradors in Lunenburg County for many generations. The rest of the Guédrys were scattered, along with the Acadians from elsewhere in Nova Scotia, and you must know more than I do about their subsequent travels.Trying to put together a family history from the very few scattered records that exist of this period is largely a matter of luck. I hope I have not distorted too much the known facts about your ancestors. Those of you who have done your own research can probably fill in many of the gaps that I have left. One of the unanswered questions is what brought Claude Guédry and Marguerite Petitpas, with her brother and sister-in-law, to Merligueche in the first place from the relatively easy life in Port Royal. You may have your own oral traditions passed down from previous generations. I would be delighted to learn from you anything more that you have been able to find out about these people who settled here in Merligueche and founded the families gathered here today.
Thank you - Merci.
Joan Dawson
LaHave, Nova Scotia 7 August 2004