The Acadian Side
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My mother's paternal grandfather was Robert Joseph Denis LECOMTE; his maternal family lines include TRIAL (originally from Italy, and some of whom later settled in Maine, USA), BOISVERT, ORION dit CHAMPAGNE, and BOUDREAULT.
Of those names, the (ORION dit) CHAMPAGNE family name is Acadian. The CHAMPAGNEs and their ancestral families settled in the 1650s and earlier in the Port Royal/Annapolis Royal area of Acadia (in the area of what is now the province of Nova Scotia).
The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 formally ended the War of Spanish Succession in Europe, and permanetly transferred large portions of Acadian territory from France to Britain.
Under British rule, Acadian families were subjected to brutal policies, ending with the government's attempt to erase Acadians' heritage by deporting them to random parts of the globe during the Great Expulsion | Grand Dérangement of 1755, and by destroying French-language burial markers at Garrison Graveyard (the main cemetery used by residents of the early French settlement at Port-Royal)...leaving only English-language markers standing.
After the mass deportation, some of my Acadian family returned to Canada (from parts currently unknown) nearly a decade later, to re-settle in Québec. Even the manner in which these deportation survivors are listed in the Québec church records is haunting -- not recorded in the usual expected format as belonging to (or hailing from) a particular parish in re-named Nova Scotia, but listed simply as "Acadien(ne)."
Acadian family names in my ORION dit CHAMPAGNE ancestral line include:
- Bastarache dit Le Basque
- Cloutier
- Comeau
- Doucet
- Gaudet
- Hébert
- Orion dit Champagne
- Richard
- Vincent
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