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Joseph Broussard dit Beausoliel

Male 1702 - 1765  (~ 63 years)


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  • Name Joseph Broussard dit Beausoliel 
    Birth abt. 1702  Port Royal, Acadia, (Maritime Provinces, Canada) Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    Death Oct 1765  Attakapas, St. Martin, LA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Burial 20 Oct 1765  Beausoleil, St. Martin, LA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I2203  Laval+
    Last Modified 17 Mar 2014 

    Family Agnès Thibodeau,   b. 19 Nov 1706, Port Royal, Acadia, (Maritime Provinces, Canada) Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Children 
     1. Joseph Brossard,   b. 11 Sept 1725, Port Royal, Acadia, (Maritime Provinces, Canada) Find all individuals with events at this locationd. abt. 1765, Broussard,Louisiana Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 39 years)
     2. Amand Broussard dit Beausoliel,   b. abt. 1750, Port Royal, Acadia, (Maritime Provinces, Canada) Find all individuals with events at this location  [Father: Birth]
     3. Claude Broussard dit Beausoliel,   b. abt. 1771, St, Martin, La Find all individuals with events at this location  [Father: Birth]
     4. Francois Broussard dit Beausoliel,   b. abt. 1775   d. Oct 1801, Louisiana Find all individuals with events at this location (Age ~ 26 years)  [Father: Birth]
    Family ID F852  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 17 Mar 2014 

  • Notes 
    • E-link to this supposedly famous Acadian (possible relative)

      http://www.acadiansingray.com/Appendices-ATLAL-BROUSSARD.htm

      Acadians Who Found Refuge in Louisiana, February 1764-early 1800s BROUSSARD [BREW-sard, brew-SAR] ACADIA

      Excerpt:
      François Brossard, progenitor of one of the most notable Acadian families, was born in c1653 perhaps in Anjou, France, to parents still unknown and may have come to the colony in 1671 aboard the ship L'Oranger. He married Catherine, daughter of Michel Richard dit Sansoucy, at Port-Royal in c1678. They settled on haute rivière, now the upper Annapolis River, at a place called Beausoleil. Not long after his marriage, François "collaborated with Pierre Thibodeau in the colonization of Chepoudy, but he did not go to settle there himself." In early 1711, François was one of several residents of the haute rivière jailed by British commander Samuel Vetch. François and Catherine had 11 children, including six sons, all born at Beausoleil, five of whom created families of their own. Four of their daughters married into the Landry, Doucet, Préjean, and Bourg families. François died suddenly at his farm on haute rivière in December 1716, in his early 60s.

      Oldest son Pierre, born in c1683, married Marguerite, daughter of Abraham Bourg, at Port-Royal in January 1709. They had nine children, including two sons who married into the LeBlanc family and settled at Minas. Two of their daughters married into the Boudrot and Préjean families and settled at Port Toulouse, Île Royale, today's Cape Breton Island, where their father Pierre moved by 1722. Pierre worked as a navigateur at Port-Toulouse.

      François, fils, born in c1695, died at Annapolis Royal in November 1717, age of 22. He did not marry.

      Claude, born in c1697, married first to Anne, daughter of Vincent Babin, fils of Pigiguit and widow of Abraham Bourg le jeune, at Grand-Pré in October 1718. Their sons married into the Landry and Aucoin families and settled at Pigiguit, Rivière-du-Nord-Est on Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, and on Île Royale. Claude remarried to Marie, daughter of Claude Dugas and widow of Abraham Bourg, at Port-Royal in November 1754. Claude died in Maryland during Le Grand Dérangement.

      Alexandre dit Beausoleil, whose nickname came from the haute rivière village where the Broussards lived, born in c1699, married Marguerite, daughter of Michel Thibodeau, at Annapolis Royal in February 1724. In c1730, they moved to Chepoudy, where her kinsmen lived, and then to LeCran, today's Stoney Creek, on Rivière Petitcoudiac, probably to put more distance between themselves and British authority in Nova Scotia. In c1740, they moved farther upriver to Village-des-Beausoleils, present-day Boundary Creek, New Brunswick.

      Joseph dit Beausoleil, born in c1702, married Agnès Thibodeau, younger sister of brother Alexandre's wife, at Annapolis Royal in September 1725. They followed Alexandre and Marguerite to Chepoudy and Petitcoudiac, preferring to settle in territory controlled by France. Along with older brother Alexandre, Joseph was a leader of Acadian partisans who fought against the British in Nova Scotia during and after King George's War.

      Youngest son Jean-Baptiste, born in March 1704, married Cécile Babin, younger sister of brother Claude's first wife, probably at Annapolis Royal in c1728. They remained at Port-Royal. Jean-Baptiste remarried to Anne, daughter of Louis Thebeau, probably at Annapolis Royal in c1748. Jean-Baptiste died at Mascouche, near Montréal, in July 1770, age 66, after Le Grand Dérangement.

      The family's name evolved from Brossard to Broussard in Acadia. By 1755, François Brossard's descendants could be found at Annapolis Royal; at Grand-Pré and Ste.-Famille, Pigiguit, in the Minas Basin; at Village-des-Beausoleils on the upper Petitcoudiac; at Port-Toulouse on Île Royale; and at Rivière-du-Nord-Est on Île St.-Jean.

      LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

      Le Grand Dérangement of the 1750s scattered this large family even farther. Descendants of François Brossard ended up in the British Atlantic colony of South Carolina but did not remain there, in France, in the St. Lawrence River valley ... and in South Louisiana:

      After yet another war erupted between Britain and France in 1754, the Acadians were again caught in the middle of it. When British and New England forces attacked Fort Beauséjour at Chignecto in June 1755, Broussards were among the area Acadians who were serving in the fort as militia. They, too, along with the French regulars, became prisoners of war when the fort surrendered on June 16. Governor Lawrence was so incensed to find so-called French Neutrals fighting with French regulars at Beauséjour that he ordered his officers to deport the Chignecto Acadians to the southernmost British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. In mid-October 1755, the British transported Alexandre Broussard dit Beausoleil and his nephew Victor to South Carolina aboard the British warship HMS Syren. They were transported in chains, under heavy guard, along with other Acadian "troublemakers." They reached Charleston in late November and were held in close confinement on Sullivan's Island outside of the city.

      Before the deportation ships arrived at Chignecto, some of the Acadians being held at forts Cumberland (formerly Beauséjour) and Lawrence managed to escape, Joseph dit Beausoleil among them. He rejoined his wife and younger children at Petitcoudiac, and they headed into the wilderness north of their home, not only hiding from the British patrols sent out to capture them but also engaging in what today is called guerrilla warfare, including privateering in the Bay of Fundy to harass British shipping. For a time, Beausoleil's "headquarters" was at Shediac on the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore, where he coordinated his resistance activities with Canadian Lieutenant Charles Deschamps de Boishébert, who had commanded French forces on Rivière St.-Jean.

      Sometime probably in the summer of 1756, Joseph dit Beausoleil's brother Alexandre and Joseph's son Victor joined the resistance movement. Although at first held in close confinement in South Carolina, Alexandre and Victor had been allowed to go to the workhouse in Charleston, from which they escaped. They made their way through the coastal swamps and marshes into the Carolina backcountry, and, after a long, perilous journey across the face of the Appalachian Mountains, assisted no doubt by Indians friendly to the French, they returned to Acadia to fight again. Amazingly, Alexandre was in his late 50s at the time, but the rigors of advancing old age could not stop him from rejoining his family. He and Victor, along with seven other Acadians who had fled from Carolina, appeared at the Acadian settlement on Rivière St.-Jean in June 1756, about the time that other Chignecto exiles who had been deported to South Carolina returned to Acadia by boat. Alexandre and Victor did not remain on the St.-Jean but moved on to Shediac, where they reunited with their family.

      .

      British forces deported the Acadians at Minas in late October 1755, sending them to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New England. The Broussards at Minas went to Maryland. Claude Broussard of Grand-Pré, who had remarried at Annapolis Royal in November 1754, in his late 50s, died in Maryland. Claude's son Jean and his wife Anne Landry were deported to Maryland with son Firmin, age 3. Jean and Anne had at least one more son in Maryland--Jean, fils, born in c1760. Jean, père died in Maryland in the mid-1760s. Augustin, son of perhaps Charles Broussard of Grand-Pré, was only 7 years old when he landed in Maryland in 1755. He soon became an orphan.

      .

      The Broussards at Annapolis Royal escaped the British round up there in the fall of 1755, spent a terrible winter in the woods and along the Fundy shore, crossed the bay to the French-controlled side in March 1756, and made their way north to the Rivière St.-Jean settlements before joining their kinsmen on the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore. Jean-Baptiste fought with older brothers Alexandre and Joseph dit Beausoleil in the Acadian resistance. When his brothers "surrendered" to British forces at Fort Cumberland, formerly French Fort Beauséjour, in late 1759, Jean-Baptiste refused to join them and took his family to Québec. One account says that his wife, two children, and his mother-in-law died on the way to Canada. One of his daughters by his first wife remarried at Île Jesus, near Montréal, in June 1761. Jean-Baptiste died at Mascouche, near Montréal, in July 1770, in his late 60s--five years after his older brothers had died in faraway Louisiana.

      .

      The Broussards on Île Royale and Île St.-Jean, living in territory controlled by France, escaped the British roundups in Nova Scotia during the fall of 1755. Their respite from British oppression was short-lived, however. After the fall of the French fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758, the victorious British swooped down on the islands and deported most of the Acadians there to France. The crossing to the mother country devastated the family:

      Marie Broussard, wife of Honoré Préjean, crossed on the British transport Queen of Spain with her husband and nine children. Every one of them died at sea. Jean-Baptiste, age 37, son of Claude Broussard of Grand-Pré, wife Osite Landry, age 28, sons Joseph, age 7, Grégoire, age 2, and daughters Madeleine, age 9, Marguerite, age 5, and Rosalie, age 3, crossed on one of the five British transports that left the Gut of Canso in late November and reached St.-Malo in late January 1759. Son Jean-Baptiste-Paul was born aboard ship in December. Only Osite and two of her children--Madeleine and newborn Jean-Baptiste-Paul--survived the crossing. Marguerite, Rosalie, and Grégoire died at sea. Jean-Baptiste, père died in a St.-Malo hospital a month after they reached the city, and son Joseph died a month after that. Osite remarried to fellow Acadian Augustin Boudrot at Pleudihen, near St.-Malo, in August 1760 and gave him at least nine children. Jean-Baptiste Broussard's unmarried younger brothers Charles, age 26, and Firmin, age 21, also crossed to St.-Malo on one of the five ships. Firmin and Charles survived the crossing, but the ordeal proved to be too much for Firmin, who died at Buet, near St.-Malo, in late April 1759 and was buried at nearby Pleudihen. Cousin Pierre-Paul Broussard, age 32, crossed on one of the five ships with wife Madeleine Landry, age 31, sons Jean-Baptiste, age 8, and Pierre, age 1, and daughters Isabelle, age 6, and Marie-Marguerite, age 4. Pierre-Paul, Madeleine, and two of their children survived the crossing, but two of the children--Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Marguerite--died at Pleudihen in April 1759 no doubt from the rigors of the crossing. Pierre-Paul's younger unmarried brother François, age 22, also crossed with them and died at the hospital in St.-Malo in February 1759.

      Pierre-Paul and Marguerite settled at Pleudihen and had more children in the area--Joseph-Osithe was born at Buet in March 1760 but died at Pleudihen in August 1761, Charles-Jean was born at Bas Champs in June 1763, Jean-Joseph at La Coquenais in March 1766, and Marie-Josèphe at Bas Champs in August 1768.

      Charles settled at Pleudihen and married Anne, daughter of fellow Acadian Joseph Aucoin, at nearby Plouër in October 1764. They settled at La Coquenais near Pleudihen, where at least three children were born to them--Marie-Isabelle in March 1766, Joseph-Charles in November 1767, and Madeleine-Josèphe in December 1769.

      Some of the Broussards who were deported to France from Île St.-Jean in 1758 ended up in ports other than St.-Malo. Joseph Broussard of Grand-Pré and Île St.-Jean and his sons Charles, age 15, and Jean, age 13, landed at Cherbourg, where Joseph died in January 1759, age 50, probably from the rigors of the crossing. Charles married Frenchwoman Bonne-Jacqueline-Françoise Castel probably at Cherbourg in c1764. They had at least five sons, all born probably at Cherbourg--Jean-Charles-Joseph, François, Jacques, Pierre in March 1771, and Joseph-Dominique, called Dominique, in May 1772. Daughter Bonne-Marguerite was born at Cherbourg in September 1773. Charles's younger brother Jean married Marguerite, daughter of fellow Acadian Honoré Comeau, at Cherbourg in July 1773. In the early 1770s, Charles, Jean, and their families participated in a venture in the Poitou region that attempted to settle Acadians from the port cities on a nobleman's land near Châtellerault. Charles's son Louis was born near Vienne, Poitou, in February 1774. Jean's sons Jean-Baptiste and Joseph were born near Vienne in May 1774 and November 1775. After two years of effort, the venture failed, and Charles, Jean, and dozens of other frustrated Acadians retreated with their families to the port city of Nantes in December 1775. Two years later, the Broussards were residing at Chantenay near Nantes, where Charles and Bonne-Jacqueline had two more sons--Guillaume-Médard, born in June 1776 but died two months later, and Jean le jeune, born in February 1778 but died at age 3 in September 1780. Jean and Marguerite also had at least two more children at Chantenay--twins Florence-Adélaïde and Pierre, born in October 1777, but Pierre died at age 10 months in July 1778. Charles remarried to Euphrosine, daughter of fellow Acadian Pierre Barrieau, at St.-Martin-de-Chantenay in June 1784.

      Jean-Baptiste-Paul Broussard, the newborn who had survived the crossing from the Maritimes to St.-Malo in 1758-59, married Marie, daughter of fellow Acadian Étienne Melanson, at Pleudihen in June 1784. Their son Jean-Pierre was born at La Coquenais, near Pleudihen, in March 1785.

      In the early 1780s, the Spanish government offered the Acadians in France a chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana, where many of their kinsmen had settled decades before. Charles and Jean Broussard of Chantenay took up the offer, but cousins Pierre-Paul, Charles, and Jean-Baptiste-Paul of Pleudihen chose to remain in France.

      .

      Meanwhile, Joseph dit Beausoleil Broussard and his fellow Acadians harassed the British as best they could. In late 1756, they abandoned their "headquarters" at Shediac and moved north to a new camp at Miramichi, also on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to put more distance between themselves and the British forces at Fort Cumberland. Their resistance exacted a terrible price. Obtaining food, clothing, and shelter for their families, especially during the winter, continually burdened the resistance fighters and limited their effectiveness against a well-fed, well-supplied, and comfortably-sheltered foe. Joseph's wife Agnès was among the many Acadians who died of sickness or starvation at Miramichi during the terrible winter of 1756-57. Some historians insist that all of the children at Miramichi died that winter. Son Victor's twin sons may have been among the many who perished. After the terrible ordeal at Miramichi, the resistance fighters retreated farther up the coast towards the French stronghold at Restigouche, at the head of the Baie des Chaleurs.

      By the autumn of 1759, after four years of unimaginable hardship and the recent fall of Louisbourg and Québec, Beausoleil Broussard and his compatriots responded to a British offer of amnesty. They agreed to surrender to Colonel Joseph Frye, the commander at Fort Cumberland, to spare their families the horror of another Maritimes winter. Joseph dit Beausoleil's older brother Alexandre was held as hostage at Fort Cumberland until Joseph and other resistance leaders surrendered the following spring. However, the British reneged on their amnesty offer, and Joseph and his fellow Acadians continued their struggle from Restigouche. Beausoleil, along with hundreds of other Acadians, was captured at Restigouche in 1760. The British held him at Georges Island, Halifax, for a time, and then transferred him to Fort Edward at Windsor, formerly the Acadian settlement of Pigiguit. There, he managed to communicate with Acadian partisans still on the loose in the area, so the British returned him to Georges Island, where he and his extended family spent the next few years in close confinement.

      In the prison camps of Nova Scotia--at Fort Cumberland and Fort Edward as well as on Georges Island--the Broussards were joined by hundreds of other Acadians whom the British had rounded up at Restigouche, Miramichi, Île St.-Pierre, Île Miquelon, and other places of refuge in the Maritimes region. Many of them were kin to the Broussards by blood or by marriage and thus were part of their extended family. They included Acadians named Arseneau, Babineau, Bergeron, Bernard, Boudrot, Bourg, Bourgeois, Breau, Brun, Caissie dit Roger, Comeaux, Cormier, Darois, Doucet, Dugas, Gautrot, Girouard, Godin, Guénard, Guidry, Guilbeau, Hébert, Hugon, Landry, LeBlanc, Leger, Martin, Michel, Pellerin, Pitre, Poirier, Prejean, Richard, Robichaud, Roy, Saulnier, Savoie, Semer, Surette, Thibodeau, Trahan, and Vincent.

      Ironically, many of the young Acadians being held at Forts Cumberland and Edward were enticed to return to their former lands and rebuild and maintain the dykes that had transformed their corner of the world into an agricultural paradise. The New England "planters" who began to occupy Acadian farmland in the Annapolis and Minas basins in 1760 had no idea how to maintain the dykes and aboiteaux that kept the fertile fields from becoming tidal marsh again. The Acadians worked diligently for their New England "masters" and were paid in Canadian card money. Despite their plunge from proud landowners to mere laborers on their former lands, many young Acadian prisoners harbored the forlorn hope of living on their fathers' farms again.

      This was not to be. Charles Lawrence, the great nemesis of all Acadians, died at Halifax in 1760 not long after his promotion to governor, but he was succeeded by Jonathan Belcher, Jr., who hated and feared the Acadians as much as Lawrence ever did. In July 1762, encouraged by Belcher, the Nova Scotia council ordered the deportation of the Acadian prisoners from the colony--600 of them, including the detainees on Georges Island as well as men held at Fort Edward and Annapolis Royal without their families! In late August, five ships carried the Acadians to Boston, but the Massachusetts authorities refused to take them. In mid-October, the prisoners returned to Halifax and were escorted back to Georges Island. Broussards likely were among them.

      The war with Britain finally ended with the Treaty of Paris of February 1763. Article 14 of the treaty gave all persons dispersed by the war 18 months to return to their respective territories. In the case of the Acadians, however, this meant that they could return only to French soil. The Acadian settlements in Nova Scotia had not been part of French territory for half a century, and the settlements at Chignecto, Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook now were part of British Nova Scotia as well, so the authorities in Halifax refused to allow any of the Acadian prisoners in the region to return to their farmsteads as proprietors. If Acadians chose to remain in Nova Scotia, they could live only in the interior of the peninsula in small family groups, away from their lands along the Fundy shore, or they could continue to work for low wages as laborers on their former lands, now, or soon to be, controlled by New England "planters." If the Acadians stayed, they must also take the hated oath of allegiance to the new British king, George III ... without reservation.

      more may be found at:
      http://www.acadiansingray.com/Appendices-ATLAL-BROUSSARD.htm
    • E-link to this supposedly famous Acadian (possible relative)

      http://www.acadiansingray.com/Appendices-ATLAL-BROUSSARD.htm

      Acadians Who Found Refuge in Louisiana, February 1764-early 1800s BROUSSARD [BREW-sard, brew-SAR] ACADIA

      Excerpt:
      François Brossard, progenitor of one of the most notable Acadian families, was born in c1653 perhaps in Anjou, France, to parents still unknown and may have come to the colony in 1671 aboard the ship L'Oranger. He married Catherine, daughter of Michel Richard dit Sansoucy, at Port-Royal in c1678. They settled on haute rivière, now the upper Annapolis River, at a place called Beausoleil. Not long after his marriage, François "collaborated with Pierre Thibodeau in the colonization of Chepoudy, but he did not go to settle there himself." In early 1711, François was one of several residents of the haute rivière jailed by British commander Samuel Vetch. François and Catherine had 11 children, including six sons, all born at Beausoleil, five of whom created families of their own. Four of their daughters married into the Landry, Doucet, Préjean, and Bourg families. François died suddenly at his farm on haute rivière in December 1716, in his early 60s.

      Oldest son Pierre, born in c1683, married Marguerite, daughter of Abraham Bourg, at Port-Royal in January 1709. They had nine children, including two sons who married into the LeBlanc family and settled at Minas. Two of their daughters married into the Boudrot and Préjean families and settled at Port Toulouse, Île Royale, today's Cape Breton Island, where their father Pierre moved by 1722. Pierre worked as a navigateur at Port-Toulouse.

      François, fils, born in c1695, died at Annapolis Royal in November 1717, age of 22. He did not marry.

      Claude, born in c1697, married first to Anne, daughter of Vincent Babin, fils of Pigiguit and widow of Abraham Bourg le jeune, at Grand-Pré in October 1718. Their sons married into the Landry and Aucoin families and settled at Pigiguit, Rivière-du-Nord-Est on Île St.-Jean, today's Prince Edward Island, and on Île Royale. Claude remarried to Marie, daughter of Claude Dugas and widow of Abraham Bourg, at Port-Royal in November 1754. Claude died in Maryland during Le Grand Dérangement.

      Alexandre dit Beausoleil, whose nickname came from the haute rivière village where the Broussards lived, born in c1699, married Marguerite, daughter of Michel Thibodeau, at Annapolis Royal in February 1724. In c1730, they moved to Chepoudy, where her kinsmen lived, and then to LeCran, today's Stoney Creek, on Rivière Petitcoudiac, probably to put more distance between themselves and British authority in Nova Scotia. In c1740, they moved farther upriver to Village-des-Beausoleils, present-day Boundary Creek, New Brunswick.

      Joseph dit Beausoleil, born in c1702, married Agnès Thibodeau, younger sister of brother Alexandre's wife, at Annapolis Royal in September 1725. They followed Alexandre and Marguerite to Chepoudy and Petitcoudiac, preferring to settle in territory controlled by France. Along with older brother Alexandre, Joseph was a leader of Acadian partisans who fought against the British in Nova Scotia during and after King George's War.

      Youngest son Jean-Baptiste, born in March 1704, married Cécile Babin, younger sister of brother Claude's first wife, probably at Annapolis Royal in c1728. They remained at Port-Royal. Jean-Baptiste remarried to Anne, daughter of Louis Thebeau, probably at Annapolis Royal in c1748. Jean-Baptiste died at Mascouche, near Montréal, in July 1770, age 66, after Le Grand Dérangement.

      The family's name evolved from Brossard to Broussard in Acadia. By 1755, François Brossard's descendants could be found at Annapolis Royal; at Grand-Pré and Ste.-Famille, Pigiguit, in the Minas Basin; at Village-des-Beausoleils on the upper Petitcoudiac; at Port-Toulouse on Île Royale; and at Rivière-du-Nord-Est on Île St.-Jean.

      LE GRAND DÉRANGEMENT

      Le Grand Dérangement of the 1750s scattered this large family even farther. Descendants of François Brossard ended up in the British Atlantic colony of South Carolina but did not remain there, in France, in the St. Lawrence River valley ... and in South Louisiana:

      After yet another war erupted between Britain and France in 1754, the Acadians were again caught in the middle of it. When British and New England forces attacked Fort Beauséjour at Chignecto in June 1755, Broussards were among the area Acadians who were serving in the fort as militia. They, too, along with the French regulars, became prisoners of war when the fort surrendered on June 16. Governor Lawrence was so incensed to find so-called French Neutrals fighting with French regulars at Beauséjour that he ordered his officers to deport the Chignecto Acadians to the southernmost British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. In mid-October 1755, the British transported Alexandre Broussard dit Beausoleil and his nephew Victor to South Carolina aboard the British warship HMS Syren. They were transported in chains, under heavy guard, along with other Acadian "troublemakers." They reached Charleston in late November and were held in close confinement on Sullivan's Island outside of the city.

      Before the deportation ships arrived at Chignecto, some of the Acadians being held at forts Cumberland (formerly Beauséjour) and Lawrence managed to escape, Joseph dit Beausoleil among them. He rejoined his wife and younger children at Petitcoudiac, and they headed into the wilderness north of their home, not only hiding from the British patrols sent out to capture them but also engaging in what today is called guerrilla warfare, including privateering in the Bay of Fundy to harass British shipping. For a time, Beausoleil's "headquarters" was at Shediac on the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore, where he coordinated his resistance activities with Canadian Lieutenant Charles Deschamps de Boishébert, who had commanded French forces on Rivière St.-Jean.

      Sometime probably in the summer of 1756, Joseph dit Beausoleil's brother Alexandre and Joseph's son Victor joined the resistance movement. Although at first held in close confinement in South Carolina, Alexandre and Victor had been allowed to go to the workhouse in Charleston, from which they escaped. They made their way through the coastal swamps and marshes into the Carolina backcountry, and, after a long, perilous journey across the face of the Appalachian Mountains, assisted no doubt by Indians friendly to the French, they returned to Acadia to fight again. Amazingly, Alexandre was in his late 50s at the time, but the rigors of advancing old age could not stop him from rejoining his family. He and Victor, along with seven other Acadians who had fled from Carolina, appeared at the Acadian settlement on Rivière St.-Jean in June 1756, about the time that other Chignecto exiles who had been deported to South Carolina returned to Acadia by boat. Alexandre and Victor did not remain on the St.-Jean but moved on to Shediac, where they reunited with their family.

      .

      British forces deported the Acadians at Minas in late October 1755, sending them to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New England. The Broussards at Minas went to Maryland. Claude Broussard of Grand-Pré, who had remarried at Annapolis Royal in November 1754, in his late 50s, died in Maryland. Claude's son Jean and his wife Anne Landry were deported to Maryland with son Firmin, age 3. Jean and Anne had at least one more son in Maryland--Jean, fils, born in c1760. Jean, père died in Maryland in the mid-1760s. Augustin, son of perhaps Charles Broussard of Grand-Pré, was only 7 years old when he landed in Maryland in 1755. He soon became an orphan.

      .

      The Broussards at Annapolis Royal escaped the British round up there in the fall of 1755, spent a terrible winter in the woods and along the Fundy shore, crossed the bay to the French-controlled side in March 1756, and made their way north to the Rivière St.-Jean settlements before joining their kinsmen on the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore. Jean-Baptiste fought with older brothers Alexandre and Joseph dit Beausoleil in the Acadian resistance. When his brothers "surrendered" to British forces at Fort Cumberland, formerly French Fort Beauséjour, in late 1759, Jean-Baptiste refused to join them and took his family to Québec. One account says that his wife, two children, and his mother-in-law died on the way to Canada. One of his daughters by his first wife remarried at Île Jesus, near Montréal, in June 1761. Jean-Baptiste died at Mascouche, near Montréal, in July 1770, in his late 60s--five years after his older brothers had died in faraway Louisiana.

      .

      The Broussards on Île Royale and Île St.-Jean, living in territory controlled by France, escaped the British roundups in Nova Scotia during the fall of 1755. Their respite from British oppression was short-lived, however. After the fall of the French fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758, the victorious British swooped down on the islands and deported most of the Acadians there to France. The crossing to the mother country devastated the family:

      Marie Broussard, wife of Honoré Préjean, crossed on the British transport Queen of Spain with her husband and nine children. Every one of them died at sea. Jean-Baptiste, age 37, son of Claude Broussard of Grand-Pré, wife Osite Landry, age 28, sons Joseph, age 7, Grégoire, age 2, and daughters Madeleine, age 9, Marguerite, age 5, and Rosalie, age 3, crossed on one of the five British transports that left the Gut of Canso in late November and reached St.-Malo in late January 1759. Son Jean-Baptiste-Paul was born aboard ship in December. Only Osite and two of her children--Madeleine and newborn Jean-Baptiste-Paul--survived the crossing. Marguerite, Rosalie, and Grégoire died at sea. Jean-Baptiste, père died in a St.-Malo hospital a month after they reached the city, and son Joseph died a month after that. Osite remarried to fellow Acadian Augustin Boudrot at Pleudihen, near St.-Malo, in August 1760 and gave him at least nine children. Jean-Baptiste Broussard's unmarried younger brothers Charles, age 26, and Firmin, age 21, also crossed to St.-Malo on one of the five ships. Firmin and Charles survived the crossing, but the ordeal proved to be too much for Firmin, who died at Buet, near St.-Malo, in late April 1759 and was buried at nearby Pleudihen. Cousin Pierre-Paul Broussard, age 32, crossed on one of the five ships with wife Madeleine Landry, age 31, sons Jean-Baptiste, age 8, and Pierre, age 1, and daughters Isabelle, age 6, and Marie-Marguerite, age 4. Pierre-Paul, Madeleine, and two of their children survived the crossing, but two of the children--Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Marguerite--died at Pleudihen in April 1759 no doubt from the rigors of the crossing. Pierre-Paul's younger unmarried brother François, age 22, also crossed with them and died at the hospital in St.-Malo in February 1759.

      Pierre-Paul and Marguerite settled at Pleudihen and had more children in the area--Joseph-Osithe was born at Buet in March 1760 but died at Pleudihen in August 1761, Charles-Jean was born at Bas Champs in June 1763, Jean-Joseph at La Coquenais in March 1766, and Marie-Josèphe at Bas Champs in August 1768.

      Charles settled at Pleudihen and married Anne, daughter of fellow Acadian Joseph Aucoin, at nearby Plouër in October 1764. They settled at La Coquenais near Pleudihen, where at least three children were born to them--Marie-Isabelle in March 1766, Joseph-Charles in November 1767, and Madeleine-Josèphe in December 1769.

      Some of the Broussards who were deported to France from Île St.-Jean in 1758 ended up in ports other than St.-Malo. Joseph Broussard of Grand-Pré and Île St.-Jean and his sons Charles, age 15, and Jean, age 13, landed at Cherbourg, where Joseph died in January 1759, age 50, probably from the rigors of the crossing. Charles married Frenchwoman Bonne-Jacqueline-Françoise Castel probably at Cherbourg in c1764. They had at least five sons, all born probably at Cherbourg--Jean-Charles-Joseph, François, Jacques, Pierre in March 1771, and Joseph-Dominique, called Dominique, in May 1772. Daughter Bonne-Marguerite was born at Cherbourg in September 1773. Charles's younger brother Jean married Marguerite, daughter of fellow Acadian Honoré Comeau, at Cherbourg in July 1773. In the early 1770s, Charles, Jean, and their families participated in a venture in the Poitou region that attempted to settle Acadians from the port cities on a nobleman's land near Châtellerault. Charles's son Louis was born near Vienne, Poitou, in February 1774. Jean's sons Jean-Baptiste and Joseph were born near Vienne in May 1774 and November 1775. After two years of effort, the venture failed, and Charles, Jean, and dozens of other frustrated Acadians retreated with their families to the port city of Nantes in December 1775. Two years later, the Broussards were residing at Chantenay near Nantes, where Charles and Bonne-Jacqueline had two more sons--Guillaume-Médard, born in June 1776 but died two months later, and Jean le jeune, born in February 1778 but died at age 3 in September 1780. Jean and Marguerite also had at least two more children at Chantenay--twins Florence-Adélaïde and Pierre, born in October 1777, but Pierre died at age 10 months in July 1778. Charles remarried to Euphrosine, daughter of fellow Acadian Pierre Barrieau, at St.-Martin-de-Chantenay in June 1784.

      Jean-Baptiste-Paul Broussard, the newborn who had survived the crossing from the Maritimes to St.-Malo in 1758-59, married Marie, daughter of fellow Acadian Étienne Melanson, at Pleudihen in June 1784. Their son Jean-Pierre was born at La Coquenais, near Pleudihen, in March 1785.

      In the early 1780s, the Spanish government offered the Acadians in France a chance for a new life in faraway Louisiana, where many of their kinsmen had settled decades before. Charles and Jean Broussard of Chantenay took up the offer, but cousins Pierre-Paul, Charles, and Jean-Baptiste-Paul of Pleudihen chose to remain in France.

      .

      Meanwhile, Joseph dit Beausoleil Broussard and his fellow Acadians harassed the British as best they could. In late 1756, they abandoned their "headquarters" at Shediac and moved north to a new camp at Miramichi, also on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to put more distance between themselves and the British forces at Fort Cumberland. Their resistance exacted a terrible price. Obtaining food, clothing, and shelter for their families, especially during the winter, continually burdened the resistance fighters and limited their effectiveness against a well-fed, well-supplied, and comfortably-sheltered foe. Joseph's wife Agnès was among the many Acadians who died of sickness or starvation at Miramichi during the terrible winter of 1756-57. Some historians insist that all of the children at Miramichi died that winter. Son Victor's twin sons may have been among the many who perished. After the terrible ordeal at Miramichi, the resistance fighters retreated farther up the coast towards the French stronghold at Restigouche, at the head of the Baie des Chaleurs.

      By the autumn of 1759, after four years of unimaginable hardship and the recent fall of Louisbourg and Québec, Beausoleil Broussard and his compatriots responded to a British offer of amnesty. They agreed to surrender to Colonel Joseph Frye, the commander at Fort Cumberland, to spare their families the horror of another Maritimes winter. Joseph dit Beausoleil's older brother Alexandre was held as hostage at Fort Cumberland until Joseph and other resistance leaders surrendered the following spring. However, the British reneged on their amnesty offer, and Joseph and his fellow Acadians continued their struggle from Restigouche. Beausoleil, along with hundreds of other Acadians, was captured at Restigouche in 1760. The British held him at Georges Island, Halifax, for a time, and then transferred him to Fort Edward at Windsor, formerly the Acadian settlement of Pigiguit. There, he managed to communicate with Acadian partisans still on the loose in the area, so the British returned him to Georges Island, where he and his extended family spent the next few years in close confinement.

      In the prison camps of Nova Scotia--at Fort Cumberland and Fort Edward as well as on Georges Island--the Broussards were joined by hundreds of other Acadians whom the British had rounded up at Restigouche, Miramichi, Île St.-Pierre, Île Miquelon, and other places of refuge in the Maritimes region. Many of them were kin to the Broussards by blood or by marriage and thus were part of their extended family. They included Acadians named Arseneau, Babineau, Bergeron, Bernard, Boudrot, Bourg, Bourgeois, Breau, Brun, Caissie dit Roger, Comeaux, Cormier, Darois, Doucet, Dugas, Gautrot, Girouard, Godin, Guénard, Guidry, Guilbeau, Hébert, Hugon, Landry, LeBlanc, Leger, Martin, Michel, Pellerin, Pitre, Poirier, Prejean, Richard, Robichaud, Roy, Saulnier, Savoie, Semer, Surette, Thibodeau, Trahan, and Vincent.

      Ironically, many of the young Acadians being held at Forts Cumberland and Edward were enticed to return to their former lands and rebuild and maintain the dykes that had transformed their corner of the world into an agricultural paradise. The New England "planters" who began to occupy Acadian farmland in the Annapolis and Minas basins in 1760 had no idea how to maintain the dykes and aboiteaux that kept the fertile fields from becoming tidal marsh again. The Acadians worked diligently for their New England "masters" and were paid in Canadian card money. Despite their plunge from proud landowners to mere laborers on their former lands, many young Acadian prisoners harbored the forlorn hope of living on their fathers' farms again.

      This was not to be. Charles Lawrence, the great nemesis of all Acadians, died at Halifax in 1760 not long after his promotion to governor, but he was succeeded by Jonathan Belcher, Jr., who hated and feared the Acadians as much as Lawrence ever did. In July 1762, encouraged by Belcher, the Nova Scotia council ordered the deportation of the Acadian prisoners from the colony--600 of them, including the detainees on Georges Island as well as men held at Fort Edward and Annapolis Royal without their families! In late August, five ships carried the Acadians to Boston, but the Massachusetts authorities refused to take them. In mid-October, the prisoners returned to Halifax and were escorted back to Georges Island. Broussards likely were among them.

      The war with Britain finally ended with the Treaty of Paris of February 1763. Article 14 of the treaty gave all persons dispersed by the war 18 months to return to their respective territories. In the case of the Acadians, however, this meant that they could return only to French soil. The Acadian settlements in Nova Scotia had not been part of French territory for half a century, and the settlements at Chignecto, Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and Memramcook now were part of British Nova Scotia as well, so the authorities in Halifax refused to allow any of the Acadian prisoners in the region to return to their farmsteads as proprietors. If Acadians chose to remain in Nova Scotia, they could live only in the interior of the peninsula in small family groups, away from their lands along the Fundy shore, or they could continue to work for low wages as laborers on their former lands, now, or soon to be, controlled by New England "planters." If the Acadians stayed, they must also take the hated oath of allegiance to the new British king, George III ... without reservation.

      more may be found at:
      http://www.acadiansingray.com/Appendices-ATLAL-BROUSSARD.htm