Before I share Jean Blanchard’s life story, I’m going to confess right up front that while all of my ancestors’ stories move me, this one was particularly heartwrenching. Incredibly emotional. Just get the box of tissues and a cuppa tea and settle in. We’re going on a journey together, and we’re visiting Jean.
I was as shocked at what I discovered as you’re going to be.
Meet Jean
Jean Blanchard was among the founding Acadians in Port Royal.
He was born about 1611 and probably arrived in Acadia around 1639 or 1640, but possibly a few years earlier or later. By 1642, he had married Radegonde Lambert, who was born in the 1620s in France. They settled down in Port Royal to raise their family, with their first child born about 1643.
Jean Blanchard has been a difficult ancestor to write about because there is so much misinformation about him floating around in well-meaning but unsourced files and trees. I’m not repeating any of that, except to say that I’ll vote with the late Stephen A. White, renowned Acadian genealogist and researcher, who assigns no parents to Jean, despite decades of rumors and conflated information that states otherwise. For discussion, please see Jean Blanchard’s WikiTree profile, here.
Cousin Mark’s research later in this article provides additional information, never before reported.
The French Depositions
One source of information about the Blanchard family are the Belle-Ile-en-Mer depositions given by Acadian refugees who were attempting to resettle in France a dozen traumatic years after the 1755 Expulsion – long after Jean’s death.
From Stephen A. White, translated to English with slight edits for punctuation and clarity:
Jean Blanchard came from France with his wife, according to Jean LeBlanc, husband of his great-granddaughter Françoise Blanchard (Doc. inéd., Vol. III, p. 43).
The deposition of Françoise’s nephews, Joseph Trahan and Simon-Pierre Trahan, is to the same effect (ibid., p. 123). Both depositions mistakenly give Guillaume as the ancestor’s given name. Jean LeBlanc’s deposition makes an additional error regarding the name of Jean Blanchard’s wife, calling her Huguette Poirier.
The censuses of 1671 and 1686, meanwhile, clearly show that she [Jean Blanchard’s wife] was named Radegonde Lambert (see DGFA-1, pp. 143-144).
The source of these errors is probably a simple confusion arising from the fact that Jean LeBlanc’s wife’s grandfather, Martin Blanchard, had a brother, Guillaume Blanchard, who was married to a woman named Huguette, as this writer explained in an article published in 1984 (SHA, Vol. XV, pp. 116-117).
This Huguette was not named Poirier, however, but Gougeon, although her mother, Jeanne Chebrat, had married a man named Jean Poirier before she wed Huguette’s father, Antoine Gougeon, and all her male-line descendants in Acadia were Poiriers.
Unfortunately, we do not know just what questions Jean LeBlanc asked in trying to establish the Blanchard lineage, but he might certainly have had the impression that Huguette was a Poirier from the fact that so many of her relatives were Poiriers, including her grandnephew Joseph, who was also on Belle-Île in 1767 (see Doc. inéd., Vol. III, pp. 13-15).
Keep in mind that the 1767 depositions were given more than 150 years after Jean Blanchard was born, and about 75 or 80 years after his death.
While Jean Blanchard is reported to have come from France with his wife, Radegonde Lambert, we know of other instances in depositions where that statement means that both people individually came from France, not necessarily married to each other, or even arriving at the same time. We know from Jean Blanchard’s Y-DNA and Radegonde’s mitochondrial DNA, that, unquestionably, neither of them were Native American.
Jean LeBlanc, who gave one of the depositions, was the husband of Jean Blanchard’s great-granddaughter, Françoise Blanchard, who was born in 1707 in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia. Her father, René Blanchard, Martin Blanchard’s son, was born in 1677, so he would have known Jean Blanchard, and would have been between 10 and 17 when Jean died.
However, René Blanchard may not have known his grandfather well, because we know that Jean’s son, Martin Blanchard, lived in Port Royal, and Jean Blanchard had relocated 15 miles or so upriver to BelleIsle before René was born about 1677. That’s 15 miles before roads or automobiles – 15 miles by canoe.
Françoise Blanchard’s two nephews, sons of her sister, Marie Blanchard, also provided depositions and are another generation removed from Jean.
This means that the information provided in those depositions needed to be handed down correctly, and remembered accurately for either three or four generations, respectively.
There were no written records that survived the 1755 Expulsion with the Acadians, so all of their information was based on memories and oral history alone.
Can you name your great-grandparents without a memory aid? Could someone who was not a genealogist?
When I started working on genealogy, I only knew the names of my mother’s grandparents. Fortunately, my mother knew the full names of my father’s parents and of her own grandparents. Beyond that was a mystery. Several of my great-great-grandparents remained elusive for decades, and then the information I initially found wasn’t accurate.
Fortunately, for Acadian researchers, new information occasionally surfaces and continues to be discovered.
We have many resources available today, such as transcribed French parish registers, so let’s take a look at Cousin Mark’s laborious work attempting to locate Jean Blanchard’s birth record which would provide us with the names of his parents.
The Blanchard Surname in France
From Cousin Mark:
Unfortunately for origin research, Blanchard is a fairly common surname in France.
Steven Cormier points this out on his Acadians in Grey website in discussing the hundreds of Blanchards that settled Louisiana, both Acadian and non-Acadian French.
Geneviève Massignon includes Blanchard as one of the common surnames found in the parish records of the seigneury of Menou d’Aulnay. Several Blanchards are listed in the Jousserand censitaire, as you show in the Jean Gaudet article. I see named a Maurice Blanchard (heirs), Pasquier Blanchard and a François Blanchard.
So, let’s start with them in the Loudunais.
I accessed Filae.com, the only database I know of for the early records that have been reviewed by the various genealogical societies in France. As you know, there are no indexes at the departmental archives themselves. I selected 1560 through 1660 and locations within 200km of Loudun. For comparison, La Rochelle is 134km from Loudun, and Nantes is 126km, as the crow flies.
There was only one Maurice Blanchard shown, who was born in 1658, so no luck there.
There was also only one Pasquier, as a father in 1639, in a village just south of Orleans, so fairly distant from Loudun.
As expected, François had many more entries, 287 in fact. So, focusing at 20km from Loudun, which includes Martaizé and La Chaussée, the latter at 14km, I found eleven entries, seven from the same couple, one of which was a double entry as the child was also named François. Between 1589 and 1604, he and Sara Chesneau baptized six children, one named Jean in 1604, all at the Protestant Temple in Loudun. Yes indeed, there was a Protestant Temple in Loudun and I’ve previously gone through the records for it. 1604 seems a little too early for our Jean Blanchard who is recorded as having been born in 1611 in two Acadian censuses, but who knows?
I also reviewed any other records for a Jean Blanchard, first within 20km and then within 200km. In addition to the above Jean, there was another Jean who is shown as father to three baptized children, the mother named Françoise Neveu. The children are René in 1634, Pierre in 1637, and Jeanne in January 1642. All three were baptized at Loudun’s Saint-Pierre-du-Marché. Given the date of the last baptism, it is possible, but unlikely, that our Jean was the father. In addition, there is a Jehan Blanchard listed as the father in 1630 at Les Trois-Moutiers, close to Loudun, to a child named Mathurin Blanchard, whose mother was named Toinette Lacompte.
Looking at a 200km range, there were 984 entries, which includes the five within 20km. Yes, a lot of Jean Blanchards! So I narrowed the date range to 1600 through 1650. That reduced it to 666. And then just baptisms between 1600 and 1620. Now down to 119, but these included baptisms where a Jean Blanchard is named as father, which Filae doesn’t separate out. A few were double entries, and I counted 34 birth/baptisms, including the one from 1604 Loudun.
There was only one from 1611, April 18th, in fact, interestingly, from Ivoy-le-Pré, in the Cher department, north of Bourges, smack dab in the middle of France. The father was an Estienne Blanchard, and the mother a Magdeleine Chrestien. There were three from 1610, one of which was from the Deux-Sèvres department next door to Vienne, one from 1612, and one from 1613. While one of the 1610 baptisms was from La Peyratte, Deux-Sèvres, on the road from Loudun to La Rochelle, the others were not close to the Loudunais.
Next, I looked at marriages between 1620 and 1650, again first at 20km and then 200km. There was no Jean Blanchard married near Loudun during this time period. Within 200km there were 42 marriages for a Jean Blanchard, 12 after 1644. Of course, none was with a Lambert. But interestingly, one was with a Nicole Pellerin in 1638 in the Loiret department.
While Filae.com contains entries for early parish records, they are limited before 1700, and for that period, most all from genealogical societies that have taken the time and effort to search through original archival material. As we know, many such records are lost, and many that are found are illegible. We are entirely reliant on these societies, which means we don’t know how complete the searches were. When I searched through parish records page by page for the Loudun and elsewhere, I found several that were not noted by these societies. In addition, all the Paris records went up in flames during one of their several revolutions. So, I must assume that there are a large percentage of parish records, surely a majority, that are missing from the Filae database.
Jean Blanchard was assuredly baptized in France, somewhere, but we can only speculate regarding any one of the several records now available.
Also remaining speculative is whether he married in France or Acadia and whether it was a second marriage to Radegonde. I regret not having found more suggestive records than the above. Sigh.
I’m extremely grateful to Mark for his incredibly thorough research and sifting through thousands of documents on our behalf.
Jean Blanchard is one of the ancestors that Mark and I share.
Now, let’s visit Acadia, where Jean spent most of his life.
The Acadian Civil War
Most people have never heard of the Acadian Civil War, but it was very real to the settlers who participated in and suffered through it.
If there is blame to be placed, it lies with the French officials who, apparently ignorant of geography in distant Acadia, meted out portions of this new land to different men, followed predictably by misunderstandings about who controlled what.
With this statement, I’m giving everyone the benefit of the doubt – because regardless of the motivation, the results were the same.
Isaac de Razilly, Lieutenant-General of Acadia, at right, died unexpectedly in 1635 in La Hève, today’s LaHave, which was at that time a tiny outpost on the southern coast of Nova Scotia that served as the seat of Acadia.
Sign in the lovely museum at LaHave.
In 1632, Razilly brought “300 hommes d’elite” to La Hève. This group included six Capuchins, lots of men who were to engage in fur trading, and possibly some noblemen.
No roster has ever been discovered, but it’s clearly possible that Jean Blanchard was among them and would have viewed this harbor from the La Hève beach. Even if Jean didn’t live in La Hève, it still remained an outpost for decades, so it’s not unlikely that Jean would have visited during fishing or trading expeditions at one point or another.
There may or may not have been a dozen colonist families that arrived with Razilly. If so, they would have lived in the habitations on the spit of land, shown above to the right of the beach, not far from the fort which succumbed to coastal erosion decades ago.
Razilly formed a good relationship with Charles La Tour, another Frenchman who controlled other parts of the Acadian coastline.
After Isaac de Razilly’s unexpected death, his brother back in France inherited his assets and retained Charles Menou d’Aulnay, Isaac’s right-hand-man, to act on his behalf in Acadia. Eventually, d’Aulnay bought out the Razilly family interest in Acadia.
In April 1636, d’Aulnay’s ship, St. Jehan, transported several settlers to La Hève, and it wasn’t long thereafter that d’Aulnay moved the seat of Acadia to Port Royal, on the other side of Nova Scotia.
On this 1609 map drawn by Champlain, what would one day become, Port Royal, the seat of Acadia, is noted by the map legend “H,” at center right, which says it is a place of cultivation where wheat is grown. Clearly d’Aulnay knew it was fertile, being farmed and somewhat protected from the direct Atlantic.
Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, was granted territory by King Louis XIV, and d’Aulnay, a Catholic, was granted a different portion of Acadia; but their territories overlapped, fueling escalating animosity between the two men.
After d’Aulnay’s move to Port Royal, the two warring Acadian factions were separated only by a few miles of easily-crossed water.
La Tour had fortified his headquarters, Fort Saint Marie, also known as Fort La Tour, at the mouth of the St. John River in 1631 and clearly felt that d’Aulnay, a latecomer to Port Royal, was an interloper.
La Tour sought support from the English in Massachusetts, which he readily received because he allowed them to fish and harvest lumber along the shores of the Bay of Fundy at no charge, whereas d’Aulnay insisted on payment.
La Tour told the New Englanders that d’Aulnay was planning to attack his fort, which may or may not have been true. John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, appealed to wealthy merchants and coughed up a sizeable loan for La Tour to fortify his fort and add men, probably in the form of mercenaries, to aid in his defense.
We don’t know if there was truth in La Tour’s allegations or not, but we do know that it wasn’t d’Aulnay that launched the first attack.
The 1640 Attack
In 1640, La Tour left Saint John, sailed across the Bay of Fundy, and then attacked d’Aulnay at Port Royal. D’Aulnay prevailed despite his captain being killed. La Tour gave up the fight, and d’Aulnay proceeded to follow him back to St. John and blockade his fort. Clearly, there’s more about this scenario that hasn’t been handed down through history, and I’d surely love to know the details.
During this timeframe, d’Aulnay was busily recruiting settlers, soldiers, and laborers, but we don’t know for sure whether Jean Blanchard was yet in Acadia by 1640 – although there are hints.
Based on the birth of Jean’s first known child in 1643, he was probably in Acadia and married no later than 1642.
Stephen White believed, based on Jean’s land assignment along the waterfront with the earliest settlers in Port Royal, including Michel Boudrot, who signed as syndic in 1639, that Jean Blanchard was already present when Port Royal became the capital under d’Aulnay.
In 1640, Blanchard, then 29, was in his prime. He would also have been part of a 1642 blockade of St. John by d’Aulnay, followed by the 1643 Battle of Port Royal.
Life was certainly “interesting” in early Port Royal.
Fear and Trepidation
In 1643, Jean Blanchard was about 32, and his wife was expecting or had just given birth to a child. Their first, or at least the first one that lived to the 1671 census.
Jean may have been wondering what he had gotten himself into. He lived on the Port Royal waterfront where he could literally watch ships, friend or foe, sail up the river, right in front of his house.
Standing on his land by the river, this was his view as he looked towards the distant mouth of the river that served as an entrance from and exit to the sea.
Every single day, Jean would have squinted through the mist and fog or maybe sleet and snow, looking across the river to see who was approaching.
Is that a ship?
What flag are they flying?
Friend or enemy?
Do I need to sound the alarm?
Where’s my family?
The 1643 Battle of Port Royal
There is some discrepancy about which of the following events occurred in 1642 and which in 1643, but all of these events occurred during those two years.
La Tour was absent from his fort across the bay more than he was present – often traveling to Boston for months at a time to trade and visit with his English merchant friends.
La Tour was in New England during the first half of 1643, and d’Aulnay took advantage of the opportunity to blockade La Tour’s fort for five months. La Tour, of course, got wind of this and returned on July 14th with four ships and 270 men to recover his fort, which he did. He then attacked d’Aulnay at Port Royal, but somehow couldn’t actually catch him. Port Royal was in a better defensive position.
La Tour succeeded in freeing his fort, only to be unsuccessful in capturing d’Aulnay, but nonetheless, he remained furious.
Next, LaTour chased d’Aulnay to Penobscot Bay near present-day Castine, Maine, where d’Aulnay was forced to run two of his ships aground.
In the resulting skirmish, d’Aulnay lost another smaller ship, and three men from each side died. Satisfied with the damage he had inflicted, La Tour proceeded on to Boston to trade. D’Aulnay was left licking his wounds, burying the dead, and fuming as he returned to Port Royal.
Later in 1643, La Tour, on his way back from Boston, attacked Port Royal again, killing three men and injuring 7, while La Tour only lost one man.
This 1686 map, although drawn more than 40 years later, shows the main street in town, along with the water mill and fort.
La Tour burned the mill at Port Royal, which was probably very near Blanchard’s home. Bent on destruction and revenge, his men rampaged through the town, killed livestock, seized furs, gunpowder, and other supplies, but La Tour did not directly attack the fort, which was only defended by 20 soldiers. We don’t know why he hesitated, but perhaps because it was a French fort that actually belonged to the King.
I expected that there would be a lot more than 20 soldiers guarding the fort, and La Tour probably did too. This provides some indication of the lack of a defensive force at Port Royal. The French had not resupplied the Acadians there for some time, but La Tour was clandestinely being supported by New England.
Perseverance
This entire situation seems very unfair and quite uneven, the balance tipping in favor of La Tour. The fact that the Port Royal Acadians persevered is a testament to their resilience and determination.
Some years later, this trait would be characterized as “stubbornness,” but whatever. It served our ancestors well, and we would not be here had they not been determined in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.
I’m grateful for their perseverance, by whatever name.
What transpired next, though, was ugly.
Easter Sunday 1645
In 1645, Jean Blanchard was approximately 34. The preceding several years had probably been a highly anxious period in his life, although he likely would never have admitted it. He had a young family, his wife was pregnant with their second child, and he would have watched the river like a hawk for signs of approaching ships he didn’t know.
Word had come that La Tour was in Boston, and d’Aulnay decided the time was ripe.
On April 13th, Easter Sunday, d’Aulnay gathered every man, which would have consisted of all soldiers and every Acadian man who could carry a gun – reportedly about 200 in total, and boarded ships at Port Royal.
Jean would have waved goodbye to his wife, not knowing if he would return. His eyes were probably watering from salt spray. Yes, that was it – salt spray.
D’Aulnay crossed the Bay and attacked La Tour’s fort, once again, in his absence.
Greatly outnumbered, La Tour’s wife, Francoise-Marie Jacquelin, only 23 or 24 years old, commanded the soldiers and defended the fort for five days. Ultimately, she had to negotiate surrender terms, which included granting quarter to all soldiers in the garrison if they surrendered, which they did. The terms were agreed upon and accepted by both parties.
In spite of the agreement, in which d’Aulnay agreed that the soldiers would not be harmed, he immediately broke the treaty and proceeded to hang all 47 of La Tour’s soldiers, except one who served as the executioner. He forced Françoise-Marie to watch, while standing on the scaffold, with a noose around her neck. She died three weeks later as a hostage.
The death of La Tour’s brave young wife and the execution of his soldiers signaled the end of warfare between La Tour and d’Aulnay. La Tour sought refuge and lived in exile in Quebec for several years.
For the next five years, d’Aulnay administered all of Acadia and recruited new settlers from France. Port Royal grew, and Acadians lived in peace.
Karma Visits
Jean Blanchard was 39 or 40, when, in 1650, d’Aulnay drowned in an accident. One might say karma paid him a visit.
This turn of events may have been very upsetting to Jean, given that he had been recruited by d’Aulnay or d’Aulnay on behalf of Razilly, fought side by side with d’Aulnay multiple times, and had clearly participated in the 1645 capture of La Tour’s fort and execution of his soldiers with d’Aulnay.
D’Aulnay’s demise meant that the governorship was now available, which prompted La Tour to return from Quebec. That alone must have made Jean’s blood run cold, along with the other Acadian men in Port Royal. Was there going to be another war? Worse yet, were they going to be ruled by the man whose wife and entire garrison they had killed?
What happened next is simply jaw-dropping.
Wedding Bells
As incredible as this sounds – in 1653 d’Aulnay’s widow, Jean Motin, married Charles LaTour in an effort to end the division and unite Acadia. It worked, at least for a while.
The next challenge for Acadia did not come from another French contingent. It arrived in the form of English ships, and a united Acadia stood a much better chance than a divided Acadia.
The English Strike
In 1654, Jean was 43. We don’t know how many children were living at that time, but Radegonde would have given birth to about six children by 1654. Five survived beyond 1671.
The waterfront in Port Royal, where Jean lived, was just about the most dangerous place he could have lived in 1654.
However, he had probably already obtained land at BelleIsle from La Borgne prior to 1654 in order to expand his agricultural production – not to mention it was much safer upriver. Jean still owned the land at Port Royal, so he could have farmed both or farmed the one in Port Royal while he dyked and drained the saltmarsh at BelleIsle.
On July 14, 1654, the English sailed up the river and unexpectedly attacked Port Royal.
English Colonel, Robert Sedgwick, commissioned by Oliver Cromwell, was prepared to attack New Netherlands when a peace agreement was reached. “All dressed up with no place to go,” Sedgwick decided to attack Acadia instead.
Sedgwick first reached La Tour’s fort at Saint John on July 13th and took that, capturing La Tour in the process. He then sailed across the bay, where Port Royal’s governor, Emmanuel Le Borgne, was known to be quite friendly with the English and had been accused by La Tour of conspiring with them.
Port Royal was entirely unprepared for an attack, especially of this magnitude.
Sedgewick had 533 New England militia members, plus 200 professional soldiers sent by Oliver Cromwell. About 130 soldiers at Port Royal attempted to defend the fort, but the English killed five and forced the rest to retreat into the fort. The English probably had more soldiers than the entire population of Port Royal and the surrounding area, including women and children.
The resulting siege lasted until August 8th, when Le Borgne surrendered with conditions very generous to the English, and to himself – perhaps “too generous”. By this time, 113 Acadians were being held captive by the English, along with 23 cannons, 500 weapons, 50 barrels of gunpowder, and Le Borgne’s own ship, the Chateaufort, which was loaded to capacity with alcohol.
In the surrender conditions, Le Borgne was allowed to keep his ship, plus the alcohol, which was quite valuable, and return to France. His sons were allowed to remain at Port Royal “as hostages” to watch over his property in Port Royal and elsewhere in Acadia, which he was also allowed to retain. Many Acadians accused him of treason and blamed him for the capture of Port Royal and the ensuing savagery.
Sedgewick’s men were unleashed and tore through Port Royal, defacing the church, smashing windows, floors, and paneling before burning the church and then killing the settlers’ livestock just because they could.
Sedgewick and Le Borgne’s handiwork would not be undone for another 16 years when Acadia was returned to French control through the Treaty of Ryswick. However, the actual transition didn’t occur until 1670. One of the first things the French did was to order a census. Thank goodness for us they did!
The 1671 Census
The 1671 Acadian census is the earliest actual individual record of Jean Blanchard, who is noted in that document as Jehan.
Jehan Blanchard was a 60-year-old laborer, aka farmer, so he was born about 1611. His wife, Radegonde Lambert, is 42, so born about 1629. Radegonde’s age is one reason why many believe they married in Port Royal, about 1642 when she would have been 13. In 1671, they have six children, and three are married.
- Martin Blanchard, age 24, is married to Françoise LeBlanc, daughter of their neighbor, Daniel LeBlanc, at BelleIsle. They have no children, so they have probably recently married.
- Madelaine Blanchard is 28, married to Michel Richard, and they have seven children.
- Anne Blanchard, 26, listed only as the widow of Francois Gudcin (Guerin), is living next to her parents and has five children between the ages of 12 and 2.
Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert’s three unmarried children are Guillaume, 21, Bernard, 18, and Marie, 15. The family has 12 cattle and 9 sheep and farms 5 arpents of land.
It’s very unusual that they have no children under the age of 15. Radegonde would be expected to have children every 18-24 months, so they should have had at least seven more children. Their absence speaks of at least seven small coffins buried in the churchyard and a great deal of grief.
By 1671 when this census was taken, based on his surrounding neighbors, Jean and family are almost certainly living upriver. However, Jean’s son, Martin, is living beside Jehan LaBatte, listed as a farmer, but who was also the military engineer. We know that LaBatte lived in the town of Port Royal along the waterfront.
This, combined with LaBatte’s 1702 map and information discovered from 1705 documents, leads me to believe that Martin Blanchard is living on the original land allocated to Jean Blanchard beside the fort in Port Royal.
Where is that land?
Jean Blanchard’s Land in Port Royal
In 1702, Labatte drew this plan of Fort Royal (today’s Fort Anne) at Port Royal as it would look when complete. He also noted the ancient fort perimeter inside the new fort, along with landmarks, according to the notation in the legend at upper left.
The pink squares outside the fort are the buildings that LaBatte expects to remain AFTER the fort is built. He doesn’t say this, but it appears that the outline-only squares near the fort’s walls are existing buildings that will need to be removed.
Jean, a laborer, initially lived beside the fort in the heart of Port Royal, near and beside other Acadian founding families. The location of his property indicates that he was among the earliest pioneers.
Had Jean not been in Port Royal when it was first established, he could not have received one of the prime pieces of waterfront, fort-side, real estate. Unfortunately, none of those early records survive but later information presented by Nicole Barrieau in her 1994 thesis reconstructs the earliest waterfront owners.
When the new fort was being constructed in 1705, several lots were expropriated to accommodate the expansion of the fort’s footprint, including one owned by Jean Blanchard, which was located between Simon Pelletret and Guillaume Trahan, founding families of Acadia.
These families were among the earliest arrivals, establishing themselves in Port Royal when Charles d’Aulnay relocated the seat of Acadia from La Hève to Port Royal between 1636 and 1639. Jean Blanchard’s neighbor, Guillaume Trahan, arrived in Acadia in 1636, and Michel Boudrot signed a document in Port Royal in 1639, so it stands to reason that the men who received these fort-side premier real estate lots were the earliest arrivals and settlers in Port Royal.
For purposes of clarification, there is a Louis Blanchard among the 1636 St. Jehan passengers, a vintner from La Rochelle. He is not married, and there is no indication that Louis and Jean Blanchard are the same person. Furthermore, there are no known vintners in Port Royal, and Blanchard is a very common surname. If one Blanchard arrived, it’s certainly conceivable that others from the same family followed, or perhaps others with the same surname but of no relationship.
We also know that most of the 1636 men either died or returned to France at some point, because their surnames are never found again in Acadia.
The Port Royal Waterfront
Using Nicole’s map, aerial photos, and my own photos taken while walking these lands in 2024, it appears that Jean Blanchard’s land is probably the land where the Queen’s Wharf stood more than a century later, in 1755.
Imagine my shock when I made this discovery. It was a “steal your breath,” unbelievable, moment.
Let’s take a walk with Jean as our guide.
This is the location where, on or about December 8th, 1755, the Acadians were rounded up by the English, marched to the waterfront beside the fort where they were divided and forced onto ships, forever dispossessed of their lands.
How fateful is it that this is Jean’s land – this parcel that he once owned – that singularly represents both the beginning and end of Acadia?
I have cold chills.
Standing on Jean’s property, where the Queen’s Wharf connects the water with the land and the past with the present, I looked out over the area where his salt marsh fields once stood. The timeless view he would have seen directly in front of his home.
His family would have had a front row seat to every ship’s arrival, and every battle as well.
This wharf was the last place that Port Royal Acadians stood together, touching the rich earth of their homeland, as they were forced to board ships on a bitter winter day, leaving anything they carried stacked on the wharf to blow in the winds. Then forced to watch their homes and property burn, so they knew beyond a doubt there was nothing to return to.
English sailors and settlers who were awarded their lands and took their place months later described those abandoned belongings, still waiting dockside, representing the ghostly remains of lives lost and destroyed.
Jean’s descendants, along with hundreds of others, were scattered to the winds on overcrowded ships that were intentionally sent in different directions, landing in distant colonies. Many, passengers died due to the miserable, squalid, freezing conditions. Some ships were blown off course in horrific storms, winding up in the Caribbean, and some simply sank. Many people were never heard from again. To this day, we have no idea what became of them.
Jean owned this very ground – the place that became the tragically sacred site marking the literal end of French Acadia, where his descendants were forced to walk at gunpoint.
This is where Acadia in Port Royal both began and ended.
It’s where we return to bear witness.
Tracing Jean’s Land
The white statue in the distance is visible in the aerial photo above and serves as a visual anchor to identify Jean’s land.
In this photo, standing on his land, part way out on the wharf near the river’s edge, I’m looking straight back into what was originally the town of Port Royal where Jean’s home would have stood – before the fort’s stone and earthen ramparts and glacis were expanded in 1705 to encompass his original land and bury it beneath the fortifications.
Standing on his land by the river, even today, you can see remnants of the saltmarsh Jean would have drained to grow wheat and pasture his cattle.
The beautiful Rivière Dauphin flows to the sea just beyond. No wonder the Acadians were willing to fight to their death to keep and protect this land. No wonder they resisted any and all coercive measures to force them to leave. Until they were literally kidnapped and held as hostages, overpowered and taken away against their will.
Their hot tears watered this wharf as the world they knew ended.
When Jean lived on this land and dyked it for farming, the little freshwater stream, still visible as it meanders its way to the river, would have nourished his family.
The 3-chimney garrison, visible to the right of and behind the white statue, would have stood in the old fort, adjacent his home. It’s here that the soldiers retreated in 1654 when being attacked by the English.
The original garrison was eventually replaced by this one with three chimneys.
The original bricks and a few timbers of the original structure remain and were incorporated into the later garrison, which is now the Fort Anne museum.
Cousin Mark and me, enjoying a glorious day in front of the remains of the original garrison, visiting our ancestors. Trust me, there’s nothing on earth like bonding with much-loved cousins on your ancestors’ lands, rich with history – our history.
This might be a good place to note that when Mark and I were standing there, we didn’t yet know the location of Jean’s land, or that he even owned land in Port Royal. We knew that Jean Blanchard had lived upriver. It was later on during that trip that Mark texted me the 1705 map while he was attending a reunion, and we didn’t have time while we were in Annapolis Royal to overlay those lots on today’s fort.
How I wish we had! I’d have taken a lot more photos, and probably shed buckets more tears.
Looking towards town from near the garrison, the bridge over the culvert beside the rampart with the white monument would have been the south end of Jean Blanchard’s land. This is very likely where his house would have been built. The fields and grazing area were always closest to the river, and the homestead was built on the highest ground.
Standing beside the white monument, overlooking the river and hills on the other side, much as Jean would have done.
In the 1686 census, Jean was living upriver, but his son Martin was farming this land in Port Royal. By 1705, when the land was expropriated, Martin had already moved on to the next frontier.
Fifty years after Jean obtained this land, a new fort had been built, its bastions, ramparts, and glacis covering Jean’s original land, except for the wharf that would become the location representing the collective grief of all Acadians.
The joy of new beginnings as Jean stepped ashore, and the agony of betrayal and removal. All in one sacred place.
Today, the remains of Queen’s Wharf have been preserved and stabilized by Parks Canada, but there are no signs indicating where it is, or that this small spit of land is the expulsion wharf, infused with agony and heartache. I discovered it quite by accident, wandering around, and a Park Ranger confirmed its genesis.
No wonder I was so drawn here.
When I laid these yellow roses on the Queen’s Wharf to honor my Acadian ancestors, collectively, I had no idea I was actually laying them directly on my ancestor’s land.
I placed roses for the more than 2000 Acadians whose feet trod here in sorrow, many never to see their families again, at least not until death. I placed them for the ache in my heart that I can still feel some 270 years later.
I swear, Jean summoned me here to hear his voice as he revealed the chapters in his life. In the lives of Acadians in Port Royal. To show me the wharf on his original land, his hand touching mine, where everything changed in the blink of an eye. I felt his presence. I just didn’t know it was him at the time.
Otherwise, the chances of the stars aligning, bringing me here, to this exact place, to place those roses, are astronomical…
The 1678 Census
In the 1678 census, Jean and Radegonde appear to be living in the same location, given that Antoine Hebert, their neighbor in 1671 still lives four houses away.
The primary difference is that their son, Guillaume, who was not married in 1671, is now married to Hugette Gougeon and they, along with their three children, live with Jean and Radegonde. Jean Blanchard is still listed as the head of household, so this appears to be a case of the young couple setting up housekeeping with Guillaume’s parents to help farm. All of Jean’s children have married or died, so the only children living in Jean and Radegonde’s household are grandchildren.
As grandparents, they probably enjoyed the laughter and joy that babies and grandchildren bring.
At 67, after a life of hard manual labor, not to mention several battles, Jean Blanchard probably wasn’t feeling any too spry.
The 1686 Census
In the 1686 census, Jean Blanchard, age 75, and Radegonde Lambert, 65, live next door to their son Guillaume and his family. No land or livestock is assigned to Jean, but Guillaume has 4 guns, 16 cattle, 20 sheep, and lives on 5 arpents of land, the exact amount farmed by Jean Blanchard in 1671.
We don’t know when Jean moved upriver from Port Royal, but based on the neighbors who are known to live just north of the BelleIsle Marsh, Jean has very clearly been living there since at least 1671, and probably substantially earlier, possibly before 1654. No land was appropriated to the Acadians by the English from 1654 to 1670, and we know that several Acadian families had already moved upriver by 1654.
Moving Upriver
We now know that Jean started life in Acadia along the river, beside the fort, in Port Royal, but subsequently moved upriver. When, and why?
In 1653, Nicolas Denys, an English captive held at Port Royal said that there were about 270 residents living in the Port Royal area, and that they were mostly families brought by de Razilly. That would include d’Aulnay who was Isaac Razilly’s right-hand-man in Acadia. D’Aulnay served as Governor after Razilly’s 1635 death, which is when he decided to relocate the seat of Acadia, along with the settlers, from rocky La Hève that faced the open Atlantic, to fertile Port Royal, sheltered and protected by the Dauphin River and surrounding hills.
If indeed Jean Blanchard did arrive with Razilly, who died in 1636, he would have married Radegonde Lambert in Acadia, not in France, given that she was only about seven years old in 1636.
Denys recorded in his journal that the Acadians had “multiplied much at Port Royal.” He also added that many had abandoned their houses in the town of Port Royal and settled along the river on farms, specifically around the BelleIsle Marsh.
Ocean-going vessels could not navigate the river above Port Royal and knew better than to foolishly brave the river’s boar tide and rocks beyond Hogg Island.
Based on what happened in 1654, that decision to relocate upriver was probably an incredibly fortuitous decision for those who had already made the move.
Brenda Dunn, in her book, A History of Port Royal / Annapolis Royal 1605-1800, explains the move of families away from the fort after it was captured by the British in 1654:
“During the years of British rule, most of the Port-Royal population moved upriver away from the town. Using the agricultural practices initiated under D’Aulnay, the Acadians dyked and cultivated extensive salt marshes along the river and raised livestock. Through necessity, residents had reached an accommodation with New England traders who had become their sole source for the goods that they could not produce themselves… New England traders exchanged their goods for Acadian produce and furs… There were seventy to eighty families in the Port Royal area in 1665.”
I don’t know how Brenda calculated the number of families in 1665, as there was no census. There seemed to be about 45 families in 1653, assuming two parents and four children per family based on the 1671 census. In 1671, there were 392 people in 68 households, corresponding to an average of 6 people per household, so Brenda’s estimate might have been high.
Regardless, there really weren’t very many people living in and near Port Royal. Within a generation or two, they were all related.
Cobequid
A new fort had been planned in Port Royal since about 1697 when Port Royal once again reverted to the French after being captured by the English again in 1690.
The Acadians were already looking to other areas to expand their settlements.
Cobequid Village is today’s Truro, NS, at far right on this 1755 English map used to identify Acadian settlements prior to the Expulsion.
November 1, 1699 extract from a letter from Mathieu de Goutin concerning the founding of Chipoudy: “Guillaume Blanchard and other settlers from Port-Royal came here two days ago to take up grants …”
December 27, 1699: Chartering of a ship by Guillaume Blanchard to his associates Jean Labat and Christophe Cahouet, at a rate of thirty livres per month.
In the 1700 census, it appears that Jean Blanchard’s son, Martin Blanchard, is still living on Jean’s Port Royal land, based on the neighbors, and that Guillaume is still living at BelleIsle on Jean’s land there.
By 1701, according to the census, Martin Blanchard was one of only three families who had relocated to Cobequid, today’s Truro, shown above. In Martin’s case, he was probably motivated because the drawings for the new fort showed that it was unquestionably going to take his Port Royal land, and many of the Acadians were putting down roots on the new Acadian frontiers. Opportunity was calling!
Cobequid was similar to Port Royal, in that there were substantial marshlands to be dyked and drained along the arm of the Bay of Fundy that experienced twice daily bore tides. Acadians were experts at managing this environment.
The potential in Cobequid for salt marsh farming was endless, and stretched as far as the eye could see.
In 1701 or 1702, work on the fort in Port Royal began again, using the new design that caused Jean Blanchard’s original land to be expropriated. Apparently, anticipating that this was going to occur, Martin Blanchard had already moved on to the next frontier at Cobequid, although both Martin and Guillaume were clearly scouting the area.
October 2, 1702 extract from a report by Mathieu de Goutin concerning the founding of Les Mines requested that Guillaume Blanchard be granted a half league on either side of the Petitcoudiac River: “the said Blanchard has a sailing vessel, and grown sons, sons-in-law and nephews, who will put the Pecoudiak the land along the Petitcoudiac River to use and will settle there many people, and in three years the colony will draw support from them…”
Three years is how long it took for salt marsh land to be usable for farming after the salt was washed out after dyking and draining.
In the 1703 Cobequid census, we find Martin Blanchard, his wife and 5 children, plus 18 additional households. Four couples appear to be newly married, and two are single men, perhaps seeking their fortune.
By 1705, when Jean Blanchard’s Port Royal land was expropriated, Martin was already settled and farming in Cobequid where he died about 1717. As early as 1699, he knew he was losing his home, and he didn’t have a backup plan, so he became one of the founding families at Cobequid where land was plentiful.
Based on the various censuses, Guillaume Blanchard never made the move to Cobequid, or elsewhere – but he didn’t actually need to move, because he lived on and farmed his father’s land in BelleIsle.
Martin, on the other hand, needed to move, so we find him in Cobequid by 1701.
BelleIsle
We know that Jean Blanchard moved near or perhaps even beside the Daniel LeBlanc family on the east side of the BelleIsle marshes. In fact, the road where he likely lived is named Marshlands.
Jean was probably granted land on both sides of this road.
Looking towards the marsh and the river beyond the marsh.
Looking towards the hills to the north from today’s main road.
Jean’s son, Martin Blanchard, married Daniel LeBlanc’s daughter around 1670 or 1671, not long before the census given that they didn’t yet have children.
The LeBlanc family has placed a memorial marker, map, and stone near this location.
The stone doesn’t mark the exact location of Daniel’s home, but the neighborhood, which was also the neighborhood where Jean Blanchard lived.
According to the various censuses, the LeBlanc, Gaudet and Blanchard families lived in very close proximity, here.
The grassy semi-swampy area between the main road and Marshlands Road is the likely location of many of the LeBlanc and Blanchard homesteads.
It was here, in the warm sunshine, with the mountains in the distance, that Jean lived out the golden years of his life.
Jean Blanchard began his life in France where he lived until he was a young adult. He may have lived at La Hève for a few years, but no more than 5 or 6 at most. He lived beside the fort in Port Royal for at least a dozen years, and perhaps as many as 30. Then, he lived upriver at BelleIsle for between 20 and 40 years.
Jean Blanchard Departs This World
We don’t know exactly when Jean Blanchard died, but we do know that both he and Radegonde passed away between the 1686 and the 1693 census.
Jean had probably already crossed over to the other side by the time that the English captured Port Royal again in May of 1690. Both Guillaume and Martin Blanchard signed the required loyalty oath, but Jean’s signature is conspicuously absent, suggesting that he had already passed. He would have been about 79 years old.
It’s possible that when the soldiers rounded up the Acadian men that they skipped Jean because he was old and frail and couldn’t travel to the Catholic Church in Port Royal where the Acadian men were sequestered and forced to sign the oath. Regardless, Jean was definitely gone by the 1693 census, as was his wife.
For a man who sailed across the ocean, spent the first few years fighting in the Acadian Civil War, followed by the 1654 fall of Acadia to the English, carved a homestead and farm from nothing, either two or three times – Jean lived an incredibly long life, somewhere between 75 and 82 years.
Jean’s Burial
While most researchers assume that Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert are buried at Port Royal, in the cemetery behind the garrison, I don’t think so.
Mass House 1757 map
When Acadia fell to the English in 1654, and the Catholic church was burned, there was no reason for the Acadians from 15 miles or so upriver to continue to travel to Port Royal if they didn’t have to. Not only was traveling that distance inconvenient, it was unsafe in the winter, and when people died, they needed to be buried regardless of the weather. The Acadians established a “Mass House”, later named St. Laurent, in their neighborhood at BelleIsle.
Mass House 1733 map
On early maps, this little church is shown right beside the LeBlanc Village, which would have been located very close to where Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert lived, less than a mile away, if that far.
When Jean died, he would have been living with or beside his son, Guillaume, who lived near the Mass House. Jean would have been buried in the little churchyard the next day, after mass was said. If a priest wasn’t available, they did the best they could.
The LeBlanc and Blanchard families lived in the area at left, and the Mass House was located in the area at right.
Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact location of the Mass House, nor its adjacent cemetery, but we do know the general area. The photo above shows the location shown on the 1733-1753 map.
This is the approximate location shown on the 1757 map.
We will likely never know where Jean is buried, but his spirit remains in Acadia, the land that he founded.
Beginning to End
This panoramic photo, standing on Jean’s land, overlooking the Queen’s Wharf, signifies both the beginning and the end of the Acadian chapter at Port Royal.
Although the Acadians were brutally dispossessed of their land and heritage, their spirit did not die.
It lives on in every single one of their descendants today. Beginning to end. Just like Jean Blanchard.
Courtesy Jennifer and Charlie Thibodeau
At Fort Anne, in December 2024, on the 269th anniversary of their forced departure, a monument was placed on the rampart beside Queen’s Wharf, perhaps on Jean’s land, and dedicated to the memory of our Acadian ancestors.
Courtesy Jennifer and Charlie Thibodeau
If you listen closely, you can still hear them – their footfalls in the snow, the echoes of their anguish as they were forced to board the ships, being forever separated from their families and loved-ones, and their whispered prayers for deliverance.
Jean’s grandchildren and their children, forced from the very shore where he built his home and his life. The exact place where he stood, gingerly placing his foot on Acadian soil and gazing hopefully into the distant future, before Port Royal was anything more than a field.
This hallowed land where Jean’s life in Acadia had begun, more than a century earlier.
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