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Marie Charlotte Bonnevie (c1703-after 1742): One Fourth Native & Not Her Sister Marie – 52 Ancestors #421

Roberta Estes

Marie Charlotte Bonnevie was born about 1703 to Jacques Bonnevie and Françoise dit d’Azy Mius, probably in Port Royal, Acadia. However, the Port Royal parish records begin in 1702 and she’s not there, so it’s possible that Marie Charlotte was born elsewhere, probably Pobomcoup, an outpost, where her mother’s parents lived.

Marie Charlotte Bonnevie should not be confused with her slightly younger sister, Marie Bonnevie, who was born on May 12, 1706, in Port Royal, Acadia, to the same parents.

Yes, I know, it’s quite confusing. In this article, I’ll either call Marie Charlotte by that name or Charlotte, and her sister will always be Marie.

Given that these two females both survived, we can rest assured that Marie Charlotte was called Charlotte. In fact, in most records, including her marriage, she’s listed by the name of Charlotte Bonnevie.

Her sister, Marie, born in 1706, didn’t have a middle name, at least not that we know of. Marie married François Duguay around 1737, probably in Beaubassin, and was having children there by 1740.

In the 1703 Port Royal census, Marie Charlotte’s father, Jacques Bonnevie is listed with a wife, 2 daughters, and one arms bearer, which would be him.

One daughter would be Marie Charlotte’s older sister, Françoise, and the younger of the two daughters would be Marie Charlotte.

On May 31, 1704, Marie Charlotte’s younger brother, Jacques Bonnevie, was born. As an adult, he was a blacksmith and married the niece of Marie Charlotte’s husband.

In 1707, the Port Royal census showed Jacques Bonneur, his wife, 1 boy less than 14, 3 girls less than 12, 1 arpent of land, 2 cattle, and 6 hogs. This is probably the same family and the known children fit.

This man is very clearly not a farmer because you can’t support a family on 1 arpent of land, which is similar to an acre.

In the 1714 census, we find “Beaumont,” which is probably his dit name, with no first name, a wife, 1 son, and 3 daughters. Based on the location and number of children, this is probably him.

Now we have three “surnames,” Bonnevie, Bonneur, and Beaumont.

Marie Charlotte’s brother, Charles, was born and baptized on October 13, 1715, but we never find a record of him again, so he apparently died, and his death was not recorded.

Marie Charlotte’s oldest sibling, Françoise, married Pierre Olivier in Port Royal in 1718, so we know the family was still there at that time. By at least 1741, Françoise was in Beaubassin, where she remarried Jean Pierre Helie.

On August 25, 1719, Charlotte stood as godmother for her sister’s firstborn child, Marie Joseph Olivier, who had been born the day before. I can see the two sisters hugging joyfully after that solemn moment, promising to watch over each other’s children forever. Either her father, Jacques, or her brother, Jacques, stood with her. Her brother Jacques would only have been 15 at that time, so I suspect this was her father.

Where was Charlotte’s mother?

The church, which was located on a hill at far right, overlooked the bay and the fort. The cemetery was adjacent to the church, in the small rolling hills behind those trees. Perhaps Charlotte’s brother, Charles, and her mother were already there, although there is no death or burial record for either of them. Maybe after the baptism, Charlotte, Françoise, and Jacques took a walk in the cemetery and introduced the baby to family members who had already passed over. After all, this would have been Françoise Mius’s first grandchild.

There are only two baptisms for Charlotte’s sister Françoise’s children, in 1719 and 1722. We really don’t know where she and her husband, Pierre Olivier, a tailor, were through 1732 when their last child was born. We do know that by 1741, Françoise was in Beaubassin, where she married Jean Pierre Helie.

Marie Charlotte married on August 18, 1721 in that same church in Port Royal to Jacques Lord, and her brother, Jacques Bonnevie married Jacques Lord’s niece, Marguerite Lord about 1729. These families probably lived near one another.

Marie Charlotte’s Parents

There’s something of a mystery surrounding Marie Charlotte’s parents.

According to Stephen White, we know that in 1732, Charlotte’s father, Jacques Bonnevie, was living on Île Royale and was listed as a retired disabled veteran of the French army, having served 17 years. He suffered a wound to his thigh, which caused his disability. Île Royale is now Cape Breton Island.

Cape Breton Island is located at the furthest eastern point of Nova Scotia, then Acadia.

Based on that same record, Jacques’s birth year is estimated to be 1660. We know he is not found in records prior to his presumed marriage to Françoise Mius, whose father, Philippe, lived in Pobomcoup, now Pubnico, on the opposite end of Nova Scotia, some 450 miles distant.

Somehow, Jacques had to have met Françoise.

Was he somehow connected to Philippe Mius? Perhaps through his profession as a soldier? He would have been about 40 when he married.

Why did Jacques Bonnevie and his bride, whose family lived in Pobomcoup, settle in Port Royal, which was no place close to her parents? Was Jacques Bonnevie serving at or stationed at the fort there?

On the 1758 map above, the fort is shown along with the approximate location of Julien Lord/Lore’s home with the red star, just slightly upriver, 3 or 4 miles away.

If Jacques Bonnevie served 17 years, does that mean he was disabled sometime around, say, 1716 or 1717, which would be about the time no more children were baptized?

Based on Marie Charlotte’s mother’s estimated birth year between 1684 and 1687, this probably means that her mother died between 1715 and 1717 when she would have been expected to have born the next child.

Was Jacques Bonnevie’s wound somehow related to his wife’s death?

We have so many unanswered questions.

One thing we can say, fairly confidently, is that the Bonnevie family must have lived in relatively close proximity to the Lord/Lore family on what is now the Annapolis River for two of Jacque Bonnevie’s children to have married Julien Lord’s son and granddaughter.

Of course, they would all have attended the Catholic Church together.

Marie’s Maternal Grandmother

One thing we know for sure is that Marie Charlotte’s mother was half-Native, making Charlotte and her siblings one-fourth, and Charlotte’s maternal grandmother was Mi’kmaq.

Acadian history relates this story, but the mitochondrial DNA of Marie Charlotte’s descendants through all females confirms it.

Mitochondrial haplogroup X2a2 is unquestionably Native American, found primarily in Atlantic Maritime Canada, but with one sample found in New Mexico, based on my analysis in the book, DNA for Native American Genealogy.

Warfare

Marie Charlotte’s first memories may have been of warfare. After all, her father was a soldier, and conflict ebbed and flowed in Acadia, sometimes erupting in full-throated battle, but never ending.

The English attacked Acadia in 1704, and raids continued intermittently until 1707, when an attack by soldiers from New England failed.

The Acadians began beefing up the fort and built a store within the fort in 1708, expecting more of the same. Charlotte’s father was assuredly one of those soldiers.

Prisoners taken from English corsairs reported that the English were planning attacks in either 1708 or 1709.

In 1710, when Marie Charlotte would have been about 7 or 8 years old, the English routed the Acadians with 3400 English soldiers pitted against the 300 Acadian soldiers.

Marie Charlotte’s father was among those brave soldiers who managed to hold the fort for 19 days in spite of being outnumbered more than 100-fold. Surely they, and their families, expected them to die, but miraculously, they didn’t. Charlotte must have been terrified.

Beginning in 1710, the English ruled the land and initially “encouraged” the Acadians to leave. Then, the English changed their mind and didn’t want the Acadians to leave because they realized they needed the Acadians to feed them.

About the same time, the Acadians changed their minds too, and decided they WANTED to leave. They tried various methods of moving themselves and their households to Les Mines and Beaubassin, none of which succeeded.

In 1711, the local priest was kidnapped during a skirmish and taken to Boston, along with some other Acadian captives, where they were held for two years.

This means that anyone who was born during this time would have to be baptized later and burials would certainly have occurred, but not recorded in the parish register. Acadia had no priest during this time, so the records are incomplete.

In 1713, Acadia was officially passed to the English, along with her people.

In 1715, the Fort gates were shut, and no trade was allowed with anyone, including Native people.

By 1720, Port Royal had been renamed Annapolis Royal and the Acadians were again being pressured to take a loyalty oath to the British crown. Refusal meant they had to leave within 3 months and take nothing with them.

They still refused, and they also refused to leave.

Acadians were nothing if not stubborn, a trait that is clearly heritable!

Marriage and Children

The Bonnevie family lived near the Lord family. Marie Charlotte was godmother to Pierre Laure’s baby born in February 1720 when she was about 17 or 18.

By this time, Marie Charlotte’s mother had probably died, her father was disabled, and she married Jacques Lord/Lore/Lor/L’Or, Laur or Laure the following year on August 18, 1721.

Register – RG 1 volume 26 page 327
Priest – Charlemagne Cuvier
Registration Date – 18 August 1721
Event – Marriage
Groom – Jacques L’Or, widower of Angelique Comeau
Bride – Charlotte Bonnevie
Father – Jacques de Bonnevie
Mother – Françoise Mius

Marie Charlotte is referred to as Charlotte in her marriage record.

Jacques was a widower, and Marie inherited two stepchildren: Jacques Lore, born in 1709, and Angelique, born in 1711. They were just a few years younger than Charlotte.

Marie Charlotte’s children began arriving 15 months later and were all born and baptized in the Catholic church in Annapolis Royal:

We do have parish records for Annapolis Royal fairly reliably up until the Expulsion, so it’s likely that we don’t know anything about Marie Charlotte’s children born in 1733, 1736, and 1739 because they had not yet married in 1755 when the expulsion occurred.

They could have died either during that horrific event or afterward in New England, assuming they were in exile with their siblings.

However, if they got separated, it’s hard to tell where they might have wound up or if they even survived.

They could also have survived, married in the colonies, and not followed their siblings to Quebec, meaning we have no record of them. Perhaps one day DNA testing of their descendants will reveal that someone survived.

1731, 1732 and 1733

Marie Charlotte’s siblings, who lived to adulthood, eventually wound up in the Northern Acadian settlements, specifically Beaubassin and Île Saint-Jean.

Charlotte’s brother, Jacques Bonnevie, stayed in Port Royal, where his children were baptized from 1730-1741. On September 21, 1731, Marie Charlotte, called Charlotte, was the Godmother for Jacques’ daughter, Marguerite Bonnevie who had been born on September 18th and was named after her mother, Marguerite Laure.

Marie Charlotte’s father, Jacques Bonnevie, is shown on Île Royal in 1732, aged 72, listed as a retired and disabled veteran of the French Army. He reportedly died there at Louisbourg on April 23, 1733.

Jacques’s adult children had not made their way to Île Royal, so why did he? Who would have been there to help him?

Or had they?

We know that Marie Bonnevie was born in 1706, and the first sighting of her after this was her marriage to François Duguay who was from Île Saint-Jean. They settled in Saint-Pierre-du-Nord and are listed in 1752 in Riviere du Nord-Est.

Still, Île Saint-Jean, Prince Edward Island today, isn’t Île Royal, today’s Cape Breton Island.

This map shows Acadia just before the expulsion and the locations where Acadians were deported to and from, beginning in 1755.

Life Deteriorates at Port Royal, ummm, I mean Annapolis Royal

By 1745, life in Acadia had deteriorated significantly and was getting worse. It’s no wonder so many had left for points North and East.

A 1745 report from Port Royal said the Acadian homes were “wretched wooden boxes, without conveniences, and without ornaments, and scarcely containing the most necessary furniture …” A visitor in the 1750s stated that “the houses of the village (Annapolis Royal) … are mean, and in general built of wood.”

The situation deteriorated significantly under Governor Charles Lawrence, who wanted to get rid of the Acadians. He used acts of individuals to make charges against the whole population. He revoked the former governor’s orders not to use military force if the Acadians refused to comply. One example was that if an Acadian was ordered to get firewood, and he didn’t do it promptly … his house would be used for fuel.

That’s horrifically brutal.

This explains why most of Marie Charlotte’s siblings had left before 1750.

The Last Record of Marie Charlotte Bonnevie

The last actual record we have for Marie Charlotte is the birth of her last child in 1742.

We have absolutely nothing for either her or her husband, Jacques Lord/Lore, from that time forward other than this oral history for Jacques:

“He suffered the great disturbance that occurred in Acadia in 1755, when the oppressor forced the family to go into exile in New York, United States. He returned to Canada with his son Pierre-Benjamin and they settled in Kamouraska The three children of Angelique Comeau (Corriveau) did not have an heir.”

Note that we only know of two children from Jacques’ first marriage, but it’s certainly possible that there were three.

If this is accurate, and if this is the same Jacques Lord/Lore who was married to Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, then he would have been 108 in 1786.

The problem is that the burial record shows this man’s age to be 79, not 108. This would be Jacques son, Jacques, but that doesn’t mean that Jacques Sr. didn’t also die there, perhaps somewhat earlier. There is a record with both Jacques and Pierre Lore witnessing a marriage in L’Ile-Dupas in 1764.

If indeed this is the same man, he would have been deported from the Port Royal region along with the other Lore males, including son Honoré.

If Jacques and his youngest son, Honoré, were deported from Port Royal, there’s no reason to think that Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, Honoré’s mother, was living far away from her children on Île Royal during or after the deportation. In fact, that’s contra-indicated.

If this Jacques is Charlotte’s step-son, born in 1709, not her husband, which is the most likely scenario, this group of people together actually provides evidence that Charlotte was NOT on Île Royal and that she and her family were all deported from Port Royal.

There is absolutely no evidence that any of her children or step-children left the Port Royal area before the expulsion began.

The Deportation

Charlotte’s brother Jacques Bonnevie, who was found near Beaubassin but did not move to Île Royal, was deported to South Carolina in 1755. He was one of only five or six families who returned to Canada in 1756. That trickle was immediately stopped before it turned into a river. Jacques was at Ristigouche in 1760 and reportedly a prisoner at Fort Edward (Pisiguit) with his wife and five children in 1761, although I have been unable to verify that.

The deportation meant death for Charlotte’s sisters and their families.

Marie Charlotte’s Death

Everywhere I look, Marie Charlotte is reported to have died at sea on or about December 13, 1758. I know where this comes from, but I think it’s inaccurate.

There are two issues.

First, I think most people have conflated the two Maries, literally combining or at least confusing them. Our Marie Charlotte born about 1703, and her younger sister, Marie, born in 1706.

Let’s summarize what we know about where the children of Jacques Bonnevie and Françoise Mius were in the 1755 deportation era.

So, given this information, where did this 1758 death date originate?

The information came from Stephen A. White, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (Moncton, N.-B.: Centre d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, 1999) p. 178-179.

Françoise Bonnevie (Jacques Bonnevie dit Beaumont and Françoise Mius) born around 1702, (On 1752 La Roque census age 50). Married (1) Pierre Olivier (Pierre & Geneviève Roussel) on 18 Oct 1718 in Port-Royal. Married (2) at 39 years of age, Jean Hélie dit Nouvelle (Étienne & Marguerite Laporte), widower of Anne-Marie Lalande, on 16 Jan 1741 in Beaubassin. She died (according to S.A. White), around 13 Dec 1758 when the ship Violet sank during the crossing to France.

Note from S.A. White: Françoise Bonnevie and Marie Bonnevie, their husbands and many of their children are among the Acadian families from Île Saint-Jean [Prince Edward Island] who disappeared without a trace after 1758. We believe that they were among the unfortunate passengers aboard one of the two British ships that sank. (see SHA vol II, p. 286-299) Jan, Feb, Mar 1968

Click to access 18cahier_total.pdf

AHA!

Well, that explains that, but no place is Marie Charlotte Bonnevie, her husband, or her children mentioned.

Marie Charlotte Bonnevie is NOT Marie Bonnevie.

What About Marie Charlotte?

I do not believe that Marie Charlotte drowned when those two ships went down.

Why?

I don’t believe she was a passenger on those ships or ever on Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) or Île Royal (Cape Breton Island).

We have no evidence whatsoever that Marie Charlotte, her husband, nor any of her children were ever lived on Île Royal or in Louisbourg, where both the ship Violet, with 280-400 people, and Duke William, with more than 360 people, sailed from en route to France.

Her father was in Louisbourg in 1732 before his death, but that does not equate to any of his children being there then or two decades later.

By 1758, three years into the deportations, the English no longer deported Acadians to the colonies but shipped them directly back to France. The Île Saint-Jean Acadians may have thought they had escaped deportation.

Given that Marie Charlotte’s sisters were indeed on Île Saint-Jean just before the expulsion began, unless they died before those ships sailed following the Siege of Louisbourg, it stands to reason that they were on those ships. There’s no record that they ever made it to France, and we know the ships sank with hundreds of Acadians on board.

Louisbourg fell on July 26th, and over the next few weeks and months, the residents were rounded up and loaded onto overcrowded, poorly maintained transport ships. Floating death traps.

Families on Prince Edward Island were rounded up and deported as well. Only 30 families managed to remain hidden. The rest sank aboard those two cursed death ships.

Marie Charlotte’s sisters, husbands, children, and grandchildren were almost certainly among them, wiping entire families off the face of the earth.

Thankfully, Marie Charlotte was probably spared that horrific fate and may have been waiting to greet them on the other side. Perhaps this time, an early death was a blessing.

It’s also possible that Marie Charlotte had already been deported with her children back in 1755 and was living somewhere in New England. At least, I hope if she got deported, she was loaded onto a ship with her children, not separated.

Her six youngest children were unmarried, the 4 youngest were minors, and all but one of those is lost to us. Honoré, her youngest, was only 13. He would have been terrified regardless, but even more so if both of his parents were already deceased and he faced that alone.

If Charlotte was deported with them, she probably died sometime between 1755 and 1764, when her children began making their way north into Quebec, settling near Montreal.

Of course, Honoré married about that time in New York and had children baptized in 1768 in Yamachiche, Quebec, but there was no sign of Marie Charlotte.

One way or another, the record and circumstances of her death are lost to us. It seems she either died in the 13 years between Honoré’s birth and the 1755 deportation or was lost during the resulting exile.

Either way, she didn’t enjoy a long life and died someplace between the age of 40 and about 63. I hope her family was at least able to provide her with the Catholic sacraments, even if they couldn’t bury her in consecrated ground and erect a stone or wooden cross in her memory.

Maybe the “Indian quilt” found in her son Honoré’s 1818 estate was a tiny piece of her mother’s family line that she was able to salvage and pass down to her son. Perhaps it warmed and comforted them on that horrific voyage into the unknown and warmed their hearts as they remembered long-lost but much-loved family members.

RIP Marie Charlotte, wherever you lay.

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