René Doucet was born about 1680 in Port Royal, Acadia, to Pierre Doucet and Henriette Pelletret.

René is often referred to with the dit name of dit Laverdure, but this appears to be incorrect. LaVerdure was initially assigned to him based on the belief that he was the grandson of Germain Doucet, Sieur de La Verdure, but he is not. Menou d’Aulnay states in his will that the Doucet children, including Pierre, René’s father, were Germain Doucet’s nieces and nephews, not his children. He was the child of Germain’s unknown brother.

The designation of “Sieur” typically was associated with a landowner or feudal lord. Sometimes it indicated minor nobility, or that he was the holder of a seigneurie, or feudal estate in France. In Acadia, Sieur de La Verdure probably means that Germain was a landholder someplace that resembled the word Verdure or the location of La Verdure in France, and others paid him rent to farm his land. The designation was probably not hereditary.

Therefore, I am not referring to René as “dit Laverdure,” although old habits die hard, and you may see him referred to as such in other places.

First Sightings in Acadia

René is not shown in the Port Royal 1678 census, but the names of children were not recorded – only their sex. Tim Hebert reconstructed the children in families based on future censuses and other records, except for the three-month-old male child.

Father Clarence D’Entremont (1909-1998) later correlated the 3-month-old male in the household with René. That child might be René or may well have been another child who died. We can’t simply assume it’s René, especially since we have multiple sources of evidence that conflict, indicating his birth year as 1680.

However, censuses have always been subject to error, and multiple censuses, in this case, clearly have issues. Still, it’s all we have before 1702 when the first surviving parish records begin.

In 1686, René’s place in the family is shown by the name Pierre who is 8 years old, which would suggest he’s that 3-year-old in 1678. This is confusing, given that another male, age 18, is also shown by the name of Pierre. No other male child in this family can be René. Other children’s names are also misspelled in this census.

René’s mother died sometime between 1686 and 1693, as his father is listed as a widower in 1693, leaving his father with children to raise. She could have died during the attacks of 1690. If so, that would probably have scarred René deeply.

In 1693, René is shown with his father and recorded as age 13, which means he was born about 1680.

He would have been someplace between about 8 and 13 when his mother passed away, and he wept at her graveside as she was buried. The church stood on this knoll before it was burned in 1690. The old Acadian graves are unmarked today.

In 1698, René is listed as age 18, again pointing to his birth in 1680.

In the 1700 census, he is shown as 20, and age 21 the following year, also suggesting his birth in 1680.

Married Life

René was married about 1701 or 1702 to Marie Broussard. The Port Royal parish registers still exist beginning in May of 1702. English incursions destroyed earlier records.

In the 1703 census, René is shown with his wife and one girl, although their oldest child was a boy, Pierre, not a girl. No ages are given. He’s noted as an arms bearer. I can’t tell exactly, based on the census order, where they lived, although they are listed between Abraham Dugast and Abraham Comeau, both of whom lived near Port Royal.

In 1707, René is shown with his wife, 1 boy less than 14, 1 girl less than 12, 4 arpents of land, 19 cattle, 17 sheep, 8 hogs and 1 gun. Note that the 1703 census erroneously recorded his first child, a son, who was Pierre, as a daughter.

In this census, René is living among a group of families who reside on the north side of the river, directly across from the fort. Some neighbor families lived across the river and slightly west of Port Royal. They include Abraham Bourg, three Granger families, René Doucet, Clement Vincent, Le bonhomme Nantois, which is the Levron family, then the Montagne (Lord/Lore) families begin who live on the north side of the river, a few miles east of Port Royal.

Their view of Port Royal probably looked much like it does today, with the fort ramparts visible at far right, and the houses and a dock in the center and at left. René’s mother’s family lived in one of those houses along the waterfront. His grandfather died long before he was born, but his grandmother, Perrine Bourg lived until between 1693 and 1698, so he would have known her well.

In 1710, René and his wife have 1 boy and 2 girls and are listed beside his father, Pierre Doucet. They are living beside neighbors Bourg, Grange(r), Pierre Broussar(d), Clement Vincent, and the Leveron family.

In 1714 they have 1 son and 3 daughters. They are on the list titled “Near the Fort,” and are still living in the same location, beside Laurent Grange or Granger, Pierre Broussard and Clement Vincent.

The Land

After René’s father, Pierre Doucet, died in 1713 at an advanced age, probably around 92, René would have taken over farming his father’s land. In actuality, he would have taken over the labor years before, probably in his teens. No man in his 80s can withstand the physical rigors of farming, especially not the dyke maintenance.

The dykes had to be shored up and maintained so that they drained the water outwards to drain the marshes and let no salty or brackish water backflow into the reclaimed land.

Most of René’s siblings made their way to Beaubassin and the Minas Basin area, which required the same type of farming, so they weren’t around to help Pierre as he aged.

This 1686 map shows the location of the original fort on the spit of land on the right between the “Ro” and “yal.”. The placard mounted below this map in the museum in Port Royal says, “Very exact plan of the land where the houses of Port Royal are located and where a considerable town can be made, Franquelin, Jean-Baptiste, 1686.” The legend says that the fort is in ruins. “Un fort ruiné.”

Behind the fort, you can see the church that was burned four years later, in 1690, and the neatly fenced cemetery. The main road is still the main road, today.

Cleared areas and fields are visible directly across the river. Residents would have taken canoes and small boats back and forth regularly. You can see a man standing in the smaller boat and three other boats “parked” along the shoreline between the fort and the Allain River or Creek. Three sailing ships that would have entered the river from the sea are shown mid-river, where the channel was deep.

Pierre Doucet’s land was conveniently located across the river from Port Royal (red arrow), probably about where that ship was located, but that also meant the farm was exposed to the incursions of the English, which, unfortunately, occurred regularly. In other words, it wasn’t particularly safe.

Maybe I should restate. It not only wasn’t safe, it was probably an attractive target, unprotected by the fort and within easy sight of the ocean-going English warships.

This 1707 map reflects the locations of the homesteads across the river from star-shaped Fort Anne shown at center left. Pierre Doucet’s land is labeled and shown at the arrow, and the names of the neighbors noted in the census are shown in close proximity as well.

Today, you can see Fort Anne, a National Historic Site, at left beside the river, and the Doucet home across the river.

In addition to 1707, 1708, and 1710 original maps, MapAnnapolis has mapped the location of several Acadian homesites, overlaid onto contemporary maps, here.

You can see their placement of the Doucet homesite on an overlay of Google Maps today.

These are the same neighbors mentioned in the census.

What looks like a “rough patch” is visible in the yard indicated by MapAnnapolis. This is often what areas that are too rough to farm or mow look like from above. In other locations, patches like this are sometimes the remains of an Acadian homestead. I wonder if that’s the case here.

I’d surely love to know if anyone has investigated this property for historical relevance and the remains of an Acadian farm – perhaps the foundation of a building.

Incessant Warfare

“Acadia” in what is today Nova Scotia only lasted from the 1630s until 1755. René was probably the first generation born on Acadian soil. He had never and never would see the shores of France. His father, Pierre, was born in France about 1621.

If we accept 1680 as René’s birth year, he was only 10 when a devastating attack took place, nearly ending Acadia right then and there in 1690.

General William Phips, commander of the English fleet out of Boston set out with 7 ships and 700 men to capture Port Royal. They ransacked the town and fort, stole anything of value, and burned at least 28 homes and the church before returning to Boston. While they didn’t burn the mills and farms upriver, the Doucet farm wasn’t upriver – it was within immediate sight right across the river from the fort and assuredly would not have been spared.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, English pirates followed, doing even more damage. They burned more homes, killed people, and gleefully slaughtered livestock. The people in the 1686 census who are missing in 1693 would include those who died in these predatory raids – including René’s mother.

René’s father and the other Acadian men, his father among them, signed a loyalty oath to the English monarchy because they had no other choice. After they signed, the English departed for Boston, leaving an Acadian council in charge.

René, an impressionable boy of 10 or 12, witnessed this, and it would have impressed him deeply. It was probably a life-altering event, shaping his perspective forever.

This incursion, along with others, encouraged several Acadian families to move on to Les Mines and settlements along the Bay of Fundy.

The English continued to attack Port Royal, attempting to wrest control of Acadia from the Acadians due to their perceived allegiance to France, and force the Acadians from their land. I have never been clear if the English end goal was total control, or annihilation of the Acadians themselves in order to take their land for English settlement. Maybe the answer to that question depended on when, and who, was asked. Unfortunately, if the English had made the Acadians fair resettlement offers, instead of “just leave with nothing,” they would probably have left together.

Unfortunately, that never happened.

As René came of age, the raids and warfare were ramping up again. It’s likely that the family homestead was burned in 1690, 1696, 1703, 1707, 1708, and assuredly in 1710 when Port Royal fell.

That’s growing up and living in a war zone.

How does one actually recover from devastation like that? What bravery and perseverance were on display.

While Fort Anne did have a few soldiers, the fort had fallen into significant disrepair, forcing a wholesale replacement beginning around 1700.

Unfortunately, a series of events, including mismanagement, delayed the rebuilding of the fort. Even though the Acadians had been repeatedly warned that the English were planning to return, destroying and pillaging once again, they were not able to complete the fort in time. They didn’t have adequate and competent management. They didn’t have enough soldiers, or even Acadian men combined with soldiers, nor enough supplies or construction materials.

Of course, each subsequent attack increased the damage that had to be rebuilt. Not just the fort, but homes, farms, dykes, barns – the necessities of everyday life.

Throughout this, life continued. Marriages, births, deaths, church attendance, planting, and harvesting – whatever could be construed as normal during that time.

Wedded Bliss

When René Doucet married Marie Broussard in 1701 or early 1702, the community had suffered through several years of either being under attack, or expecting to be under attack. They knew it was coming; they just didn’t know when or how bad it would be. What a way to live. Continual dread.

For families whose farms were along the waterfront facing the fort, this must have been an incredibly stressful time because the British war machine sailed right up the river, laid anchor between the fort and the opposite bank, and began firing upon the fort and attacking the citizens.

Everything within sight was laid to the torch.

In some cases, the women and children were taken into the fort, into the powder magazine known as the “black hole,” but we don’t know if that happened in just 1710 or was standard practice earlier.

For René as a child, it might have been more dangerous to shelter in the fort than on the other side of the river. By the time they saw the ships arriving, they wouldn’t have been able to row across the river to the fort.

As an adult, he would have been worried about protecting his family and fighting.

It’s also possible that families on the north shore escaped into the North Hills behind their homes and made their way upriver to family members at BelleIsle.

The English soldiers would not have dared to follow through the dense woodland hills where both Acadians and Indians would be hiding in ambush, especially after night fell.

René Doucet married Marie Broussard, whose parents lived several miles upstream at Belle Isle, which was further from the fort and in a better defensive position. Perhaps when British sails appeared, Marie quickly gathered the children and headed for her parent’s home.

René and Marie had their first child, Pierre, the day before Christmas in 1703, which is how we established that they probably married in 1701 or 1702. Since records prior to May of 1702 didn’t survive, we don’t have a marriage date, nor do we know that they didn’t have an earlier child that died. Marie was born in January 1786, so she was young when she married – not unusual among Acadian girls.

Warfare can be all-consuming, but not even that could prevent love from blossoming. I hope their wedding day was warm, carefree, and joyful.

The Attacks Resume

In preparation for the expected conflict, in 1701, the Governor of Acadia began construction of a stone and earthen fort which was still incomplete by 1704, leaving the residents vulnerable. They scrambled, trying to complete the fort, but unsuccessfully.

The English attacks upon Acadia resumed about the same time that René and Marie were starting their family.

By June of 1704, when their baby boy was just 5 months old, Acadia was under attack again by the English in revenge for a French and Indian raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts in February of that year. It’s unclear whether the Acadians had anything to do with that raid, but nonetheless, they were the representative French people in the region and paid the price, bearing the wrath of the English.

Settlements and one of their two churches were looted. The dams and dikes were “dug down,” meaning their fields were flooded with seawater. Since you could see the Doucet farm from the river, we must assume theirs was one that suffered these depredations.

In later drawings, you can see ships docked in the Annapolis River, then called the Rivière Dauphin, between the fort and the Doucet land across the river. Given that the ships wanted to stay out of cannon range, they were probably anchored closer to the Doucet homestead than the fort. This may have been drawn from the Doucet land and shows us exactly what they saw.

When Daniel d’Auger de Subercase became governor of Acadia in April 1706, he had years of mismanagement and neglect to overcome with only 160 soldiers, many of whom were “fresh from the quays of Paris.” In other words, they were inexperienced or worse. Subercase knew he had to act instead of simply remaining a sitting duck, waiting for English predators to kill his men and end Acadia. He assumed an offensive position and, among other things, encouraged Native raids against English targets in New England.

He also encouraged the corsairs of Port-Royal to act against the English colonial ships. Privateers, another term for sanctioned pirates, were very effective, and the English fishing fleet on the Grand Banks was reduced by 80% between 1702 and 1707. As a bonus, certain English coastal communities were attacked.

In New England, public outrage simmered, at first, then those flames were fanned into rage.

René and Marie’s second (known) child, Anne Marie, arrived in November of 1706, three years after their first child, and just four months before the English attack on Acadia in March of 1707. The attack was comprised of 1000 men led by Massachusetts and joined by men from Rhode Island and New Hampshire. It ultimately failed but foreshadowed things to come.

Attacks occurred again in 1707 and 1708, some quite severe. The soldiers certainly couldn’t hold the fort alone, so all men who could carry a gun were members of the militia. There was no choice. Their lives hung in the balance.

In 1708, Queen Anne’s war began, and the hostilities ramped up again between the English and French.

In 1708, the fort’s store was built, and the Acadians were shoring up their defenses.

A new powder magazine and bombproof barracks were constructed and the riverbanks were cleared to remove cover for attackers. An additional ship was built, and relationships were established with privateers who welcomed the opportunity to take English ships. If France wouldn’t protect Acadia, the privateers would!

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

René was just under 30 years old and probably physically in his prime.

Their third child, Agathe, arrived three years after the second child, on January 19, 1710. One of the godparents was the Lieutenant of the company at the fort. René was probably coordinating closely with the soldiers.

Nothing motivates a man like his family being in jeopardy, and their very existence depending on his skills as a soldier.

1710

On September 24, 1710, Port Royal was attacked again. The English were intent on completely overwhelming the Acadians with 5 warships and 3400 troops. This time, the English were well prepared. 400 marines from England were joined by 900 soldiers from Massachusetts, 300 from Connecticut, and 100 from New Hampshire. Iroquois were recruited as scouts.

There were more English and colonial soldiers than the Acadians had total residents in both Port Royal and the Acadian settlements further north.

The Acadians, with their 300 soldiers, a number which would have included all able-bodied men, stood absolutely no chance, although they did manage to hold the fort for an amazing 19 days. The episode became known as the Siege of Port Royal, or the Conquest of Acadia.

This hand-drawn English map shows the landmarks of the Siege of 1710. Looking at the map location across from the fort, it’s possible that the English came ashore at the Doucet homestead.

Another map shows the homesteads on the far side of the river across from the fort.

Based on the other maps, it appears to me that the Doucet home was actually the residence closest to the location, labeled with a “4,” which, according to the legend, is “where our whole body of men landed.”

I’m nauseous just thinking about what that family endured. Their abject terror. Perhaps this is why some of their children are 3 years apart instead of 18 months.

Did René have to witness his home burn? Did he know his family had sheltered elsewhere, or did he have to watch the flames, maybe from across the river, fearing the worst? What about his barn and livestock?

Would anyone or anything be left?

Without fields to plant and livestock, rebuilding would be impossible or, at best, exceedingly difficult. Without his wife and children, he wouldn’t care about rebuilding.

Here is what we know about the 1710 battle:

As the fleet sails north, it is joined by a dispatch ship sent by Thomas Matthews, captain of the Chester; it was carrying deserters from the French garrison, who reported that the morale of the French troops was extremely low. Nicholson (British commander) sends the ship ahead with one of the transports. As they entered Digby Gully, they received fire from groups of Micmacs on the coast. The ships retaliate with their guns, with neither side taking any casualties.

On October 5, the main British fleet arrived at Goat Island, about 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) south of Port-Royal. That afternoon, the Caesar transport runs aground while attempting to enter Annapolis, and is eventually swept away by the rocks. Her captain, part of her crew, and 23 soldiers died, while a company commander and some 25 other people fought ashore.

The following day, October 6, British marines began landing north and south of the fortress and town. The northern force was joined by four New England regiments under the command of Colonel Vetch, while Nicholson led the remaining New England troops as part of the southern force. The landings were uneventful, with fire from the fort being countered by one of Fleet’s long-range bombers. Although later accounts of the siege state that Vetch’s detachment was part of a strategic plan to encircle the fort, contemporary accounts report that Vetch wanted to have command somewhat independent of Nicholson. These same accounts state that Vetch never came within range of the fort’s guns before the end of the siege; his attempts to erect a battery of mortars in a muddy area opposite the fort, across Allain Creek, were repulsed by the fire of cannon. The southern force encountered guerrilla-type resistance outside the fort, with Acadian and native defenders firing small arms from houses and wooded areas, in addition to taking fire from the fort. This fire caused three deaths among the British, but the defenders could not prevent the British on the south side from establishing a camp about 400 meters from the fort.

Over the next four days the British landed their guns and brought them to camp. Fire from the fort and its supporters outside continued, and British bombers wreaked havoc inside the fort with their fire each night. With the imminent opening of new British batteries, Subercase sent an officer with a flag of parliament on 10 October. The negotiations started badly, because the officer was not announced correctly by a beater (drummer). Each side ended up taking an officer from the other, mainly for reasons of military etiquette, and the British continued their siege work.

On October 12, the forward siege trenches and guns within 91 m (300 ft) of the fort opened fire. Nicholson sends Subercase a demand for surrender, and negotiations resume. At the end of the day, the parties reach an agreement on the terms of surrender, which is formally signed the next day. The garrison is permitted to leave the fort with all the honors of war, “their arms and baggage, drums beating and flags flying.”

The British must transport the garrison to France, and the capitulation carries specific protections to protect the inhabitants. These conditions provide that “inhabitants of the cannon firing range of the fort” may remain on their properties for up to two years if they wish, provided they are prepared to take the oath to the British Crown.

Ironically, one of the terms of surrender stated that inhabitants within cannon-shot, 3 English miles, could stay for 2 years, meaning they had two years to move their “moveable items” to a French territory, which was any of the rest of Acadia, at least until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

René’s home had probably already burned, but his land was unquestionably within cannon-shot.

481 Acadians pledged allegiance to the Queen of England, and the French troops left Port Royal, renamed by the English to Annapolis Royal, on a British warship. They were taken back to France.

450 English soldiers remained at the fort, but they clearly didn’t want to be there. By June of 1711, only 100 were left – the rest having either deserted or died.

The Native Americans were involved on both sides.

Everything was in upheaval.

In Grand Pre, the English arrived under the premise of peace but were actually there to take the property of the Acadians. Peter Melanson, Alexander Bourg, Anthony LeBlanc, John & Peter Landry were chosen to be deputies to bring the word to the Acadians who hadn’t heard that their property was now the government’s.

They were asked to pay 6000 livres (about $1200) in money or in poultry; plus, 20 pistoles ($80) every month to maintain the English governor’s table. This, in addition to a tax to pay the troops, would allow them to travel to and trade with Port Royal. Otherwise, they were captive.

No one counted on the stubborn dispositions of the Acadians.

A document was composed on November 16 saying that the deputies were granted the power to collect the money. English commander Samuel Vetch wanted to get as much money from the Acadians as possible, but 6 months of sickness had reduced his forces to 100 men, and he couldn’t impose the tax.

The Acadians weren’t used to being taxed and found every excuse possible not to pay, or to pay as little as possible. When the Acadians were asked to help by working on fortifications, a number of excuses were offered up…their horses were too thin, the Indians might attack, there was ice on the river, etc. This uncooperative attitude was effective and would remain with the Acadians through the years.

The Massacre at Bloody Creek

In June of 1711, a detachment of English soldiers from Fort Anne traveled upriver in a whaleboat and two flatboats and was ambushed by a band of Indians, although some reports indicated that there were also Acadians involved. The boats did not stay together and had not accounted for the tide, allowing the Indians to rally and set up an ambush. The Native people, who often intermarried with the Acadians, were closely allied.

Thirty English soldiers, a major, and the fort engineer were killed at what came to be known as “Bloody Creek,” 12 miles east of Annapolis Royal. The event was named the Battle of Bloody Creek or the Bloody Creek Massacre. Some evidence suggests there were more deaths than were reported.

Buoyed by their victory, approximately 600 Acadian, Abenaki, and Mi’kmaq men blockaded Fort Anne. Unfortunately, the blockade was unsuccessful because they had no artillery, and the fort was still accessible by water.

We can rest assured that René was involved in the blockade.

The English and the Oath

On March 23, 1713, René and Marie had their fourth child, Anne, three years after the third child was born.

On April 13, 1713, Acadia passed to England, with France ceding all of Nova Scotia or Acadia with its 2000 residents. One author reported that in the past century, France had sent less than 200 colonists to Acadia and, at that point, was focused on Louisiana. In other words, Acadia was left to fend for herself, whither, and die.

By 1713, the roles had reversed. The Acadian residents stated that they were ready to leave, but the English tried to prevent their departure because they realized that they needed their crops and labor to feed the English soldiers. The French at Ile Royal offered the Acadians safe harbor, but the Acadians refused, feeling that there wasn’t enough land, the ground was rocky, and they would starve. They knew how to farm salt marshes. They had no idea how to farm rocky soil.

For the Acadians, this was something of a lose-lose situation. Yet, the Acadians were known for their resolute persistence, and they continued to do so.

The English pressured the Acadians from 1713-1730 to take an oath of allegiance and become British subjects. The Acadians continually refused, expressing three points of concern: that they be able to continue their Catholic faith, the Indians (allies of the French) might attack an Acadian who fought against the French, and that the English take the Acadians’ history into account.

Both sides were entrenched, and the standoff continued.

The only census under the English was taken in 1714, where René was listed with his wife, son, and three daughters living among the same neighbors.

In a twist of irony, the Acadians tried to leave and join the other French families elsewhere, but Vetch, the English governor had reversed his position when he realized how strong that French settlement would be, and that he would have no farmers to govern and no one to feed the English soldiers. Now, instead of insisting they leave, he forbade them to leave and prevented their exodus.

Vetch wrote a letter on Nov. 24, 1714, to London, showing why he hadn’t let the Acadians go. Evidently, he had received six questions, which he answered thus:

          1) He calls the area “L’Accady and Nova Scotia” and says there are about 500 families (2500 people) there.

          2) He notes that all (except for 2 families from New England … the ALLENs and the GOURDAYs) wanted to move.

          3) He also estimates that there are 500 families at Louisbourg, plus 7 companies (of soldiers). The French king gave them 18 months provisions and helped them out with ships and salt (for the fishery) to encourage them to settle there.

          4) As to the movement of Acadians from Nova Scotia to Isle Royale, he notes that it would empty the area of inhabitants. Even the Indians (with whom the French intermarried and shared their religion) would take their trade to Isle Royale to follow the Acadians. This would make Isle Royale a much larger colony.

Vetch said that 100 Acadians (who knew the woods, could use snowshoes, and knew how to use birch canoes) were more valuable than 5 times as many soldiers fresh from Europe. They were also excellent in fishery. Such a move would create the largest and most powerful French colony in the New World.

          5) He notes that some of them (“without much belongings”) have already moved, but the rest plan on moving the next summer (1715) when the harvest is over and the grain is in. They had about 5000 black cattle, plus many sheep and hogs, that they would take with them if permitted. So if they move, the colony will be reverted to a primitive state and be devoid of cattle. It would require a long time and 40,000 pounds to obtain that much livestock from New England.

          6) He also wrote that having them sell the land wouldn’t be good; the treaty doesn’t even give them that right. He states that they wouldn’t have wanted to go if the French officers (speaking for the French king) hadn’t threatened that they’d be treated as rebels if they didn’t move.

The Acadians, always determined, tried any number of avenues to leave, including clandestinely making boats, which were seized. The Acadians essentially became hostages on their own lands – land that they hadn’t planted because they thought they were leaving.

So, in November of 1714, in addition to the other issues, they had no food. That meant that the winter of 1714 was a very lean time. Marie was pregnant.

On May 1, 1715, René and Marie had their fifth child, Francois.

The Acadians remained completely committed to their position. They were pleasant and polite but staunchly refused to take that cursed oath.

The English were in control and they were stubborn too. Things got worse.

In 1715, the gates of Fort Anne were shut, and the Acadians were prevented from trading with the fort and also with the Indians. The Acadians now desperately wanted to leave, but they couldn’t. The English tried to starve them into submission.

I hope that the sea and maybe their Indian allies sustained the Acadians during these starving times. Something must have worked, because that baby born in May didn’t die.

In 1717, Captain Doucette, reportedly an Englishman of no relation (but I’d like to see a Y-DNA test) became the Lieutenant Governor of Acadia. By this time some Acadians relented and decided to stay on peaceful terms. Perhaps the devil you know versus the devil you don’t. When the Indians learned about this, they threatened the Acadians.

Though they had always been friends and allies, and in some cases, relatives, the Indians were worried about the Acadians defecting to the English side if they agreed to the English terms and stayed put.

Captain Doucette demanded that the Acadians take the oath, but the Acadians thought that doing so would tie them down … and most of the families still wanted to move. They said if they were to stay, they wanted protection from the Indians, and the oath should be stated so that they would not have to fight their own countrymen. But Doucette wanted an unconditional oath.

Wills clashed, and neither side made headway. The stalemate continued.

On April 19, 1718, René and Marie had their 6^th child, Catherine, three years after their fifth child was born.

Sadly, on October 4, 1719, Catherine died and was buried, probably in the garrison cemetery. I do question this, though, because the garrison would have been under English control, and there was a Mass House where the Acadians worshipped at BelleIsle, so their child might have been buried in that now-lost cemetery there.

1720 – To Leave or Not to Leave

By this time, Port Royal had been renamed to Annapolis Royal.

On May 9, 1720, those who had become British subjects were offered free exercise of their religion, a guarantee to their property, and their civil rights. Official notices were translated into French to be distributed, a policy that continued from 1720 to 1755. An offer was made that they could depart but not take any of their possessions with them.

The Acadians answered that they feared the Indians if they took the oath. They promised to be faithful and peaceful but would not sign the requested oath and agreement. They explained that they couldn’t leave in the year allotted by the treaty because no one would buy their land.

The French government wanted them to move, but the land the French offered was poor, and the English government was underhandedly making them stay by refusing to allow them to take anything. The English didn’t want to lose their source of supplies. The Acadians were hard to control…the Minas Acadians even more so than the Port Royal Acadians.

Everyone was exasperated, and the Acadians were probably angry.

Those poor Acadians. This is the drama that never ends.

General Phillips arrived later in 1720 and issued a proclamation that they must take the oath unconditionally or leave the country within 3 months. He also said they couldn’t sell or take with them any of their property, thinking that would force the Acadians to take the oath. But the Acadians still refused, saying that the Indians were threatening them. When they proposed, “Let us harvest our crops and use vehicles to carry it,” Philipps figured that the Acadians were planning on taking their possessions with them and denied their request.

This had truly become a no-win situation.

The Acadians felt that their only route of “escape” was by land, so they began to make a road from Minas to Port Royal, about 70 miles.

The governor issued an order that no one should move without his permission, and he even sent an order to Minas to stop work on the road.

The English stated that the Acadians desired to take the Port Royal cattle to Beaubassin, about 300 miles today by road but not nearly as far by water. Beaubassin was a fortified French possession and some Acadian families had already lived there for decades.

Philipps, reaching the end of his patience, pronounced the Acadians ungovernable and stubborn, and stated that they were directed by bigoted priests. He went on to say that the Acadians couldn’t be allowed to go because it would strengthen the population of their French neighbors. The Acadians were also needed to build fortifications and to produce supplies for the fort. Philipps stated that they couldn’t leave until there “are enough British subjects to be settled in their place.” He hoped that there were plans being made to bring in British families and expected problems from the Indians, who didn’t want the Acadians to move.

Instead, France started sending people to Ile Royal. The fort at Louisbourg, destroyed in 1758, was begun in 1720. Other settlements in the region included St. Pierre near the Straight of Canso, which had slate mines, and Niganiche, further north on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a fishing port.

On February 5, 1721, René and Marie had their 7^th child, Marguerite, three years after their 6^th child.

Roughly two years later, in 1723, Charles, their 8^th child, joined the family.

On August 20, 1725, they welcomed their 9^th child, Jean, into the world.

By now, René was 45 years old and probably quite tired of the constant upheaval and uncertainty. He had lived his entire life like this.

1725 – An Oath, But Wait…

In 1725, Governor Armstrong, a violent man with a bad temper and a reputation that preceded him, arrived. However, he realized he needed the Acadians and convinced the Port Royal Acadians, representing about one-fourth of the Acadian population, to take the oath by reminding them that England would not allow Catholics to serve in the Army. Their concern was having to fight against their countrymen and family members, and he had addressed that. Encouraged by his success, he tried the same thing in Minas, but it didn’t work.

Then, he offered to allow the Acadians to take the following oath: “I do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King George the Second, so help me God.” This meant that they wouldn’t have to “take up arms” against the French or Indians, they could leave whenever they wanted, and they had the freedom to have priests and to practice the Catholic religion.

Beginning then, they were often known as the “Neutral French” or French Neutrals.

The Acadians breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps the decades-long issues that rubbed constantly like a burr in underwear were finally over.

Maybe they could finally live in peace and raise their children with some level of security.

On July 20^th, 1728, René and Marie welcomed their 10^th child, Cecile.

In 1729, that oath they had taken was considered too lenient and declared null and void. Everyone was unhappy, but the Acadians were unwavering in their insistence on a conditional oath.

This is where it gets interesting.

Governor Phillips Saves the Day!

Phillips, the old commander who was sent to replace Armstrong, reported that the Acadians took this oath:

“I sincerely promise and swear, as a Christian, that I will be utterly faithful and will truly obey His Majesty King George the Second, whom I acknowledge as the sovereign Lord of Nova Scotia and Acadia. So help me God.”

That’s what Phillips reported, but the actual oath continued on a second page, as follows:

“… that the inhabitants, when they have sworn hereto, will not be obliged to take up arms against France or against the Savages, and the said Inhabitants have further promised that they will not take up arms against the King of England or against its government.”

The priest and a notary signed as witnesses, but Phillips only sent the first part back to England. The Royals didn’t know about the second part, and the Acadians believed they were protected. In essence, both sides got their way, even though it wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up.

However, it worked, and peace was finally upon Acadia.

For the next 15 or 20 years, the Acadians were left alone, and their population grew rapidly. However, those additional people strained the seams of the Acadian settlements at Port Royal.

But for René, that didn’t matter.

A Baptism 

On September 10^th, 1731, René Doucet and Anne Granger witnessed the baptism of René’s granddaughter, Marguerite Garceau, born to Jeanne, also known as Anne Doucet and Daniel Garceau. René’s daughter would have been ecstatic about the birth of her first baby and was probably thrilled for her father to stand as godfather. I can only imagine her joy that fall day, standing beside the baptismal font.

The inclusion of Anne Granger, who would have been a neighbor, suggests strongly that they were still living on the same land where René had been born, probably in the house that had been rebuilt several times, overlooking the beautiful dyked marshes and the Annapolis River.

While this wasn’t René’s first grandchild, it was the second grandchild born in Port Royal and the only one he had stood with at their baptism. The rest of his grandchildren were born to children who had married and migrated to Chipoudy or Beaubassin – not places nearby. He probably seldom, if ever, saw his children who moved away and their children.

Tragedy

Sometime after September 10, 1731, tragedy struck. René died, but we don’t know when, or how, or where. We just know that there are no further records that include René. No baptisms that I’ve found – nothing.

What we do know is that there was no death or burial entry in the Port Royal parish records, nor the records in the Minas basin. In other words, had René been visiting his children elsewhere and perished, he would have been buried there, and the priest would have made an entry in the church books, which do exist.

Instead, we are met with stony silence.

Was he out on the water and died?

Was he traveling by boat or canoe to visit his children when a storm came up and swamped his boat?

Was he fishing?

Did a bore tide sweep him away?

Did he drown, his body not recovered?

Did he disappear hunting in the winter?

What happened, and why is there no record?

He wasn’t an old man, only just over 50, someplace between 51 and 53.

We will never know, but I surely hope his family knew and were able to have some type of closure.

I hope he didn’t simply disappear.

Assuming René died about 1731, his wife, Marie Broussard who was about 45, was left with children at home to raise.

I believe, based on what we have been able to discern, that René’s son-in-law, Daniel Garceau, stepped in and helped his wife’s family, essentially running the farm for all of them to survive. They would all have lived communally.

Even with help, Marie assuredly had her hands full.

• Son, Pierre had married in 1725 and was living in Chipoudy.
• Daughter Anne Marie was married and living in Pisiquit.
• Daughter Agathe was married and living in Chipoudy.
• Daughter Anne or Jeanne had married Daniel Garceau and stayed in Annapolis Royal, probably working the farm with Marie. Marie must have thanked God daily for this couple.
• Son Francois was about 16 when René died and didn’t marry until 1742, staying in Annapolis Royal. He probably helped Daniel and his mother with the farm.
• Daughter Marguerite was about 10 years old when René died.
• Son Charles was about 8 when René died.
• Son Jean was about 6 when René died.
• Daughter Cecile was about 3 when René died.

René’s widow, Marie, never remarried, although her life would have been much easier with a husband. She reportedly died sometime after the marriage of her youngest child, Cecile, who was the last to marry on January 22, 1752. Both parents are mentioned in this record, and neither is mentioned as deceased. We are left to wonder.

The other possibility for René is that the reason there is no death record for him is because he lived beyond the deportation in 1755, and died elsewhere. That’s not impossible, but absolutely no record in 24+ years makes that rather improbable. The Annapolis Royal parish records are not indexed by every name – only indexing the primary person, parents and spouse. Parents are provided, but if they are deceased, those records don’t always say so. Witnesses and godparents are also not indexed. I surely wish they were.

So, if anyone finds René Doucet in any parish record in Acadia after September of 1731, please let me know.

_____________________________________________________________

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There’s a lot we don’t know about Jean Garceau, Goicheau, Gaucheau, Gourseau, or Garsseaux, but a few fascinating things that we do. To begin with, I doubt that he ever intended to become an Acadian. So he came as a soldier, not as a settler.

We know for a fact that Jean was a soldier at Fort Anne because his marriage entry in the parish records tells us that he was serving in the garrison.

Jean Garceau, or as it was spelled in this record, Garsseaux, dit Tranchemontagne married Marie Levron in Port Royal on November 20^th 1703.

On the 2oth of November in the year one thousand seven hundred and three, I, a religious minister performing the curial functions in this parish, after the publication of the three banns on three consecutive Sundays, without any impediment having been found, united in matrimony, by words in the presence of our Holy Mother Church, Jean Garsseault, called Tranchemontagne, soldier of this garrison in the company of Duvernay, son of Pierre Garsseaux and Jaquette Soulard of the parish of St. René in the diocese of Poitiers, and Marie Levron, daughter of François Levron and Catherine Savoye, of this parish. And they declared that they could not sign, but made their mark, along with those witnesses whose names I have signed below on the same day and year as above.

Among other things, this marriage entry tells us that Jean, Marie, and her parents could not read or write – not even just sign their their names. However, the second X on this document was made by Jean, so it’s as close to his signature was we will ever have – and it’s his mark!

The following page contains some witness names, sign by the priest, which was rather unusual. The first looks to be Brouillan, who was the Governor of Acadia at that time. The second Bonaventure something, maybe L’Echofour? The third is Bourgeois Defoyer, perhaps? This signature looks different that the first two.

The signature at the bottom is Felix Pain, the Recollet priest at Port Royal.

Jean’s dit name, or nickname, translates literally as “mountain trench,” but we have no idea how his military nickname was acquired. It could have been in France or Acadia, and it could have been something related to where he lived, simply a nickname, or even something humorous.

We know that the church in Port Royal had been burned by the English in 1690 and had probably not been rebuilt. The Acadians either worshipped at the priest’s home on the main street in Port Royal, or at the Mass House, a small church at BelleIsle.

Jean, the French soldier fell in love with the lovely Acadian Marie Levron whose parents lived across the river. He must have spent evenings staringly longingly across the body of water that separated him from his love – that is – until he worked up the courage to speak with her father.

Given that Jean was stationed at the garrison in Port Royal and Marie lived right across the river, they may have been married at Father Pain’s residence. Maybe within a month of Jean’s discussion with Marie’s father. No need to wait more than the required three weeks for the banns to expire.

According to the 1710 map of Port Royal, the rectory was located near this present-day park and wharf, near the Theatre.

Standing on the wharf along the waterfront behind the Priest’s home, you can see the area of the Levron homestead directly across the river at far right.

Marie’s parents would have rowed across the river, with her of course, in a boat much like this, landing right about here on the shore. It was probably cold on that late fall day, but the soon-to-be-married couple assuredly didn’t care.

Initially, I entertained the possibility that they married at the bride’s home or maybe at the St. Laurent Chapel at BelleIsle, but given that Brouillan, the Governor, was a witness, this had to have taken place in one of three locations. Either at the priest’s home in Port Royal, possibly at Brouillan’s residence on either Hogg Island or at the fort, or in the Fort Chapel if it had been completed in time.

The next time we should have seen this couple is in the 1707 Acadian census.

Jean Garceau, by any name or his wife, are not reflected in the 1707 census, probably because he was a soldier and not an Acadian settler, although that surprises me a bit since he married an Acadian woman in 1703. Plus, she was Acadian and they had two children by this time. It’s clear that he had no intention of leaving and had joined the local community. Their first child was born in October of 1704, and the second in April 1707. Where were they?

Prior to his marriage, he would have lived at the garrison with the other soldiers, so he would not have been reflected in any census.

Jean Garceau’s Origins

We are very fortunate that Jean and Marie’s marriage record contains the parents of both the bride and groom.

Jean provides us with the name of his father, Pierre Garsseaux, and mother, Jacquette Soulard from the parish of St. Rene of the diocese Poitier.

We really have no idea how old Jean Garceau or Garsseaux was based on his marriage information, but we may be able to figure something out.

Nothing is ever easy in Acadian genealogy.

We’re going to take Jean at his word that he knows who his parents are and that the priest recorded them correctly, even though the spelling would have been phonetic. .

Cousin Mark, in preparation for my Acadian trip to France, spent weeks researching this line and found some very interesting information. I’ll just share our conversation with you, slightly modified for readability and continuity.

December 19, 2023

Hi Roberta – I looked to see who I may find located in France, just in case you visit in April.

There aren’t many Acadians that we can track due to the absence of records. A lot of guessing and speculation, but no real evidence.

One that I thought would have been easy was Jean Garceau, whose marriage record you have to Marie Levron, of 20 Nov 1703. In the record, where his name is spelled Garsseaut with the dit name Tranche Montagne (mountain trench), he apparently gave his parents’ names and location, Pierre Garsseaut and Jacquette Soulard, of parish St. René (or Rémi) of the diocese of Poitiers. Stephen White shows it as St-René.

Easy, right? NOT!!

I first tried to find a parish of either St. René or St. Rémi(y) as either could have been what was written. Surprisingly, given the proliferation of saint’s names in France, there was only one church listed in the entire country with the name Saint-René and it was near Paris. I used the excellent site for such research, gcatholic.org. There are only a couple of towns, all in Brittany, with that name as well. The diocese of Poitiers doesn’t list any. Nor did the departmental archives for Deux-Sèvres and Vienne that retain all parish records, meaning one did not exist back in the 1600s either.

But there are quite a few Saint-Rémy parishes and towns throughout France, including several in the two departments that comprise the diocese of Poitiers. The diocese was elevated to a “Metropolitan Archdiocese” in 2002, but the website still shows its history as a Diocese.

It now covers and appears to have the same boundaries as the combined departments of Deux-Sèvres and Vienne. The map on the website shows its extent. It used to be even larger, and I saw in my research the pages of the records printed with “Généralité de Poitiers” that appears to have stretched to the ocean.

The diocese even includes all the Loudunais, including Martaizé and La Chaussée.

So first of all, the trees and Find-a-Grave that may show the city Poitiers or just the Vienne department, have it wrong. There is not now and never was a parish or church with the names of either Saint-René or Saint-Rémy in the city of Poitiers or close by.

There are three parish churches named Saint-Rémy in the department of Vienne, all some distance northeast of Poitiers, one in the village of Saint-Rémy-sur-Creuse and two in the villages of Chenevelles and Liegné-les-Bois, near to each other. Departmental parish records for each go back to the period of time of my research.

There is also a very old parish church in the town of Saint-Rémy, just northwest of Niort in the Deux-Sèvres department. 

Unfortunately, despite the church’s obvious age, departmental parish records for Saint-Rémy, Deux-Sèvres, only go back to 1693, but I believe this is the one referenced in the marriage record, based on my review, page by page, of the parish records in the other three parishes and what I found at Filae.com.

Before I engaged in the very tedious and difficult reading of old parish records in French, I consulted and thoroughly researched Jean and his parents’ names at Filae.com. Filae is the primary genealogical site for French genealogy, similar to Ancestry.com, and was purchased by MyHeritage a couple of years ago. I’ve subscribed to it for several years, since I started my research into French origins. They have original records, but only back to about 1700. Besides family trees, they include the database of what genealogical societies in France have researched for older records. I have found, by comparing what is listed and my own viewing of the records, that the two in the area, Cercle Généalogique Poitevin and Cercle Généalogique des Deux-Sèvres are very reliable and comprehensive.

I searched between 1650 and 1700 for Jean Garceau and the name’s phonetic variants, and for Pierre Garceau and Jacquette Soulard between 1630 and 1730. For Jean Garceau there were only two family trees and absolutely no records for the Vienne department; both trees were Acadian, and one of those was Karen Theriot Reader’s.

Searching Deux-Sèvres there were 14 genealogical society entries for a Jean Garceau spelled a few different ways. None could be the one we are looking for as either they were born too late, married showing children births and one born in 1681 but to a François Garseau and a Marguerite Payneau.

For Pierre Garceau it was about the same, no records for Vienne, 1630-1730, but for Deux-Sèvres for the longer time frame there were 51 entries by genealogical societies. This is one reason I believe it likely the Saint-Rémy indicated was the town in Deux-Sèvres and not the three villages in Vienne. Again, however, none of the entries pointed to the Pierre we are seeking and with no wife named either Jacquette or surnamed Soulard.

But I hit pay dirt with my search for Jacquette Soulard. While there were just three entries for Vienne, none of interest, there were 47 entries for Deux-Sèvres.

Five of them showed children’s births to her and a Pierre Gaucheau or Goicheau, between 1686 and 1698, at two villages about 30 miles to the north of Saint-Rémy, Saint-Marsault and Moncoutant.

Given the wide variations in spelling in parish records based on varied pronunciation of the names and the subtle changes over time, it is very easy to see Gaucheau becoming Garceau or Garsseaut by the time Jean arrived in Acadia. White even mentions that Jean is listed in a military detachment as spelled “Gourseau“.

This finding of course necessitated further research into Pierre’s name as spelled in these entries. While Gaucheau is listed in seven entries, Goicheau is listed in 51, including his marriage record to Jacquette Soulard on July 2, 1685 at Saint-Marsault, a village now part of La Forêt-sur-Sèvres commune, and about 30 miles north of Saint-Rémy. Parish records for Saint-Marsault date back to 1643.

Filae shows the ages and the names of the parents.

Also attached is a copy of the original record I obtained searching through the Deux-Sèvres archives.

Transcribed as:

Le deux juillet mil six cent quatre vingt cinq après les fiançailles et la publication des bans sans opposition faite au prône de notre messe paroissiale, je soussigné, prêtre, ai reçu le consentement mutuel de mariage de Pierre Goicheau, laboureur, âgé de trente trois ans, fils de Jean Goicheau et de Marie Martin, de la paroisse de Saint-Geoff en Nicolas, et de Jacquette Soulard, âgée de dix-huit ans, fille de Pierre Soulard et de Marie Boque, de cette paroisse.

En présence de Jacques Soulard, Louis Cochin, la veuve de Pierre Boque, et plusieurs autres qui ont déclaré ne savoir signer.

Translated as:

On the second of July, sixteen hundred and eighty-five, after the engagement and the publication of the banns without opposition, announced during the sermon of our parish mass, I, the undersigned priest, received the mutual consent of marriage between Pierre Goicheau, laborer, aged thirty-three years, son of Jean Goicheau and Marie Martin, from the parish of Saint-Geoff in Nicolas, and Jacquette Soulard, aged eighteen years, daughter of Pierre Soulard and Marie Boque, from this parish.

In the presence of Jacques Soulard, Louis Cochin, the widow of Pierre Boque, and several others who declared that they did not know how to sign.

Back to Mark’s letter:

I then searched for records of a Jean Gaucheau and Jean Goicheau. There were apparently several Gaucheau/Goicheau families in the area and a few Jeans, but none that I could with confidence conclude was the Jean we are looking for.

The closest was a Jean Goicheau that appears as a godfather to a Renée Falourd in 1695 at Saint-Marsault.

A Marie Falourd appears as godmother to two of Pierre’s children, so there was a definite friendship if not familial relationship between the two families. In the event, as records do not appear before 1693 at Saint-Rémy, I could not verify with certainty that the Pierre and Jacquette I found were those reported by Jean Garceau. I believe it very possible, however that they were, although given the marriage date and the list of children appearing regularly thereafter, it seems likely that if they were his parents, he was born out of wedlock before 1685. Pierre was 33 when married and Jacquette 18. It would also account for Jean Garceau joining the military at a young age and going overseas. But all that is speculative.

Besides my search through the original records at Saint-Marsault, I searched those parishes with the name Saint-Rémy from the Vienne department. I could not find any Garceaus nor Gaucheau or Goicheau. In fact, I did not see any surnames I recognized as being Acadian. There were certainly several non-Acadian surnames, such as Paget and Champion that appeared on a regular basis through the years at Saint-Rémy-sur-Creuse for example, but, as Filae entries indicated, none of interest to this search.

I’m incredibly grateful to Cousin Mark for his incredible research, especially given that these are not his ancestors AND his research allowed me to visit the church where Jean’s parents were married.

Moncoutant Old Churches

Before moving on to that visit, though, I want to include images of the old churches in Moncoutant.

Given that Pierre Goicheau and Jacquette Soulard had five children baptized between Saint Marseault and Moncoutant, let’s take a tour of the old Moucoutant churches in the area. One of these HAS to be the right one, and they assuredly passed by and perhaps attended baptisms, weddings, and funerals at other nearby churches. In other words, they would have been familiar with all of them.

I’m not sure which one, or ones, so here are the possible candidate churches in the region. There could have been children baptized in various churches, as their father was a laborer and perhaps moved from place to place with the seasons.

In Moncoutant, the Church of St-Gervais and St-Protais is located in the center of the city, on the old road. All old churches were either on the main road, or at crossroads.

The visitor who provided the photography of the above church says that this is a 15^th century Gothic-style church with a massive bell tower. The church was enlarged in the 17^th century, and was partially rebuilt in the 19^th century.

The Eglise Saint-Pierre (Pugny) is located here, outside Moncoutant itself, and you can see several photos, here. You’re viewing the old portion of the church, above.

The visitor who posted these stunning photos said that it’s an 11th-century building, modified in the 15th century, devastated during the wars of religion, after which it fell into ruin. It was restored at the end of the 19^th and in the middle of the 20^th century.

Also located slightly outside of Moncoutant is La Chapelle-Saint-Etienne, here in this beautiful crossroads village lost in antiquity. I love this, because you can even see the old well in the yard to the right of the church. The church dates from at least 1219 when it was mentioned in a Bull on Honorius. Destroyed in the 100-Years-War (1337-1453), it was partially restored later.

In 1598, the year the Edict of Nantes was signed, church was reported to be in very poor condition.

“We found the church very desolate of all that is required, the nave completely uncovered, the choir with a vaulted chapel and half covered with curved tiles, most of the walls of which are tending to ruin, for lack of repairs (…).

The church is very poor in tablecloths, chasubles, and other required things.

We found the baptismal fonts to be overturned on the ground, because of the troubles.

In the bell tower there is a bell hanging and another that is not hanging”

Things didn’t improve much. In 1686, the church was reported to be in danger of collapse, inside and out. However, the record further notes that:

“In a chapel there is an arm in which there is a silver vase containing some linens, without the appearance of relics and which is nevertheless traditionally called the arm of Saint-Etienne.

The small cemetery, completely cut off by roads, is in the middle of the town. The priest is sick and crippled.

Going to the waters of Bourbon, he has taken as his replacement a priest named Avice, previously in Largeasse and coming from the diocese of Bayeux. The inhabitants are very unhappy about it. He let three people die (sic) at the door of the church, without giving them communion. He has no sign of a priest, neither in his clothes nor in his speech. He drinks wine very often and, in church, does nothing decent.”

And then, in 1695:

“The sanctuary is still in danger of ruin and has only 4 bushels of rye as income.”

If this is the church closest to where Pierre Garsseau and Jacquette Soulard lived, the condition of the church and the resident priest explains why they might well have looked elsewhere to have at least some of their children baptized.

This church barely hung on until 1922 when at least a minimal restoration began, and then in 2008 when the belltower was to be roofed and the transepts shored up.

I so desoerately want to bring flowers and light a candle here.

Of the three candidate churches for where Jean’s parents had their children baptized, this one is my favorite because I can see them climbing the stairs and entering the humble church through the red wooden door in belltower.

No soaring buttrices, no huge wooden doors, no pomp – maybe not even a priest, or at least a sober one. Just a beautiful little crossroads church where the local peasants walked in the hope that they could find their priest so they didn’t have to go someplace else.

This church has not undergone the extensive restoration of the others, so it’s more authentic to the age when Pierre Garceau and Jacquette Soulard, by whatever spellings, would have been living and worshipping in the churches in this region.

It is here that I feel their presence.

Their children were baptized someplace near here, even though our Jean Garceau was older, and therefore not included in the records. He was probably baptized in one of these churches too – maybe St. Etienne and the priest, having had a bit too much wine, never recorded it!

Why Saint-Marsault?

We will never know why Jean Garceau’s parents married in 1685 at Saint-Marsault, although the conditions at Saint Etienne might be a clue.

Jean said he was their child. We know from Mark’s research that his parents had a baby in 1686, and it wasn’t Jean.

We also know that his father, Pierre, was 33 when they married in 1685, and Jacquette was 18.

Let’s do some math.

If Jean married in 1703, in Acadia, as a soldier, he could not have been born in 1787 or later. If he were born in 1787, he would have been only 17 when he married, and even younger when he joined the military.

Acadian and French men simply did not marry that young. Furthermore, Marie Levron was not pregnant when she and Jean married, based on the birth of their first child a year later, so that was not a factor either.

So, one of two things has to be the case.

Jean could have been born before his parents were married. If that’s the case, then he was born in 1685 or earlier. It does cause one to wonder why his parents didn’t marry then, when Jacquette was pregnant for Jean, since they clearly did marry in July of 1685. French girls were considered of marriageable age at 14.

Or, maybe they WERE married at St. Etienne, and Jean WAS baptized there, but neither was recorded so his parents decided to marry again where there was a sober priest who recorded it in the parish register.  Yes, that’s extremely speculative and would be highly unusual – but then so is the priest letting three people die at the church door.

If Jean was born in 1685, he was 18 when he married. That’s still exceedingly young for a French male.

The second possibility is that his father, Pierre, was married previously and Jean was born to Pierre’s first wife who died. Pierre then married Jacquette, who was functionally Jean’s mother, so he thought nothing of listing her as such.

If Pierre, who was 33 in 1685, married at 23, in 1675, which was relatively young, Jean would have been someplace between 18 and 28 when he married Marie Levron in Acadia.

That makes a LOT more sense. Again, Saint Etienne could have been involved.

However, being born out of wedlock might have been a reason for Jean to join the military relatively young too.

And yes, all of this is speculation because otherwise, there’s really no way for Pierre Garceau and Jacquette Soulard to be the parents of Jean Garceau who married in 1703. Yet, he clearly said they were his parents.

If Jean’s parents were married in Saint Saint-Remy, there’s a good possibility that Jean was baptized there too. Or, perhaps he was a toddler attending his parent’s wedding.

Based on Mark’s findings, it appears evident, assuming this is the correct family, that Jean Garceau spent his childhood and much of his formative years at Saint-Marsault.

Saint Marsault

Thanks to Mark’s exhaustive work, I was able to visit Saint Marsault in the spring of 2024, and you’ll forgive me if I tell you that I literally felt my ancestors here – from the minute I set foot inside.

Our tour bus pulled up outside on the main road, at a pulloff beside a park along the village stream. These old churches are often difficult to get to, with little if any parking. The original members didn’t need parking as they simply walked or perhaps rode in a wagon.

There it stands. L’ Église St-Martial (St-Marsault,la Forêt-sur-Sèvre). This ancient church reaches back to the middle ages in this little village and was named after a third century saint venerated for his role in the spread of Christianity in France. The church was restored in the 18^th century, but the various parts date from different periods in its history. The bell tower dates from the 12^th or 13^th century so would have already been “old” when Jean and his parents were here.

We walked up the slight hill from the road that now bypasses the church

The priest promised to meet us, but no one was there. Our knocks echoed on the thick wooden door but went unanswered. I wanted to cry.

We walked around to the side. Almost every French church has a monument to those who gave their lives in either WWI or WWII.

I was trying to console myself my telling myself that at least I was there, in that sacred place, and got to walk around and view the exterior. It would have looked much the same as Jean and his parents would have seen.

Then, one of my cousins discovered that they had left the side door open for us. Oh, happy day!

This beautiful door looks to be authentic. Pierre and Jacquette would have come and gone through this door, perhaps announcing themselves to the priest through the window if they were in need of a baptism or were sent to fetch the priest for last rites for someone.

This church is stunningly beautiful. I could see my ancestors here. Could hear their voices echoes across time.

Young Jean, probably being hushed to stay quiet during the wedding service.

He would have sat in the pews and perhaps knelt on the floor.

Of course, I lit a candle to honor my ancestors. I lit candles for my ancestors in all of the churches they, too, had lit candles in. Light and sacred prayers reaching across the ages – 339 years from their wedding to my return. I always wonder if they are watching or somehow know.

Are they here with me?

Seeing what they saw in the alcove. Acadians were staunchly religious. They fought and sacrificed for the right to worship in the Catholic faith.

Drinking in the elixir of their religious sanctity.

These doors were reinforced because the church served as a place of safety during times of attack.

Knowing that they sat here, stood here, and walked through that doorway – it was difficult for me to leave. Part of my soul is connected here through an invisible, timeless, silver thread..

I shed more than one tear as I walked back down that hill, away from the church.

Tears of joy, tears – just tears. How could I possibly have been so connected so quickly. Or maybe it wasn’t quickly – it was threads and ropes and chains reaching across the centuries. Maybe it was my ancestors holding me, calling me.

I saw the lush green foliage and spring flowers beside the stream and knew this was the stream that sustained them. Gave them life and nourished them. Water that the priest blessed to become sacred – except it was already the sacred key to life and had been back into time immemorial.

A community well was dug near the stream to provide clean water, and everyone took their bucket to the well, where they exchanged news of the day. Today, that’s just a memory, but the well-casing remains, as do the whispers of our ancestors, traveling on the breezes.

My family stood exactly in this spot – right here – some 250 years ago. Today, the well is in the little park beside the stream, probably because it floods in the spring, across the main road down the hill from the church. Dandelions bloom on this day just as they did on those long-ago spring days, too.

It was less than 5 miles between Moncoutant and Saint-Marsault, so Jean Garceau’s parents probably lived someplace halfway in-between.

The small village of La Ronde is located at a crossroads between Montcoutant and Saint Marsault and has its own church, L’Eglise Notre Dame La Ronde, la Foret-sur-Sevre, which dates from the 12th century and was rebuilt in 1478 following a fire.

This historic building at the main intersection across from the church in La Ronde probably marked the way for Jean Garceau’s parents too.

Today, a Madonna figure still resides in the alcove between the door and window, faithfully guarding the residents of the home and looking across the street at the church..

These quaint French villages of a few houses each are all connected by tiny one-lane roads threading their way like ribbons through farm country that has been tilled since before time was recorded. It seems that every couple of miles there’s a tiny crossroads village, so small there’s not even a stop sign, with its requisite Catholic church to serve the local villagers and farmers.

It was someplace here that Jean Garceau was born, grew up, and ultimately said goodbye to as a soldier. He probably remembered them well – the crossroads, the churches, the villages, and yes, his parents and siblings.

Did he think he would one day return?

Did he realize he would never set sight on France, or his parents and siblings again?

What did Jean expect when he left?

In Acadia

Exactly when Jean arrived in Acadia is uncertain, but we know he was unquestionably a soldier.

Stephen White states that he was with the Charcornacle Company, which may be accurate. Joannes de Chacornacle, a lifetime military man, became Captain of a company of infantry in Acadia on February 1, 1702. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography states that three years later, Charcornacle was in Placentia where he died in 1707. We don’t really know where Charcornacle was in late 1703.

We don’t know how many companies were at the fort when Jean married Marie, but he certainly could have been in Chacornacle’s company if Chacornacle was still there. Even if not, Jean assuredly knew him.

I could find nothing about Duvernay, the man whose company he’s noted as being a member of in his 1703 marriage record.

The fort had fallen into disrepair after the 1690 attack and had never been repaired. France had been neglectful. In 1702, work resumed on the fort as, under then-current conditions, it couldn’t possibly defend Port Royal successfully – if at all.

In 1702, Pierre-Paul Delabat, a master engineer who specialized in designing and building forts arrived.

He drew up plans to build a new fort with a low profile, making it less of an easy target.

The new fort had earthworks to absorb cannon fire and expose approaching attackers.

The fort was on the point of land with the harbor in front, the Allain River to one side, marshland, the town upstream of the fort, and woods behind with no good way of approaching unnoticed.

The fort was built in the shape of a double four-pointed star, with bastions and a dry moat, or ditch between the two, but the old fort had to be torn down, which left Port Royal and the soldiers exposed during the time they had no fort. The new earthenworks were constructed bucket by bucket and cart by cart of stone and dirt. Men were few and the Acadian families also needed to farm.

The Governor was dragging his feet and taking his time – precious time they didn’t really have.

Understanding their predicament, a force of men from Grand Pre came to assist with the construction of a stone fort, as compared to the earthen one that had failed earlier.

There were only 100 soldiers and some local men who helped with the backbreaking work of setting each stone and building the reinforced ramparts. .

Jean was unquestionably one of those men.

The project was estimated to take two years, 1703 and 1704, to complete. The French government contributed, but not enough and not fast enough. Port Royal residents contributed 800 livres with which they built a hospital and new church in addition to the work on the fort.

Jean would have been involved with all of those projects.

Everyone was unhappy with the commander, Brouillan, for a wide variety of reasons, and those complaints made their way back to France. He interfered incessantly with everything, but most concerning was his constant interference with Pierre-Paul De Labat, a military officer who had been appointed to build the new fort that was so desperately needed.

Brouillan had a residence at the fort, as governor, but he somehow swindled Etienne Pellerin out of his land and spent his time, and the money that was supposed to be for the new fort, to build himself a fine country home with a courtyard, gardens, and several outbuildings. Rue St. Antoine was even extended to provide easier access from his house to the fort. Pellerin had bought Hogg Island from Jacques Bourgeois a few years earlier.

But that wasn’t even half of the scandal. Even in this small French outpost, Brouillan had a mistress, Jeanne Quisence, Madame de Barat, who followed him to Port Royal. It’s not like it could possibly have been a secret. She opened a tavern and sold watered-down wine to the soldiers, charging terribly inflated prices. Who was to stop her? Music was even provided by the garrison’s own fifer.

Scandalous!

Jean Garceau was probably well acquainted with her establishment. Soldiers probably weren’t likely to judge, especially since they had a place to drink and socialize. Plus, they were probably wise enough to know not to criticize the Governor’s mistress and her activities, which he clearly sanctioned.

The worst part, though, was that Brouillan was excessively harsh and cruel, torturing the soldiers and destroying morale. I hate to think of Jean in this circumstance.

Finally, Brouillan was recalled to France in 1704 to answer these allegations and regain the confidence of the French government. He denied everything, and his lies apparently worked because, in 1705, he set sail once again for Port Royal but died at sea.

However, the slow progress in building the new fort, the size of the Port Royal forces, the delays caused by Brouillan, plus the dissent within the ranks caused by him began to take a heavy toll. It did not go unnoticed by the British.

To be clear, the French officers IN Port Royal begged for expeditious repairs, but were ignored and overruled. They knew they could not defend themselves well and were essentially sitting ducks.

This sign shows the fort long after the English took it, in the 1730s, but Jean built the foundations of this fort, including the officer’s quarters and chapel. That building, #11 at upper right, is today’s museum.

1704 Attack!

The fort was not prepared for another attack, but in July of 1704, in retaliation for a raid on Deerfield, CT, ready or not – it happened.

Sure enough, the Acadian’s worst fears were coming to pass. English Major Benjamin Church entered the harbour and established a blockade at Goat Island.

The men waited, stationed inside the fort, anticipating a full-on attack – which, thankfully, never materialized.

Unexpectedly, Church moved on to the Minas Basin. After raiding, burning the homes, destroying the crops, killing the cattle, and tearing down the dykes in Grand Pre, Pisiguit, and Chignecto, he returned to Port Royal. His ships sailed into the harbor and laid Fort Anne and the town of Port Royal under siege.

They captured the guard station opposite Ile aux Chevres, or Goat Island as it’s known today, probably near the original fort that overlooks Goat Island from the North side of the river. Goat island is visible beneath the tree, so the guard stations would have been near the Habitation park today.

Then, Church and his men destroyed many of the dykes that kept the salt water out of the farmland and looted the church, which tells us that there was a church of some type, probably in the fort.

The English kidnapped four Acadians, but we don’t know who.

For 17 days the soldiers holed up in the fort, awaiting the attack they were just sure was coming – but it didn’t – although confusion reigned. When the English were finally satisfied that they had extracted adequate retribution and destruction, they left.

Jean Garceau must have been sick with worry that July. Marie was heavily pregnant with their first child, Pierre, who would be born on October 22nd.

Port Royal was actually very fortunate, because Major Church was both meticulous and vengeful and proceeded to raid Castine, Maine and other locations in New Brunswick as well. For some reason, he spared Port Royal the worse and returned to Boston.

Sometimes, during these attacks by the English, Fort Anne’s own officers had to give orders to burn the houses, buildings, and even trees near the fort so that the British wouldn’t use them for cover to sneak up on the fort during an attack. At least, under those circumstances, the families had notice to leave, but that was but small comfort.

After the attack, anger seethed, though, sometimes beneath the surface, and sometimes not hidden at all. Anger at the English, but also anger at Brouillan and the French for not fortifying Port Royal in a timely manner.

Soon thereafter, 600 feet of the ramparts were washed away by torrential spring rains, probably on the harbour side near Allain Creek. This had to be incredibly discouraging, maybe even causing people to question why God would do that to them.

The officers were reported to be young and inexperienced, and the recruits of “no account.”

If they heard that, it too would have served to demoralize them further.

In 1703 and 1704, soldiers worked harder and more rapidly on the fort, but the new earthworks had to be hand-carried, literally bucket by bucket of stone and earth.

Brouillan, who died in 1705, was temporarily replaced by Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure, who rehabilitated the 185 soldiers at the fort into a state of health and readiness. I wonder if this is the Bonaventure who was one of the witnesses to Jean Garceau’s marriage.

Unfortunately, the fort remained unfinished, and no ships arrived from France with anything.

They didn’t realize that they were truly on their own. It’s not like France said they weren’t coming. They were expected, but never arrived, with hope dwindling day by day.

Illicit trade was secretly taking place with Boston merchants, with Louis Allain being charged.

As a form of self-preservation, Port Royal became a rendezvous for privateers, more commonly known as pirates. They had become friendly with the French corsairs who were more than happy to thin out the English ships near Acadia. Yes, indeed. More than happy.

Captured Englishmen were held at Port Royal, awaiting an exchange agreement for captured Frenchmen held in Boston.

1706

The new governor, Daniel d’Auger de Subercase, arrived in 1706 and immediately went on the offensive against the English.

One of the first things he did was to take 35 English prisoners to Boston in exchange for Acadian men. Subercase and Massachusetts Governor Dudley were on friendly terms, maybe best described as frenemies – friendly enemies.

Thanks to Subercase, the fort was being reinforced, but that took time. Time was the one thing they didn’t have. Thank goodness Subercase was in charge.

1707 – Another Attack!

On April 8, 1707, Jean and Marie welcomed their second child, a son, Daniel, into the world and had him baptized.

The English launched an attack in May and June of 1707. By this time, all able-bodied men were enrolled in the militia, even though some lived at a considerable distance. Messengers were sent to notify and gather them, and to oppose the advance of the enemy on both sides of the river. The British had landed near Goat Island, and more than 320 men were advancing through the woods on both banks. Port Royal was under siege.

The two forces met near Allain Creek, with Subercase leading the French soldiers and Acadian men in battle. His horse was shot out from under him. He retreated, but uphill so that the advancing English had to face French fire. Subercase, wasn’t only brave, he was a military genius, thinking clearly under fire.

The English camped at the base of the hill, within half a mile of the fort, and across the river, probably in the area just beyond the bridge on both sides of the river.

They were fortunate that about 60 Canadians just happened to have reached Port Royal just before the English fleet arrived. The Canadians probably didn’t consider themselves so fortunate.

By now, more than 500 men had gathered to guard and defend the fort.

Guns were mounted on the ramparts, and the English were taking fire. The English militia knew that they had been out-strategized and were presently out-gunned as well.

For several days, the English resorted to guerilla warfare, burning buildings and such, but finally, on the 16^th, the English began heavy musket fire. The fort was not breached as the English had expected, requiring their retreat, and then, the next day, their humiliating evacuation back onto their ships.

However, Port Royal was left entirely in ruins.

DeLabat, the engineer, drew a map detailing the burned buildings. The English proudly pointed out that they had burned the great magazine and the church which was actually Father Villieu’s home that was used for holding church services. They burned many homes near the north bastion of the fort and claimed to have fired from the top of the ramparts into the buildings within the fort.

Labat’s map, drawn after they attacked again in 1708, confirmed for posterity in the legend that, indeed, they had burned the make-do church, along with most homes in Port Royal.

The fort expansion proceeded.

The English returned yet again a few weeks later, in August, but Jean Garceau and the soldiers were able to repel them after 11 days. Subercase and his men killed sixteen New Englanders and lost three soldiers.

The French coffers were dry due to the war in Europe, but Subercase, a great leader, wasn’t about to lose without a fight. He sold his own effects, even his clothes, to obtain the continued assistance of the Mi’kmaq.

1708

The Acadians knew the English would not be deterred for long, so in the spring of 1708, Governor Subercase began working earnestly to get the fort in tip-top shape. 250 additional hands were brought in to help. They had their own man-of-war ship, the Venus, anchored at the foot of the fort as a deterrent. When France refused to help build a second one, they cozied up to the privateers who took great pleasure in assisting, bringing their “prizes” back to Port Royal. Indeed, there was more than one way to get things done!

Subercase wrote of them, “The privateers have desolated Boston, having captured and destroyed 35 vessels.” 470 prisoners were brought to Port Royal, causing another problem. “The crowded condition of the people, the lack of sanitary measures, and the intemperate habits of the sailors and soldiers, in this season of riotous abundance, brought on an epidemic of spotted fever, in the autumn of the year, from which over 50 died.”

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

They also received word that a great force was being gathered at Boston, upon which news Subercase gathered a force of 140 Indians and 75 militiamen from Grand Pre, in addition to his own.

The soldiers built a new bomb-proof powder magazine in 1708 with extremely hard stone imported five years earlier from France. Given that this stone was imported in 1703, we do know that at least one ship arrived that year, and it’s possible that Jean Garceau was upon it. He could have arrived earlier.

The new magazine held 60,000 pounds of powder for the cannons, which was kept much dryer.

This 1708 building is the only fully original building still standing at Fort Anne.

Expecting an attack in the spring of 1709, the soldiers worked to clear the riverbanks of wood so that trees and brush would not shelter the enemy.

Subercase requested reinforcements for the garrison as well but received no word or reinforcements from France. It seemed that France had, in effect, abandoned Acadia. He must have been furious.

New barracks were constructed for the soldiers and a new building, 85 feet long, to be used as the new church. They made the fort self-sufficient in the event of another siege, at least as much as possible.

The new officer’s quarters are now the museum, the white building behind the marker where the soldier’s barracks stood.

In March 1709, a corsair left her berth at Port Royal and captured nine prizes in just ten days, including prisoners that the French expected to exchange after the anticipated British attack.

The only thing that saved Port Royal in 1709 was that the British fleet never appeared in New England, having been detained for service in the Spanish war.

Nevertheless, they waited, daily expecting another attack from the English, all through 1709 and most of 1710. Word kept arriving that an attack was being planned and they knew it was inevitable – but they never expected the Hell that would eventually descend.

1710

On March 20, 1710, Jean’s son, Joseph Garceau, entered the world. His parents must have been worried sick, given what they knew was coming. I don’t know where Jean would have sent his wife and children, but it assuredly wasn’t across the river from Fort Anne.

In October of 1710, an even more devastating attack occurred – completely overwhelming Acadia – all of Acadia. Not just Port Royal, although Port Royal took the brunt. This wasn’t just at attack, it was Armageddon – the full force of the British fleet augmented by the New England one as well.

The soldiers and Acadians had rebuilt the fort as best they could. Would it stand?

We don’t know if soldiers were allowed to live with their families outside of the fort, or if they lived in the barracks in Fort Anne and visited their homes. Some men with their families lived just outside the fort on the main street, but could reach the fort within a minute or so running. That was the case for Jacques Bonnevie, but he was also an officer and had been for 17 years.

The relationship with the English was complicated. Sometimes trading partners out of Boston, and sometimes enemies. Therefore, English ships would, could and did arrive at any time. The soldiers and Acadians across the river could see their sails arriving in the Bay of Fundy, then sailing slowly up the Riviere Dauphin. They never knew if they were approaching as friend or foe that particular time, so they always had to be on guard. But they never, ever expected what transpired in 1710.

The powder magazine had been completed, and so had the new barracks. The trees and brush had been cleared along the river, so the fort had an unobstructed view of the river, but, ultimately, there wasn’t enough time, resources, or men to protect Port Royal or Acadia from the evil English. A few ships perhaps, or some Colonia militia, like before, but not the entire English fleet sent to crush their very existence.

On September 24, 1710, the English returned with their entire fleet: 36 transports, five warships, two bombardment galleys, and more soldiers than ants. 3400 of them, a combination of men from England and Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, along with Iroquois who had been acting as scouts. They brought more soldiers than Acadia, let alone Port Royal, had residents. There were only 1250 people in all of Acadia, and most of those were in distant locations like Beaubassin, Les Mines, and Cobequid. In Port Royal, there were only about 450, and only about 100 were men.

They were doomed.

For some time, Fort Anne, due to low morale, had been plagued with desertions, and sure enough, sailing on those British ships were those traitorous French deserters who had spilled the beans, including that morale was incredibly low. France had repeatedly failed Acadia. No reinforcements had arrived. They had either been forgotten or abandoned. It didn’t matter which, because now, they were paying the price.

They were no longer fighting for France. Now Jean Garceau was fighting for his very life and that of Marie and their three children, the youngest who had just been born in March. Would Jean ever see his six-month-old son again?

 At 2:15, sentries near Goat Island spotted sails appearing in the river, sailing towards Port Royal from the bay. These weren’t boats, they were all ocean-going vessels. Soldiers quickly realized they weren’t the long-anticipated French reinforcement ships, nor their privateer friends.

They spied more and more of them.

They were endless. They couldn’t even see all of them.

The Riviere Dauphin began to look like a port. Some reports said there were 35 ships, but others said there were more.

A sea of sails swayed in the wind, creating an uneasy nausea in those waiting and anticipating the attack. They scurried to finish as much of the fort as possible at the last minute, preparing for the unknown.

An unknown that promised to be worse than anything they could have imagined.

Acadia had less than 300 hungry, ill-equipped men or boys old enough to carry a gun, plus a few Mi’kmaq warriors who just happened to be there, plus 20 men from Quebec who were visiting to trade.

Worse yet, three-fourths of the French forces were described as “raw levies from the cities of France, destitute of military training and completely lacking in enthusiasm.” They couldn’t be allowed far from the fort, or they would disappear and join the other deserters, some of whom had already turned traitor and were helping the English.

Subercase removed the boats and canoes from the riverbanks where they were normally tied for crossing to the other side, which, of course, reduced morale even further. Provisions, including food, were scarce, even though it was fall. The Governor had been paying for everything, including the soldiers’ food, from his own coffers for the past two years.

While most men would cave, Subercase would not. The Acadians would not yield without a fight, even against overwhelming odds. Even if it meant death.

The English clearly knew the layout of the fort, town, and homes. They knew the condition of the soldiers and residents. And England, their motherland, had not abandoned them like France had abandoned Acadia. It’s not that the French monarchy and nobles didn’t know.

Subercase both pathetically and heroically wrote, thus,

“I have had means by my industry to borrow wherewith to subsist the garrison these two years. I have paid what I could, by selling all my moveables; I will give even to my last shirt, but I fear that all my pains will prove useless, if we are not succoured.”

Yet, bravely, he did not bow to the inevitable, and therefore, neither did the officers and soldiers under his command.

They did have at least a little time to prepare, as their Mi’kmaq brothers saw the ships arriving along the Digby Gully and fired upon them, but to no avail, of course. A sea of sails entering Digby narrows and blocked the harbour.

By October 5th, the English ships had arrived at Goat Island, within sight of Port Royal. It was like Hell was arriving.

They gathered the women and children inside the fort. The most vulnerable were sheltered in the black hole for protection. The black hole had no light or ventilation and in other circumstances, was a torture chamber.

The next day, the English began landing both north and south of Fort Anne and Port Royal, across Allain River and elsewhere.

The Acadian men fired upon the English from the fort but the cannons could not reach their ships in the river. There was no prayer of summoning the required strength or numbers to prevent the English incursion. It wasn’t for lack of spirit. It was for lack of France.

They engaged in a “hot skirmish.”

One of the British commanders attempted to erect a mortar battery in the muddy marshes across Allain Creek, on Abraham Dugas’s old marshes – but the soldiers were able to repulse them.

Across the river, from time to time, through the ships and smoke, Jean would have caught a glimpse of Marie’s parents’ home.

I’m sure he prayed with everything he had in him that they had all moved to safety.

The English erected their battery here, with the fort in full view just across Allain’s Creek.

They surrounded the fort and all of Port Royal. Across the river, above the fort, and below. Squeezing slowly from all sides, tighter and tighter.

Jean would have squinted to see the Levron home, across the river, when he could – but all he could see was ruins everyplace.

The Acadian and Mi’kmaq men engaged in guerrilla-style resistance outside the fort, firing small arms from houses and wooded areas. The Redcoats couldn’t see them well, as they dressed in skins and clothes like the Mi’kmaq that blended with nature. The French soldiers could spot their red coats easily – and there were red coats everywhere.

Many of their homes were burned.

Again.

Of course, they fired on the British from the fort, killing three, but were unable to prevent the British on the south side from establishing a camp about 400 yards from the fort – further up on or across from the Dugas land, shown in the distance, above.

The British landed along the river there, just behind the Hillsdale House.

They mounted their cannons and guns on the dykes, and pounded the Hell out of the fort every night, their cannons thundering and raining fire upon the fighters.

The star shape of the fort meant that their cannons could fire in any direction.

The English returned fire, of course, the deafening roar and blinding flash of the cannon’s discharge blending with the terrible and deadly scream of the bursting shells. And then, there were men’s screams, too.

It wasn’t enough.

The women and children were utterly terrified, praying continuously. They thought sure they would all die. Subercase requested a cease-fire so that the women and children could leave, which he was granted.

This suggests that at least some of the women were in the fort, which may have been the case for Marie and their three children.

Four days later, on October 10th, Subercase knew they were about to be massacred, along with everyone’s families who were now upstream but not out of harm’s way, He sent an officer to the English with a parley flag – but the English nearly killed him, not realizing his mission. The officer had not been announced in the traditional way, by a drummer. They exchanged blindfolded officers in good faith, hoping for negotiations.

Two days later, on the 12th, the English had advanced to within 300 feet of the fort and opened fire. They were so close that the French soldiers could hear their voices and their taunts.

They were this close – on the other side of the bushes, and the top of the hill is the Fort Anne rampart.

Not only were they just feet from the fort, the English used a new and very deadly invention for throwing grenades. All morning, the walls of the fort shook with the thunderous discharge of artillery – a murderous ball of hellfire, shells, and bursting grenades raining down upon the devoted few who stood manfully to their guns in a contest with but only one possible outcome.

Then, eerily, the fire abated, and the soldiers in the garrison waited – unable to see what was transpiring. The silence was deafening.

Two English officers could be seen approaching the fort on Dauphin Street bearing a flag of truce. Officers met them, blindfolded them, and led them in the gate, over the bridge, and to the Governor’s quarters.

The English commander had sent General Subercase a demand for surrender. That was at least better than the massacre that would have ensued otherwise.

The guns remained silent while negotiations ensued. Everyone’s future rested with the negotiating skills of Subercase, because it clearly didn’t rest with their ability to win the battle. The only possible saving grace would be the French fleet arriving in the harbour.

Those prayers would not be answered.

Still, they waited in terrified anticipation.

By the time the sun set, surrender terms had been reached. Their worst fears were not to be realized. They would not be massacred, and neither would their families. The English prisoners were released from the fort, and the British boats headed upriver to fetch the Acadian women and children. The absolute worst thing that the English could have done was to harm their families. However, they had no choice but to trust them.

The Acadians were allowed to keep six cannons and two mortars, although I have no idea why. Maybe as salve to their dignity. The English received the rest of what was inside the fort as spoils of war.

The men could not hold the fort, although they did their best in the face of insurmountable odds, and managed to last for 19 days. They also managed, thanks to Subercase, not to be slaughtered.

Hostilities ceased while the fort prepared for surrender. On October 16th, 1710, the key to the fort was handed over to the enemy by the revered and gallant Subercase. If you can’t win, save your men and at least live to fight another day.

As he did so, though, he quipped to Nicholson, the English commander, “hoping to give you a visit next spring.” Ironically, in some quarters, Subercase was accused of negligence.

Marie surely thought Jean would be massacred, but he was allowed to march out of the fort with full honors, carrying the French flag, “arms and baggage, drums beating and colors flying,” even in defeat.

Wretchedly clothed, bearing marks of bitter privation, the soldiers stood very tall and marched out of the fort with all the honors of war, saluting the English General as protocol required, as they passed through the British lines on their way to the water side of the fort that they had built. All they had left, other than their lives, was a small bit of dignity, afforded by the conquering English.

The English soldiers then marched across the bridge into the fort. Jean could hear their boots, rhythmically marching in triumph, as they stopped inside to halloo as they hoisted the Union Jack and drank the Queen’s health. The English ships and transports fired salvos of victory. The French soldiers stood stone-faced, staring into an uncertain future of defeat. Especially Jean. Yes, he was a French soldier, but he was also married to an Acadian woman. Now living on land controlled and conquered by the English, against whom he had fought. A man with a foot in both worlds. What would happen to him?

What would happen to his family?

You can see the same archway today at Fort Anne that the brave soldiers, including Jean, marched through.

As agreed, the French garrison of soldiers was transported to France by British ships. Most of the soldiers, who had been without pay or supplies for four years, were more than happy to be taken back to France and deposited on French soil, even if it was in a British warship.

We know that Jean was not required to leave. He and a few other French soldiers had married the daughters of Acadians, or Mi’kmaq. Some of those soldiers sailed away, abandoning their families, and others remained. Life was not by any means easy, as they were under constant suspicion and scrutiny. Ultimately, that may have contributed to his fate.

The surrender terms included specific provisions to protect the Acadian inhabitants. “Inhabitants within the gun range of the fort,” which was three miles, could remain in undisturbed possession of their land for up to two years if they wished, provided they were willing to swear an oath to the British Crown.

And therein lies the problem. That oath. But there was another option.

All French/Acadian residents could opt to move within those two years to any other French-held territory, such as Ile-Royal or Ile-St. Jean. Today, we know them as Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island.

Those at a greater distance than three miles were tolerated or allowed to remain on sufferance.

Previously, when the English won a battle, they eventually had simply gone away. The Acadians were hopeful that the English would just go away again and leave a few sentries as they had after past raids.

They also believed that the French fleet was just days or maybe weeks away someplace. They didn’t know that the French ships bound for Port Royal had been held and relieved of their supplies at Louisbourg. They were desperate there too.

There was no French fleet and no ships to rescue Port Royal.

This defeat had to be incredibly humiliating for a soldier.

The Acadians had done this so many times. Their homes had been burned at least twice, if not three or four times, since Jean had married Marie in 1703. But this time was different, because now the English were in charge.

There was at least a little preservation of dignity, but this was the end of French Acadia.

The next few weeks were, at best, confusing.

When the fort fell, the priest attempted to help by reuniting the Acadian settlers “in the upper region of the river” beyond that three-mile marker to protect them from the terms of capitulation requiring that despised oath of allegiance. Considered seditious by the British, Father Durand was taken prisoner in January 1711 and transported to Boston. Later that year, he was returned in a prisoner exchange.

But Jean was not there to greet him.

Gone Too Soon

Jean died sometime in 1711, between the dates of January 17^th and the end of November.

How do we know this?

Recall that Father Durand was captured in January and taken to Boston. The last date that he performed any function and recorded it in the parish registers was January 17^th. Of course, baptisms, marriages, and deaths did not occur every day, but at least one occurred every few days. In other words, Father Durand might have been in Port Royal a few days longer, but not many.

At the end of 1711, Father Durand’s name appears once again in the parish registers on December 20^th, where he is performing baptisms and otherwise catching up on priestly duties that were neglected in his absence.

There was a priest who performed a few baptisms in late April, but Justin Durand recorded them in the parish registers when he returned.

Given that it took about 28 days to sail from Boston to Port Royal, he probably left Boston at the end of November.

After the more pressing events had taken place, in early 1712, in the registry, Father Durand recorded the death of Jean Garceau and several others in one entry.

The Nova Scotia Archives have omitted one name in their translation, but you can see the names clearly, including “Joseph Garcot.”

There was no adult Joseph Garcot, and we know from later records that his infant son, Joseph, died in 1789, so this had to be Jean Garceau.

After the names of the people who died, Angelique Comeau, wife of Jacques Laure, Germain Bourgeois, Joseph Garcot, and Pierre Teriot, the entry by Father Durand says. “tout mortes dans 1711 devant ma captivite.”

This translates literally to either:

• All died in 1711 before (in front of) my captivity.
• All died in 1711 during my captivity.

Two entries later, another woman, Marie La Perrier, wife of Pierre Le Blanc dit Jasmin, is noted the same way, but the wording is slightly different and says that she “et mort lors que j’etais a Boston dans 1711,“ which translates to “died when I was in Boston in 1711.” This is how we know that Jean did not die during the battle in 1710.

What neither entry says is that any of these people were in Boston WITH Father Durand.

What it does say is that they died IN 1711, not before, and while Father Durand was in Boston which explains why there was no death/burial entry for them when they died.

Since Father Durand recorded other deaths in 1710 and other clerical events in early 1711, it only makes sense that if these people had died before he was kidnapped, that he would have recorded their deaths and burials at the time they occurred, not later.

Furthermore, we know for a fact that Germaine Bourgeois was NOT in Boston with the priest because he was involved in the Massacre at Bloody Creek in July of 1711 in Acadia, and died after he was imprisoned – reportedly in Fort Anne.

Additionally, a married woman, Marie Comeau, was involved. There is confusion surrounding this identification, because a marriage record for Jacques Lore clearly states her name as Angelique, not Marie. There’s also a record that I have not been able to confirm that she gave birth on September 22, 1711, possibly in Pobomcoup, to a daughter. There is no baptismal record in either 1711 or 1712, as reported by some researchers, in the Port Royal records. We do know that Jacques Lore is listed in the 1714 census with a wife and two children, and remarried in 1721. There are no baptismal records or other records involving Angelique or any other wife during this timeframe. There is only one Jacques Lord, so there is little question that Father Durand is referring to his wife – but at best, this is confusing. I also question that the English would have kidnapped a woman, but we just don’t know for sure.

Let’s look at the evidence we have surrounding Jean’s death.

Father Durand did record one burial on October 14^th, 1710, stating that a child had died during the siege against the English.

No other burials were recorded during that time, which may or may not mean that the French and Acadians experienced none. However, if the child’s death and burial were recorded, it stands to reason that other deaths would have been too. I found no recorded battle deaths, but assuredly several men were injured. Two younger, soldier-age men died later in 1710, so it’s possible that Jean Garceau was injured.

I found an interesting book that gives accounts of the 1710/1711 event. I don’t see any mention of Acadian hostages in 1711 though.

The book also says Durand was held hostage for two years, and we know unquestionably that he was not.

The single most compelling piece of evidence that Jean Garceau was NOT with Father Durand in Boston is the fact that his widow, Marie Levron, married Alexander Richard only six days after Father Durand returned from Boston and recorded the entry in the parish register as the first marriage he performed less than a week after returning

Father Durand performed the marriage of Marie Levron, widow of Jean Garceau, to Alexander Richard the day after Christmas, December 26^th. If he had brought the news of Jean’s death with him, informing his widow, I doubt very seriously if she would marry six days later.

It’s much more likely that Jean had died months earlier, and Marie was just waiting for a priest to marry her to Alexander.

By late December, she had had enough time to grieve, especially considering that she had three babies and needed a husband. Farming and raising a family in an agrarian society requires two people.

Based on all of the evidence, taken together, I think Jean Garceau died in Acadia and is probably buried in the Garrison graveyard at Fort Anne with other soldiers and many Acadian family founders who died during this time.

Alternatively, if he died in or near Port Royal, he could have been buried in the cemetery by the Mass House at BelleIsle, but I suspect that they buried him where he fought the good fight.

It just seems so unfair that after all he survived, that something laid him low after the battles were over.

Closing Notes

I simply could not have done this without Cousin Mark, for whom I am exceedingly grateful. Mark has the patience of a saint, and yes, I’ve told him as much. It’s wonderful to have such an amazing cousin!

Here are closing thoughts from Mark:

As for Garceau/Soulard, please remember that I had NOT found the records to be conclusive, but tentative, as I could not find Jean’s birth record anywhere.

Regarding Jean’ parents:

“I believe it very possible, however that they were, (his parents) although given the marriage date and the list of children appearing regularly thereafter, it seems likely that if they were his parents, he was born out of wedlock before 1685. Pierre was 33 when married and Jacquette 18. It would also account for his joining the military at a young age and going overseas. But all that is speculative.”

Nevertheless, the couple I found remains the best possibility, after considerable research. I placed research notes on Jean Garceau’s WikiTree profile.

And this was one of the “easiest” Acadians to research.

Easy, indeed, Mark. There is nothing easy about them – Acadian research, nor their lives and challenges they so bravely faced.

They unflinchingly stared terror straight in the eyes.

__________________________________________________

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George Franklin McNeil (1934-2018) was my cousin and friend. I had the privilege of meeting him in person in 2004 in Wilkes County, North Carolina, land of our ancestors.

By that time, I had been corresponding with George and his wife, Joyce Dancy McNeil (1937-2003) for decades. I was related to both George and Joyce individually in multiple ways through several Wilkes County families: the McNiels, however you spell it, Vannoy, Hickerson, Shepherd, and more.

George and Joyce spent more than a quarter century traipsing through the mountains and documenting the cemeteries, their locations, and burials in Wilkes County. Many were unmaintained family plots, deep in the underbrush, nearly lost forever. This mission was truly their legacy and a result of their love of history and genealogy.

Joyce and George were kind enough to send me letters with information when I was a novice genealogist, finding my way and making those wonderful early discoveries of who my ancestors were, and where they lived. Yes, before the days of the internet and databases where hints are served up to eager genealogists. George never adopted technology and staunchly refused to sign up for an email account. “Call me,” he would say. How I wish I could now.

As I matured in the field, I was able to contribute to their research and eventually test George’s Y-DNA and autosomal DNA.

Before his death, George donated his research and cemetery database to the Wilkes County Genealogical Society as an avenue to fund their efforts. The McNeil Family History Room carries his name, and lookups are available for a fee.

George penned his understanding of the McNeil/McNiel genealogy before his death. He distributed it widely among those requesting information. I think he got tired of having to write the same information over and over in letter after letter. When I asked if I could share this, he cheerfully said, “Of course.” George is gone now, and unfortunately, I can’t ask him any more questions.

There are no more trips with Cousin George riding through the beautiful rolling countryside to stare at fields where cemeteries once stood before chicken houses usurped the few flat places in the county – clearly flat land that was once just as eagerly sought-after for cemeteries.

George drew maps of the locations he was going to take you to. He drew maps for me, and several cousins have sent me maps he drew for them as well. He would tell you that he would “ride along” because otherwise, you would never find the locations. He was dead right, too.

In honor of George’s years of work, I’m publishing the document cousin George sent me about our ancestor, the Elder George McNiel, as cousin George referred to him. George would want this to be shared and certainly took every opportunity to do so himself.

I wrote an original article about the Reverend George McNiel, here, but since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to obtain additional records. After George’s work, I’ll have some commentary (did you have any doubt about that) and will provide additional records and updated DNA information in a future article.

George’s original document didn’t include photos, so I’ve added some that I took with him in the appropriate places.

Thank you, Cousin George, and Godspeed. PS – If you figure out who George’s parents were – could you please let me know! 😊

George’s article begins here. My commentary is noted as “RJE Note.” Everything else, other than photos, are verbatim.

What IS the McNeil Family History?

(By George Franklin McNeil, 4G-Grandson through one line, and 5G-Grandson through another line of the George McNiel who arrived in Wilkes County, NC in 1778, and died in the Parsonville Community in 1805. My late wife, Joyce Dancy McNeil, was an avid genealogist during the last 25 years of her life. She spent many of those years trying to unravel my ancestry. She obviously uncovered more questions than she found answers. This was before the days of the Internet and Google, so we accumulated quite a file of printed material. Much of it is contradictory. I will try to present the major differences in a logical sequence, and let you choose the story you like best.)

In this paper, I will refer to the progenitor as Elder George McNiel. I do that for two reasons. He was the first McNiel to arrive in Wilkes County, probably arriving in 1778, the first year of the existence of the county. Almost every McNeil family since then has had a son named George. To clarify which George I am talking about, I use Elder when I am talking about this eldest George. He was also a Baptist preacher.

In those days, Baptists were very adamant about equality in the church. God regarded every person as equal, they said, even though they didn’t let women say much in church. They absolutely prohibited the use of any kind of title that would suggest that one person had authority over another in the hierarchy of things. Most church covenants of the day included a section stating that no one was to be called anything other than “Brother” or “Sister.” They did make one exception. Preachers and deacons were called Elders of the Church, and were often referred to in church records by the title of Elder. So, our George was an Elder in our family, and an Elder in the Baptist Church.

Ask any McNeil, McNiell, McNeil or McNeill whose family roots extend to the tri-state area of Northwestern North Carolina, Southwestern Virginia or Eastern Tennessee, and they will tell you they are Scottish. Their earliest known ancestor was a Baptist preacher named George McNeil who arrived in Wilkes County about the time of the Revolutionary War. He bought land and settled in the Reddies River Community, but helped start many of the earliest Baptist churches in parts/most/all of the three state area. Minutes of the Strawberry, Yadkin and Mountain Baptist Associations record that he often moderated their annual meetings. He started a church near his home that was sometimes referred to in religious records as George McNiel’s Meetinghouse, and sometimes as Deepeford Meetinghouse. He was elected Wilkes County Register of Deeds and served in that office until he died. In his later years, he moved to a place on the headwaters of Lewis Fork Creek that became known as Parsonville. He is buried in a graveyard in a cow pasture in that community.

So far, so good. But from here, each descendant’s story usually differs significantly from, or completely contradicts another.

My Daddy’s Version

(RJE Note – George’s father was Commodore Christie McNeil (1898-1988), son of George Franklin McNeil (1866-1935), son of Jesse A. “Tess” McNeil (1825-1891), son of George McNeil (1802-1878), son of Rev. James McNiel (1763-1833), son of the Elder George McNiel born about 1720 and died in 1805.)

McNiels are Scotch-Irish. The prefix “Mc” means “son of” in Scotland, so McNiel means “son of Niel.” We don’t descend from the MacNiels of Barra (but I can’t remember where he said we came from.) Our earliest ancestor in this section was Elder George. While North Carolina was still an English colony, George came up the Cape Fear River and settled in what became Moore County amongst a large contingent of Scotch-Irish around Cross Creek — now Fayetteville in Cumberland County. Soon, he moved a little further northwest and came under the influence of the Sandy Creek Baptist congregation and one of their famous preachers like Shubal Stearns and the Murphy Brothers. Eventually, the Sandy Creek Baptists commissioned Elder George as a church planter and encouraged him to go to the wild frontier in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina.

About the time of the Revolutionary War, Elder George came to Wilkes County and bought land on the South Fork of Reddies River adjoining Robert Shepherd’s land. He helped organize Briar Creek Baptist Church, and (Old) Roaring River Baptist Church. He was involved in some way in starting Lewis Fork Baptist Church. Three Forks Baptist Church in Boone claims that he was involved in their early history. He started a preaching point on top of Deep Ford Hill, just a short distance from his home. (Although Flat Rock Baptist Church’s minutes say their preacher went to help organize a church here in about 1792, I can’t find any record of it being officially organized at that time. It was organized on ye 7th Aprile 1798 as “Baptist Church of Christ at Reddies River” which was the normal naming convention for Baptist churches of the day. That congregation used the old Meetinghouse for about 10 years, then moved to Seed Tick Hill — across the road and river from Old Union Township School — and half a century later to its present location a short distance further up the river. It is now known as Old Reddies River Primitive Baptist Church, and services are no longer held there.)

In his later age, Elder George moved west to the headwaters of Lewis Fork Creek and started a church. (Daddy thought the name of the church was Pine Run Baptist. However, Pine Run is just over the crest of the Blue Ridge in Ashe County and Pine Run Baptist Church is located there today.) Elder George is buried in an old graveyard across the creek from where he lived.

Our line of descent came through Elder George’s son, James, whose wife was Mary ‘Polly’ Shepherd. (Daddy didn’t know the name of Elder George’s wife or of his other children.)

George William McNiel’s Additions

George William McNiel was the son of Elder George’s son Thomas and his wife Mary Hannah Parsons. George W. was born in 1825, so his grandfather had been dead 20 years when he was born. As the centennial of Elder George’s death approached (RJE -in 1905), some of the family came up with the idea of having a ceremony to mark the anniversary. Rev. William Harrison Eller of Greensboro wrote George W. asking for any information he had about his grandfather. George W did not answer the letter for almost two years, and the information he finally supplied was limited. One of his statements was “My grandfather (Elder George) came into the State of Virginia with his brothers John and Thomas.” He also wrote, “He came into the State of Virginia and married a Miss Coats.” He then lists the names of some of the children and grandchildren of Elder George.

Booklet Distributed at the Centennial Observance of Elder George’s Death

Pages 90-101 of Judge Hayes’ book, Genealogy of the McNiel Clan, appear to be a reproduction or summary of the Centennial Observance hand-out. Page 92 refers to “tradition,” but no source is mentioned. It says Elder George had a daughter, Mary, born in Scotland. It also says that Elder George was closely associated with the Sandy Creek Baptists and their preachers, Shubal Stearns, the Murphy Brothers and John Gano. (RJE note – read about John Gano here, here, here and here in conjunction with his early forays into North Carolina and his association with the Vannoy family.)

George “attended upon the ministry” of Shubal Stearns before his ordination. (From the structure of the whole paragraph, I can’t tell whether Stearns was preparing Elder George for ordination or George was preparing Stearns for ordination.)

(RJE note – Stearns was baptized into the ministry in 1751. Read about him here, and here. Elder George’s preaching style may have been similar to Stearns’s charismatic “Holy whine.” Sandy Creek was Stearns’s home church. He died and was buried there in 1771.)

(RJE note -You can see the Sandy Creek Baptist Church, above, here, here, and here.)

Rev. Joseph Murphy was baptized at Deep River, near the McNiel home in Moore County. Elder George served as a volunteer chaplain during the Revolutionary War.

The writing includes much history about early Baptist churches and associations, with Elder George’s name sprinkled here and there. However, it is impossible to determine the dates when he was involved. For instance, it may have been started in the 1750’s and still exists today. Then Elder George may be said to have been associated with it, but we can’t tell whether it was in the 1750’s or fifty years later.

If you have not read his version of family history, you should borrow a copy of Hayes’ Genealogy of the McNiel Clan from the library at Wilkes Community College and read pages 90-101.

(RJE note – a full text version of this book is available at FamilySearch, here.)

History of North Carolina Baptists, by G. W. Paschal – 1955

Shubal Stearns organized the Sandy Creek Baptist Association in 1758. He died on 29 Nov 1771. The Yadkin Baptist Association was organized in 1786. The Mountain Baptist Association was organized in 1797. George McNiel is mentioned several times:

• 1776 – In a list of “unlettered” preachers active in Northwestern North Carolina
• 1786-89 – Moderator of the Strawberry Baptist Association
• 1787-89 – Moderator of the Yadkin Baptist Association
• 1794-1800 – Messenger from Briar Creek Baptist Church to the Association
• 1794 – Helped organize Lewis Fork Baptist Church
• 1795 – Preacher at Lewis Fork Baptist Church

Version Published in 1933

James Larkin Pearson was a native Wilkes Countian who gained a reputation as an author, poet and newspaper publisher. His mother was Mary Louise McNiel, daughter of Larkin McNiel and Nellie Ferguson McNiel, so he was Elder George’s Great-grandson. In 1933, Pearson published the first (and only) issue of The McNiel Family Record. In it, he stated his intention to print an issue each month and to feature one McNiel family per issue. He solicited paid subscriptions and submissions of family histories. (His response must have been limited in both endeavors — no more issues were printed.) In the first issue, Pearson printed an article based on information furnished by Rev. Eller. It said that George had departed from Glasgow, Scotland along with his brothers, John and Thomas. Mary (George’s daughter) came to see them off on their voyage to America. She remained on the wharf, waving goodbye and George stood on the aft deck looking back, until the land vanished over the horizon.

(RJE Note – George and Thomas McNeil are both found as adults in Spotsylvania County, VA in 1752, both taking tailor apprentices.)

The McNiel Reunion

In 1935, a big McNiel reunion was scheduled – well promoted and advertised. My father and his brother, who were living in Roanoke Rapids, NC at the time, heard about it, and even in Great Depression days were able to scratch up enough money for train fare to North Wilkesboro. As best I can reconstruct events, Robert McNeill, one of Milton McNeill’s sons (that’s the same Milton who served on the centennial memorial committee), an attorney in Washington, DC, spearheaded the reunion idea. At about the same time, Robert was the leader in organizing The Clan MacNeil Association of America and was elected its first president. It seems that Robert enlisted James Larkin Pearson and Johnson J. Hayes as coordinators of the reunion.

The event was well attended, according to what Daddy told me. The organizers announced to the attendees that they hoped to gather information about all the descendants of Elder George McNiel. To that end, each family was encouraged to gather and write down the name and vital dates of every member of their immediate family, and trace their McNiel lineage back as far as they could. After everybody responded, some variety of book would be published to present all this history. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm, and the heads of many families promised to get to work on the project.

Then came the keynote address by Robert McNeill. Unfortunately, he chose not to talk about family history, but launched into a hard-core political campaign speech. He extolled the Hoover Administration and denounced the Roosevelt Administration. Then he urged all those present to be sure to vote to return the Republican Party to power next year.

In rural and small-town Carolina, in the midst of the Great Depression, there were those in the audience who did not share Robert’s opinions. They were offended by his speech, doubly so because he had chosen to use the crowd that had gathered for a totally different purpose. The reunion ended in disarray, with some families vowing that they “wouldn’t give him air if he were in a jug.” Some families sent in information about their families, others didn’t send in anything. No published data came out of the reunion until many years later.

Genealogy of the McNiel Clan, by Judge Johnson J. Hayes – 1965

Some 30 years after the ill-fated reunion, Judge Hayes attempted to make sense of the material that had been submitted much earlier. The result is a booklet that he self-published and has been out of print for almost 50 years. Today, his booklet is given more credence than it probably deserves. With his quite detailed history of Wilkes County, titled The Land of Wilkes, the Judge established a reputation as a thorough and accurate researcher. Many people today want to think that the information in his booklet is the result of his personal research, and is entitled to great respect. However, on page 1 he plainly says that the booklet is based on information submitted following the reunion. While the booklet is a valuable tool for researchers of McNiel family history, everybody needs to be aware that there are many omissions and many errors in the data presented.

Ben Rose’s Version

In the latter part of the 20th century, one of the Baptist Conventions in Virginia asked Ben Rose to write a history of early Baptist activities in the state, and to develop profiles of as many early preachers and leaders as he could. He did not research our Elder George, but he developed a profile on Elder Thomas McNiel of Spotsylvania County.

Rose concluded that Thomas’ parents and grandparents had been born in the colonies. Two earlier generations had been ship owners and masters engaged in local trade between ports in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. It is Rose’s conjecture that the family of the master lived on board the ship, and probably did not claim a home ashore.

What’s the Real Story?

Nobody knows for sure! After spending more than a third of a century trying to make sense of the stories told about Elder George McNiel, that is my honest evaluation. We have found nothing that we can tie to him before 1758. The name, George McNiel, appears a few times in Spotsylvania County, VA records. Those records were made at the time each particular event happened. They all occurred between 1758 and 1775. His involvement in helping organize Baptist churches in Northwestern North Carolina and participating in and moderating the annual meetings of the Strawberry, Yadkin, and Mountain Baptist Associations is documented in minutes recorded at the time they happened. Public records confirm that he served as Register of Deeds for Wilkes County. Written accounts of the proceedings of the NC General Assembly confirm that he was considered for a pension for Revolutionary War service and it was denied on the basis that he had not officially enlisted in a militia unit and he had already been compensated for his horse. These events in North Carolina happened after 1778. I believe the Spotsylvania County VA and the North Carolina records refer to the same person.

All the details about his personal life—date of birth, place of birth, names of parents, education, place(s) of residence before 1758, names of wife/wives, date(s) of marriage(s), total number of children, exact dates of birth of some children, place of birth of the children, involvement with Sandy Creek Baptists and their preachers, and many other details—are either omitted or based on word of mouth accounts passed down for a hundred years through families of different children, grandchildren, etc. The first time I can find that any of this kind of information was written down was when his grandson, George William McNiel, responded to an inquiry from Rev. W. H. Eller in 1898—almost a century after Elder George’s death. This grandson never saw his grandfather, being born 20 years after Elder George’s death. That it took George William almost two years to respond to the inquiry indicates to me that he was not very interested in such things and probably didn’t know much family history. He came up with something as a favor to Rev. Eller.

Over the past century, many different people have taken the few pieces of known information and elaborated on them. Some would not have been above a little puffery, or of adding some events just to make things interesting. When I questioned the details one author had written, he replied, “I can’t prove that it happened, but you can’t prove that it didn’t.”

If you find a nicely written, fairly complete biography of Elder George, my advice is to look at the sources. Unless those sources were recorded at the time the event happened, take it with a grain of salt. I can take selected versions of material printed after 1900 and make his story say anything I want it to say.

Some family traditions, and his tombstone, indicate that Elder George McNiel was born in Glasgow, Scotland. If The McNiel Family Record is correct in saying that he had brothers John and Thomas, and if you believe Spotsylvania County records that indicate that Thomas and George, who were neighbors in the county, were brothers, and if you believe Ben Rose’s profile of Thomas’s ancestors compiled for Virginia Baptists, then George and his parents were born in the colonies, and their distant ancestors had lived aboard their ship. Therefore, he would not have been born in Glasgow, nor would he have departed from there, leaving his daughter, Mary, standing on the wharf. If you believe that George, John, and Thomas sailed from Glasgow, leaving his daughter Mary on the wharf, you open a whole different can of worms. Who was Mary’s mother?

Was the mother dead or alive? George is said to have fathered a daughter named Mary in America in the 1774/84 time frame. If he had a daughter named Mary in Scotland, would he have named another one Mary? I don’t think there is proof of where George was born. You can accept the version that suits your fancy.

Who was George’s wife (wives)? If he left a daughter, Mary, on the wharf in Scotland, perhaps he had a wife there that we don’t know about. I’ve never heard of one. Did she die in Scotland? Did she later join George in the colonies? Records are silent about this possibility.

Elder George’s grandson, George William, wrote that his grandfather “came into the state of Virginia and married a Miss Coats.” Where did she come from? When did they get married? How does his “Miss Coats” turn into “Mary Coats”? Public records in Wilkes County show that George and Sally McNiel witnessed a bill of sale transferring ownership of 3 Negro slaves, August, Cumbo, and Bird, from John Stubblefield of Wilkes to Jacob Nichols of Rowan on 3 Oct 1782. Documents in the loose estate papers in the State Archives in Raleigh, dated 2 Feb 1808, show that William McNiel was the administrator of the estate of George and Sarah McNiel in Wilkes County. There could have been a wife named Mary, but public records suggest that from at least as early as 1782 until his death, his wife’s name was Sarah.

(RJE Note – I wrote about Mary, Sarah, Miss Coates, here.)

Most family histories attribute eight children to Elder George and Mary Coats. The dates of birth range from 1758 for John to 1782 for Thomas. That’s 24 years. While not impossible, that’s a rather long period for a woman to be having babies. If we examine the documented and estimated dates of birth for the children, there is one child, then a gap of 7 years, six more children, a gap of 6 years, and then one more. That’s not a natural pattern for a woman to have children. Were there two or three babies who died during each of those gaps? Did Mary actually have 12-15 babies? Or did a wife die and there was an elapsed period of time before he remarried?

There were two Federal Censuses taken during Elder George’s lifetime—1790 and 1800. At that time, the Census did not include the name of each member of the family. Only the name of the head of household was recorded, along with the number of males and the number of females living in the household, placed in broad age groupings. There is no woman in his household in either Census old enough to have been the mother of all the children attributed to Mary Coats. It’s impossible to fit the ages of the children attributed to Elder George into the age groupings in the Censuses. Of course, some of his children could have been visiting somebody else, or some grandchildren could have been visiting in his home on the day the Census Enumerator came by. Anyway, the Censuses don’t fit the family as traditionally known.

When can George and his brothers first be documented in the colonies? From several sources, we are told that Elder George worked with the Sandy Creek Baptists and their preachers, especially Shubal Stearns. Paschal tells us that the Sandy Creek Association was formed in 1758 and that Stearns died in 1771. My wife spent several months looking through records of the Cross Creek NC Scots and could not find a George, John, or Thomas that could fit into what we know about later records. If the three brothers lived in the Cross Creek community, she couldn’t find their trail. If he were so closely associated with Shubal Stearns and Sandy Creek, why did Paschal not find him there? Stearns and Sandy Creek are quite well covered by Paschal. Why is George mentioned by Paschal only after 1786, the time when we know he was living on Reddies River? A George McNiel that I believe was our ancestor was living in Spotsylvania County, VA during this period. Did he travel between Spotsylvania County and Sandy Creek?

Spotsylvania County, VA public records show that a Thomas McNiel bought land from John Lea on 4 Aug 1752. Records suggest that Thomas was a Baptist preacher. He eventually wound up in Caswell County, NC, where his will was proved at the December 1781 session of court. There is no trail of John.

On 7 Mar 1758, George McNiel witnessed the will of William Matthews in Spotsylvania County.

He and Thomas were charged with attending unauthorized religious services in Caroline County, VA, in 1768. The charges were dismissed. Elder George was assistant to the preacher at Lower Spotsylvania Baptist Church (now Wallers Baptist Church) in 1772.

On 13 Feb 1775, Daniel and George Musick sold 68 acres of land in Spotsylvania County, adjoining John Shepherd, to George McNiel. In that same year, George McNiel witnessed the deed when John Shepherd sold 500 acres in Spotsylvania County to Mack McDaniel.

On 12 Mar 1778, George McNiel purchased 120 acres on the South Fork of Reddies River in Wilkes County, NC, adjoining land owned by Roland Judd and Robert Shepherd. On 20 Nov 1778, he entered 132 acres on both sides of the South Fork of Reddies River adjoining Robert Shepherd. This was Entry No. 35, indicating that it was made very shortly after Wilkes County was formed. NC Grant No. 442 was issued for this land on 23 Oct 1782. On 15 Apr 1780, he entered another 100 acres on the South Fork of Reddies River, and on 2 Aug 1791, he entered 222 acres on the North Fork of Lewis Fork Creek.

We know that the McNiels and Shepherds were neighbors in Spotsylvania County. Two of the McNiels married Shepherds. That the McNiels settled beside the Shepherds in Wilkes County indicates to me that the Wilkes County George McNiel is the same one who had lived beside the Shepherds in Virginia.

Virginia records indicate that George was involved in religious activities before he came to Wilkes County. Tradition says he was trained as a Presbyterian preacher but became a Baptist after reaching the colonies. One story I have heard was that he said he changed because there were more Baptists to preach to. In History of North Carolina Baptists by G. W. Paschal, Elder George is on a list of “unlettered” preachers active in Northwestern North Carolina. So, how well trained was he?

Old church records substantiate his involvement in establishing Brier Creek Baptist Church and (Old) Roaring River Baptist Church in Wilkes County. In the early 1790s, he started a preaching point on top of Deep Ford Hill, a short distance from his home at the time. Early Baptist records sometimes refer to this as George McNiel’s Meetinghouse and sometimes as Deep Ford Meetinghouse. (Prior to American independence, the Anglican Church was the “official church,” supported by taxes and having clergy approved by the Church in England. A building used by the Anglican Church was the only facility in colonial America that could be called a “Church.” The places where people of any other religious persuasion worshipped could not be called a church, so the name given to them was “Meetinghouse.” By the 1790s, after Independence, Baptist worship sites legally could have been called a church, but people were so accustomed to calling them “Meetinghouses” that the term continued for years. In fact, I can remember old folks continuing to call the churches in our community Meetinghouses as late as the 1940s.) The sites of the old church and its associated graveyard have undergone so many changes that neither can be identified today.

Minutes of (Old) Reddies River (Primitive) Baptist Church state that the Deep Ford Meetinghouse was where that church was constituted on “ye 7th Aprile 1798” and that they continued to use it for worship services for the next ten years or so. The location of the road has been changed. The Deep Ford is no longer used and its exact site is no longer remembered. The supposed site of the church is covered in timber and has been logged several times, so any trace of a church would have been destroyed years ago.

The McNiel and Shepherd families were active in the new church, Reddies River (Primitive) Baptist Church. I assume they had been active in the older Deep Ford Meetinghouse. There is no way for us to know who was buried in the old graveyard. I can only assume that the older Shepherds and perhaps a couple of Elder George’s children were among those buried there. Many residents of the community with whom I have spoken can remember the old graveyard and remember that it was located in the southwestern quadrant formed by the intersection of Highway 16 and Shingle Gap Road. Ann McGlamery Carter, who grew up almost next door to the graveyard, told me that she remembered playing hide and seek in it when she was a little girl. She thought there were a few inscribed tombstones, but most of them were fieldstones. Some were large enough for her to hide behind, she said. It is a common allegation by residents of the community that Vance Lovette used the tombstones in the foundation of a chicken house that he built in the 1930s on or close to the graveyard site. (The old chicken house ceased being used in the 1970s and was bulldozed into a nearby ravine a few years later.) Several mobile homes are now located on the site of the old graveyard.

(RJE note – George took me to this location. I wrote about it in two articles about Robert Shepherd and his daughter, Elizabeth Shepherd.)

Elder George was also involved in establishing Lewis Fork Baptist Church in Wilkes County and Three Forks Baptist Church in what is now Watauga County. Most churches of that day had services on only one Sunday a month, and the same preacher served several churches. Therefore, it is probable that Elder George preached at most of the Baptist churches in existence at that time in the tri-state area. He was active in various associations of churches, often moderating their annual meetings.

George’s Later Life

I think it would have been about 1797 or 1798 when he moved from his home along the South Fork of Reddies River to a place on the headwaters of Lewis Fork Creek that is now called the Parsonsville Community.

A new church, Reddies River (Primitive) Baptist Church, was organized at the location of his old church in 1798. That probably meant that Elder George had stopped using the church building. I think that is about the time he moved away from Reddies River. The new congregation didn’t have a preacher for years, but Elder George was called upon for baptisms and funerals. I don’t have any documentary proof of why he moved to the North Prong of Lewis Fork Creek. He had entered land on Lewis Fork Creek in 1791. Perhaps, for some reason, he preferred it to his home on Reddies River. His youngest son, Thomas, must have moved with him, because a few years later, Thomas married Mary Hannah Parsons, whose family gave the Parsonsville community its name. Thomas and Hannah are buried in the same graveyard as Elder George.

I can remember when a rather large house stood on the opposite side of the Parsonsville Road from the graveyard where Elder George is buried. It had been the home of George W. Welch. Two chimneys from that house are still standing in 2013.

(RJE Note – This is a 2004 photo of the location as shown to me by Cousin George when we visited the Elder George McNeil cemetery.)

I have seen descriptions of the location of Elder George’s house as being “back of the George Welch house.” To me, that sounds like the Welch house was standing when George moved there. However, that is not the case. Actually, Welch married America A. Parsons, Elder George’s great-granddaughter, and they probably lived in the house from about 1875 to 1940. I think Elder George’s house was back of where the George Welch house was later built.

Records seem to prove that Elder George served as Wilkes County Register of Deeds until close to the time he died. His signature appears on some of the earliest documents. I’m not sure where the official office of the Register of Deeds was in those days, and I don’t know how frequently he had to be in the office. In those days, documents had to be “proved” in a regular session of court before they could be recorded. Court was held only three or four times a year. Perhaps the only time he had to be in the office was during and immediately after each court session. If that is true, I can see how he could live in Parsonsville and attend his office in Wilkesboro, some fifteen miles away. However, if he had to be in the office every day, I don’t understand how an 85+ year old man tolerated such a commute. I don’t think the roads would have accommodated a buggy, so his transportation would have been by horseback. Perhaps he could have boarded with someone living near town during the week and went home only on weekends. (A problem is that there was no town during the early part of his tenure.) In 1799, the General Assembly ordered Wilkes County to acquire some land for the county seat, and build a court house, stocks, and jail. The land that was acquired had disputed ownership and was tied up in a lawsuit until 1837.

Elder George died 7 June 1805. As the centennial of his death approached, family members came up with the idea of having a memorial service to commemorate the anniversary. The resolution by the Brushy Mountain Association to observe the centennial of his death says that no tombstone had been erected to mark his grave. The Brushy Mountain Baptist Association provided funds to buy one. A committee of relatives was named to coordinate the proceedings. The committee gathered information about Elder George’s life and had a booklet printed that was made available to those attending the service in 1905. The tombstone was erected in the graveyard directly across the creek and road from where his house had been located. It is a granite shaft about 10 inches square and some 4 feet high, resting on a base of three granite blocks of graduated size. The shaft is inscribed on three sides:

“Elder George McNeill was born in Glasgow, Scotland in or about the year 1720 and departed this life June 7, 1805.”

“He was one of the pioneer Baptist preachers and organized the Yadkin and later the Mountain Baptist Associations. He was a patriotic citizen and companion of the American Army in the war of the Revolution.”

“Committee: J. M. Eller, J. O. McNeill, G. W. Walsh, T. L. McNeill, M. McNeill.”

Whether or not the granite marker is supposed to be at the exact spot of his grave, or whether it just marks its general location, I do not know. There are no other inscribed tombstones at adjoining graves. His son, Thomas, and his grandson, George William, are buried in the graveyard, but their graves are a couple of rows west of his tombstone.

Over the years, the graveyard was not maintained. Trees and weeds grew in it. When I first remember it, it was in a cow pasture. Periodically, the cattle would turn over the tombstones, including Elder George’s.

It was probably in the 1980s when a few descendants cleaned up the graveyard and built a barbed-wire fence around it. Trees continued to grow in it.

I visited the graveyard periodically, and by the beginning of the 21st century, the barbed-wire fence was down in places, and most of the tombstones were turned over again. Weeds and briars were so thick that it was best to visit in the wintertime. In the fall of 2005, a group of descendants and friends spent one Saturday cutting and removing weeds and bushes, probing for and resetting grave markers, and removing a large dead poplar tree that threatened the graveyard. Since then, the graveyard has been cleaned off about once a year. The land is owned by an elderly man who lives outside of Wilkes County. The cemetery is not separately deeded nor is there a deeded right-of-way to it from the road. (RJE note – George wrote this document in 2013.)

How Do You Spell McNeil Anyway?

You will note a discrepancy between the way the surname is spelled on the tombstone and in this commentary. Signatures on various public documents show plainly that Elder George spelled his surname “McNiel.” Later, it became fashionable in some branches of the family to add an extra “I.”

One bachelor who was considered to be rather well off, and who retained the original spelling, had brothers, each married with a family to support and struggling financially, who changed their name to McNiell. The bachelor told someone, rather facetiously I suspect, that when your net worth exceeded a thousand dollars, you could add the extra “I.”

For some reason, some of the family started using McNeil or McNeill. One of the earlier advocates of the McNeill version was Rev. Milton McNeill. He was not only a preacher, but a politician as well. He served in most elected offices in the county as well as in the state legislature. He is the “M. McNeill” listed as a member of the centennial committee on Elder George’s tombstone. (His obituary refers to him as the “best known man in Wilkes County.”)

The other McNiels on the committee, J(ames) O(liver) and T(homas) I(rvin), both actually spelled their name McNiel, but evidently Milton prevailed to have all surnames on the tombstone spelled the way he spelled his. (The G. W. Walsh named as a committeeman on the tombstone descended from those who spelled their name Walsh, but he actually spelled his name “Welch.” He married America A. Parsons, who was Elder George’s great-granddaughter and built their house across the road from the graveyard. Chimneys of his house still stand in 2013.)

Don’t let anybody tell you that those with different spellings are not related. Essentially all of those from the tri-state area with either variation of the spelling descend from Elder George. I had uncles who used McNeil as well as some who used McNiel.

Today, the variation in the way the surname is spelled continues. I guess we just don’t know what our name is.

What About the Battle of King’s Mountain?

Many of his descendants say Elder George was at the Battle of King’s Mountain on 7 Oct 1780, during which a loosely organized group of volunteer militia from Eastern Tennessee, Western Virginia, and Northwestern North Carolina (known as the Overmountain Men) attacked and utterly destroyed a regiment of trained British soldiers along with some local Loyalist followers. There is no mention of him on the monument at King’s Mountain or in any official roster of men at the battle.

In 1881, a book titled King’s Mountain and its Heroes, written by Lyman C. Draper, was published, giving a rather detailed account of the events surrounding the battle. I have summarized that book in the following pages.

There were nine company-sized militia units involved in the battle, each under its own Colonel. Usually, a county raised a militia unit primarily to protect the settlers from Indian raids. Each of the units now looking for Colonel Ferguson had chased Indians, but they had never trained together or been in battle together. There was no overall commander, until they finally chose one during the march.

It’s hard to determine the exact number of men on either side who were actually engaged in the battle. The militia units were almost 1,800 strong, but as we will learn later, about half of them did not get to the battle. The estimated strength of the British varies all over the place, but it is believed that the number of men actually engaged in hostilities on each side was fairly equally matched, at about 900. Today, the commander of an attacking force wants at least twice the number of troops, and would like to have three times as many as the defending troops. How can we explain the lop-sided outcome of this battle in which the forces were very nearly equal in size? The Overmountain Men were motivated. They had better weapons. They used different tactics. The high ground occupied by the British, usually a military advantage, turned out to be a huge disadvantage. And maybe there was a little luck and answers to Patriot prayers.

What had got these backwoods farmers so riled up that they went looking for a fight? British General Cornwallis had landed his army at Charleston, SC, and started north. He had expected that many locals would join his army along the way. That didn’t happen, but he had not encountered strong resistance either. As he neared Charlotte, NC, he dispatched Colonel Patrick Ferguson and some 900 men to move west and pacify that region. Part of this unit got as far as Gilbertown (now Forest City) and ran into resistance. They heard rumors that the settlers to the north—in the foothills and mountains—were serious about independence and would not welcome British soldiers. Ferguson took a few prisoners, gave them a message for their leaders, turned them loose, and headed back toward Charlotte.

When Ferguson’s men reached King’s Mountain, he considered it to be an ideal defensive position. The top of the mountain was almost flat and was large enough so his whole regiment could deploy in a defensive posture. These positions overlooked a very steep drop-off of 100 feet or so on all sides of the mountain. Any attacking force would have to climb the steep incline right under the defenders’ guns. Ferguson opined, “God Almighty himself can’t drive me from here.”

Ferguson’s message to the residents was delivered to the first settlement. The original paper no longer exists and a sanitized version of it has been published. It was passed along as a verbal message to all of the other communities throughout the foothills and mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. It went something like this:

All you scoundrels and riffraff who are rebelling against the king are not fit for a true Englishman to piss on. Unless you forthwith lay down your arms and swear allegiance to the king, I will march my army over the mountains. We will hang all your men and boys, **** your widows and daughters, burn your houses and outbuildings and lay waste to your crops and livestock.

The Americans didn’t like his tone. But, even worse, they knew that, given an opportunity, Ferguson would do exactly what he threatened. The leaders quickly decided they were not going to sit around and wait for him to show up. The best defense might be a good offense. They would go and find him and have it out once and for all. They would protect their family and property! They were motivated!

The militia leaders in Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia quickly assembled their units and met at Sycamore Shoals (now Elizabethton, TN). About half of the men were on horseback. The others, who did not own a horse, or it couldn’t be spared from home for an extended period, were on foot. Each man came armed with his personal weapon. Most were long rifles that they depended on for hunting. They were accurate, and each man was well accustomed to using the weapon he carried. (The British were armed primarily with short-barreled, smooth-bore muskets.) Technically, the Militia out-gunned the British.

The combined militia moved south along paths through gaps in the mountains, headed for Quaker Meadows (Morganton). Other units joined them along the way. The Wilkes and Surry County Militia under the command of Colonel Ben Cleveland joined the main body at Quaker Meadows. Then, across the South Mountains to Gilbertown (now Forest City). Here, they found people who had seen some of Ferguson’s men. They had headed east when they left that community.

The Patriots lost a day trying to find a ford across the river. Finally, they crossed and headed generally east along the NC-SC line. They met some travelers coming from the east. Obviously, they had taken a load of food supplies somewhere. The men “persuaded” them to tell where the British troops were camped. They were on top of King’s Mountain. But, how long would they stay there? How long would it take for the militia to get to King’s Mountain moving at the speed of foot-soldiers? The leaders concluded that they would prefer to move faster with fewer men than to take the time for the whole group to get there.

The leaders of each militia unit gave the order. If you are on horseback, but you are old, or not in top physical shape, or don’t have a good rifle, or have any qualms about going into battle and shooting British citizens, get off your horse and let one of the foot-soldiers take your place. Colonel Herndon of Wilkes County was placed in command of those left on foot, which accounted for about half of the entire body. He was told to let the men camp for the night, and then move at sustainable speed toward King’s Mountain the next day. They estimated that the march would take three days.

A member of the party began to recognize landmarks and realized that he had hunted in the area years before. He gave the leaders information about the general lay of the land and agreed to act as a guide for the mounted contingent.

After a few hours’ rest, the mounted men set out in the pouring rain, expecting to ride all night. It was shortly before noon when King’s Mountain came into sight. A place was found to stop and get oriented. The leaders went as close to the mountain as they dared and marked the best approach routes. They decided to approach the mountain from the west, with 5 units (Col. Hambright/Maj. Chronicle, Col. Cleveland, Col. Lacey, Col. Williams, and Col. Shelby) moving along the north side of the mountain and 4 units (Maj. Winston, Maj. McDowell, Col. Sevier, and Col. Campbell) moving along the south side. The plan was for the men in front of each column to continue until they met at the east end of the mountain. Then, on signal, they would attack from all sides of the mountain simultaneously.

The men were told the plan. They tied their horses. Then they advanced on foot through the wet leaves, which enabled them to move with very little noise. By staying in the dense forest, they might not be detected before they were in place. But, it didn’t quite work that way. They were spotted by a British outpost before the lead elements met. The British opened fire but were ineffective at that range. The militia hurriedly got in position and began the attack.

They didn’t attack side by side in a nice straight line. Each man rushed from behind one tree to the next. Or to a big rock, or a downed log, or a stump hole or other depression in the ground. They took every advantage of camouflage and cover. They didn’t give the British much to shoot at. The only time that a militiaman was exposed to British fire was the few seconds it took for him to run from one covered position to the next. When a British soldier had loaded his musket, he moved to the edge of the drop-off and stood up to fire down the slope. He made a good target for a militiaman with his long rifle. Thus, the tactics of the two units were worlds apart. The British fought European style, while the militia fought Indian style.

That’s not the only problem the British were having. Many times, when they pointed their muskets downward to shoot down the steep slope, the bullet rolled right out of the muzzle. They were shooting blanks! They resorted to bayonet charges. But those pesky Americans wouldn’t stand still out in the open so a soldier could impale him on a bayonet blade. It’s hard to bayonet somebody on the other side of a big tree, who has a rifle ready to shoot at you. The charging British couldn’t find anyone to engage, while, all the time they were being shot at from behind trees, rocks, and logs. In rather short order, each charge ran out of steam and the British scrambled back up the steep slope to their defensive positions. So, for the British, this particular configuration of high ground was a distinct disadvantage.

Colonel Ferguson first attempted to direct the defense by a series of whistle signals. Then he mounted his horse and rode from position to position urging his men to fight harder. He was shot several times and could not stay in the saddle. Upon his death, his subordinates surrendered. So, less than an hour after the first shot was fired, the battle was over and every British combatant had been killed, wounded, or captured. American casualties were 28 killed, 62 wounded.

We would like to think that our forefathers would honor enemy surrender and treat their prisoners humanely. But they didn’t. Several British were shot while waving a white handkerchief. Soon after the battle ended, they held kangaroo courts, convicted and hanged 30-40 prisoners. Then the militia, with some 600 prisoners, headed back toward home. On the second day, they met the foot-soldiers, still moving toward King’s Mountain. During the long march from King’s Mountain to Guilford Court House, about 125 prisoners managed to escape. Many were shot “while attempting to escape.” Of the 600 prisoners when they left King’s Mountain, there were only 130 when they were transferred to General Gates.

We like to say Elder George went to King’s Mountain. He’s not named on the battlefield monument or in the roster of men at the battle. Which is right? Maybe both. Here’s the way I reconcile the contradictory versions.

The battle was in 1780. If we accept tradition that Elder George was born in 1720, he would have been 60 years old. Would a 60-year-old man set out on foot with a bunch of young whipper-snappers half his age on a march of unknown duration? I suspect he would have ridden a horse.

He was a preacher—had been for years. Regardless of how strong his support of independence was, would he have carried a rifle and would he have been expected to kill British soldiers that he encountered? I like to think that he would have carried a Bible rather than a rifle. Maybe he set out to be available to provide spiritual comfort to anyone in need of it. Maybe he counseled the Overmountain Men—those who were over-eager to kill, as well as those who had trouble reconciling the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” with the immediate objective of their journey. Some may have been afraid of combat—afraid that they might die. Perhaps he could offer encouragement, hope, and peace.

I think Elder George’s mission would have been to give spiritual comfort to the men. They were headed to battle. Casualties are to be expected in a battle. He could comfort the wounded and give the dead a Christian burial. However, there were no slots in the militia for chaplains. There was no place for him to enlist. He just went along. Perhaps he felt called by his religion or by his desire for freedom, or both.

So, I think the chances are good that Elder George left Wilkes County with Colonel Cleveland’s Militia. I think it was probably his intention to render spiritual aid before, during, and after any action in which the unit participated. I think he was most likely traveling on horseback. When the leaders decided that they wanted a young, lean, mean killing machine on every horse, I suspect that a 60-year-old preacher would have yielded his mount to a younger replacement.

There is documentation that could be construed to support this notion. In the record of legislation introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly, it is recorded that a bill to pay Elder George a pension for his Revolutionary War service was introduced. It bounced around between committees, and no one questioned his service. However, the pension was denied on the basis that he had not officially enlisted in a militia unit, and he had already been compensated for his horse.

(RJE note – You can read about my visit to Kings Mountain with photographs, here.)

My DNA Analysis

A 25-point analysis of my DNA does nothing to prove or disprove any of the contradictions in our recent family story. All 25 points correspond exactly to those of inhabitants of northern Ireland whose ancestors have lived there as long as history has been recorded. Many of those families are said to go all the way back to Niall of the Nine Hostages. This Niall was the first to consolidate the rule of northern Ireland under one person. The short version of his exploits is that he invited nine of his rival chiefs to a big party at his digs. After a big meal and consumption of quantities of Irish beverage, he boiled the doors and announced that nobody could leave until all of them had sworn allegiance to him. Thereafter, he evidently ruled the roost until he was killed in battle in 403 AD. His descendants became the historical Irish Kings.

(RJE Note – This is the painting of Kisimul Castle that hung on Cousin George’s wall.)

Local McNeils have assumed that we are related to the Scottish Clan MacNeil, whose ancestral home was Kisimul Castle on the Isle of Barra in the Hebrides Islands west of Scotland. In Castle in the Sea, Clan Chief Robert Lister MacNeil traces his ancestry through Niall of the Nine Hostages back to Noah. But DNA does not link the Barra MacNeils to Niall’s descendants nor to me. So, another male must have snuck in somewhere. Anyway, the DNA analysts at Family Tree DNA say that scientifically we descend from Niall and his Irish bunch before any of them strayed off to Scotland.

If you are a male, with a male line stretching back to Elder George, perhaps an analysis of your DNA would prove interesting. It’s painless, and you will find out what science says your background is. Don’t ask me to explain how it happened!

Roberta’s Notes:

Bless Cousin George’s heart for his decades of research, and that of his wife, my cousin, Joyce Dancy McNeil, too.

Today, we have information that wasn’t available to George – both historical and genetic. George took the Y-25 DNA test in 2005 and later upgraded, taking the Family Finder autosomal test too. His Y-DNA matches other McNeil men, by various surname spellings, including two with Big Y-700 tests. One match is from a descendant of the Thomas McNiel who moved from Spotsylvania Co., VA, to Caswell Co., NC. Additional matches are men who descend from other early McNiel settlers, one from New York and others from Ireland.

The historical assumption that every McNeil descended from one line, such as the McNeil of Barra Clan, is typical for early genealogy. It wasn’t until DNA that we had the capacity to discern that men with the same surname could have descended from multiple, unrelated ancestors.

I’ll have more to share in a subsequent article with new information.

I wanted Cousin George’s wonderful article that represents more than 30 years of work to stand alone.

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• The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA – Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA

Genealogy Books

• Genealogical.com – Lots of wonderful genealogy research books
• American Ancestors – Wonderful selection of genealogy books

Genealogy Research

• Legacy Tree Genealogists – Professional genealogy research