The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Land of Evangeline, by John Frederic Herbin

The
Land of Evangeline

The authentic story of
her country and
her people

By

John F. Herbin

Illustrated in color
and black and white.

With

Evangeline

By

H. W. Longfellow

TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY
LIMITED

Copyright, Canada, 1921
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY. LTD.
PUBLISHERSTORONTO

Third Edition
10th Thousand

Musson
ALL CANADIAN PRODUCTION

The Land of Evangeline

Grand-Pré, the home of Evangeline, seldom fails to impress the stranger, who sees it for the first time, with a sense of its rich loveliness. It would be difficult to find a more delightful setting for the story of the Acadian maiden, separated from her betrothed lover, Gabriel, and sent into exile with her people.

The country fronting the present Grand-Pré is broadly open to the Basin of Minas. The dyked marshes extend for miles in blocks of pasture, grain, and haylands. Great creeks which once the mighty tides of the Bay of Fundy filled till the meadows were submerged with the turbid waters; red channels of the winding rivers beyond; and the great stretch of the Basin of Minas, purple-fringed by the distant hills, all combine to make this an idyllic setting.

At the time of the Deportation of the Acadians, in 1755, most of the farm land, flanked by the dyked meadows, from the Gaspereau River to Kentville, held the villages and small hamlets of the people. Upon the descending slopes on both sides of the Gaspereau Valley that lies south of Grand-Pré, other populous villages, pastures and farms, clustered as far as the present village of the name, Gaspereau.

North and west, as far as Pereau, under the North Mountain, the rich Acadian country of Canard lay upon the banks of the four rivers, fronting always the meadows of marsh that spread away from the swift tidal streams.

This was the Minas country of the Acadian period, divided into two parishes, Grand-Pré and Canard, separated by the present Cornwallis River. In 1750, five years before the removal of the inhabitants, Minas had a population of four thousand. There were thirty-five villages, named after the original founders who came from Port Royal—Gaspereau and Grand-Pré were the only exceptions.

Upon the Grand-Pré meadows may be seen the thirteen sections of dykes raised from time to time, till the whole extent of marsh became enclosed. It was a laborious work for the people, who numbered only four hundred in 1700. Most of the marshes were enclosed during the following forty years as the families grew to manhood, and new settlers came. Upon these lands they had their pastures, hay and grain areas fenced in. Upon the undyked marshes they cut the coarse salt grass.

As the forest lands were cleared of wood, they were used as pastures. Beyond these, stretched the primeval forests on all sides. Orchards of apple and pear, and garden plots lay near the homes. Fish were abundant in the sea beyond. By boat the settlers were able to pass from place to place, for the rivers made convenient ways for travel.

Grand Pré

While the name Grand-Pré was given in general to the Minas country south and alongside the Cornwallis River, the village of the name was adjoining the Memorial Park land. It had twenty-three inhabitants living upon three farms. The cellars of the three homes may be seen to-day. The largest was on the west side of the Park. The other two, upon the gentle slope south. They were the properties of Pierre Landry, Jean le Sour, and Jacques Terriot—all prominent and prosperous men in the little community.

The knoll of land, consisting of fourteen acres, now called the Grand-Pré Memorial or Historical Park, lies adjoining the dyked lands. It is enclosed by a rustic fence, and is separated by the Dominion Atlantic Railway from the farms on the slope rising to the south. The ground was used for church purposes, and the chapel stood upon the highest part of the knoll. Where the stone cross stands was the burying ground of the Grand-Pré Acadians of the parish of St. Charles. The church land had been given for the purpose by the original Landry, and formed part of his farm. About the year 1687, the first church was built, and enlarged or rebuilt as the population increased. Few dykes had been erected at this time, and the tides of the Basin of Minas came within a few hundred feet of the church land. In the burying ground were laid the first to die in Minas. Melansons, Terriots, Le Blancs, Landrys, and other families mingle their dust there. The cross without names, built of stone from some of their home foundations, marks where they lie forgotten.

The Presbytery stood on the foundation west of the church site. This was occupied by Colonel Winslow when his troops were encamped about the churchyard, on the eve of the Deportation. The row of willows on the north side of the Park grounds was set out to shield the church from the north winds that swept across the open dyked lands.

The bronze figure of Evangeline (facing p. 72), represented as looking back upon the country of her people as she set out to depart with them from Grand-Pré, will always typify the Deportation of the Acadians, the commencement of the period of exile and wandering. The statue stands upon the old road by which the people reached the church, and is but the commencement of restoration work projected for the Historical Park at Grand-Pré. (At the summit of the slope south this road joined the main highway running from the Gaspereau River to the farther villages of the Acadians.) The statue was modelled by Philippe Hebert, himself a descendant of the Acadian family of the name. Etienne Hebert was one of the first colonists to come to the Minas country from the home colony of Port Royal, now Annapolis Royal. This family increased in numbers in Minas, and two villages bore the name, one in Minas and the other in Canard. There were fifty Heberts at the time of the dispersion.

We may now review the growth of the Acadian Minas from the coming of the first settlers in 1681 to the year 1755, when Colonel John Winslow, with the New England volunteers, encamped upon the church ground of St. Charles at Grand-Pré. In December of that year the houses and barns, churches and mills of the Acadians were destroyed, and for five years the country was without an inhabitant. We have the names of the older parents, of their children, their possessions. We also have record of the younger married couples who came to make homes in the new country of Minas. The villages grew chiefly in clusters about the establishments of the elders. Dykes were built. Land was cleared of wood for their gardens and orchards. Roads were made connecting all the centres of farm life. Winter roads for their timber, fencing, and firewood were made. Finally, they cut a way through the forests from Halifax to Annapolis Royal. They were increasing in population, and in worldly goods.

The Three First Families

Perhaps before entering directly upon the historical aspects of the Evangeline country, it would be interesting to know something of its outstanding families, members of which figured prominently in the later history of the place.

The three most picturesque and important persons in the history of the Minas country are Pierre Melanson, Pierre Terriot, and René LeBlanc.

The Melansons (Gaspereau)

In a census of the Port Royal people, made in 1671, the name Pierre Melanson appears, but with no account of his family or possessions. He refused to give the facts asked for. There has been some doubt as to his antecedents, although he was a man of importance, and his name appears in several historical documents. Some think he was the son of the Scotchman, Pierre Melanson, who remained in Acadia after the colony under Sir William Alexander was broken up in 1632.

It has been ascertained, however, that Pierre Melanson was a tailor and farmer of considerable wealth, when he sold his Port Royal property in 1669. He was also Captain of militia, and a man of mark among the oldest inhabitants of that place. His courage and enterprise are shown by his removal to the unsettled country of Minas in 1681. His selection of the Gaspereau Valley for his new home, points to a knowledge of the country, for he settled in the most beautiful and favorable situation in the region. It was at the head of the tide, sheltered, with extensive marshes, and rich uplands suitable for farming. The forests lay upon the hills, the stream teemed with gasperot, salmon, and trout. The Basin of Minas could be easily reached at high tide by boat. Conditions were most favorable for the development of the little colony, and those which soon sprang up in that neighbourhood (Gaspereau) and at Grand-Pré.

The Gaspereau villages grew in importance, and were among the richest and most populous in 1755. The Melansons numbered about eighty souls, and were connected by kinship and marriage with all the Acadian families of Minas.

It was one of the daughters of this Pierre Melanson who married the “Notary Public” of Longfellow’s Evangeline.

Another daughter, Anne, married Thomas Jacasse, and it was their son who later refused to sign the deliberations for the surrender of Quebec.

The Terriots (The Cornwallis)

The next colonist who came to establish himself in Minas was Pierre Terriot from Port Royal. He is an important and interesting figure in the history of the country. His coming dates but a short time after Pierre Melanson’s arrival. Terriot selected the fine situation near Kentville, upon the present Cornwallis River, with natural conditions similar to the Gaspereau Valley. Good upland for farms, and extensive areas of marsh near the head of the tidal stream, afforded favorable means for the development of his farming operations. His home on the south side of the river was ten miles from Melanson’s, and the expansion of growth was each toward the other. The farm areas soon extended alongside the marshes into what became the Grand-Pré district.

Pierre Terriot, like Melanson, came out from Port Royal, where his father had settled before him. Port Royal was the parent colony (1632, under Commander Razilly) from which all the Acadian districts received their first colonists.

Pierre Terriot was a colonizer, and an interesting figure in the early days of Minas. Although he had no children by his wife Cécile Landry, he encouraged migration from Port Royal to the wilderness, the rich country of Minas that surrounded him. Young couples soon came, relatives of the Terriots and Landrys, and others, who for a time enlarged their holdings more rapidly than those who came to Grand-Pré and Gaspereau. The founder, Terriot, who was in good circumstances, aided the newcomers with grain and stock, and as has always been the custom of the Acadians, the settled people cut the timber, built the foundations and homes, and helped the young couples to start in life.

Pierre Terriot’s home was, moreover, the asylum for orphans and widows, till the children grew up and were able to set up for themselves. The settlers married young, and were encouraged to do so, for they were a home-loving people, and industrious.

The Terriots numbered about fifty, and were also settled in other parts of Nova Scotia. This region seemed to attract the younger people from the older and more thickly settled country of Port Royal. It was favorably situated, more remote from the New England colonies, and so conditioned that all who came could acquire land and make homes.

Next to the Grand-Pré Park land, the New Minas relics of the Terriot settlements and the work of their descendants are the most numerous and interesting. Many cellar foundations remain as they were left in 1755 after the houses and barns were burned. The English colonists of 1760 raised their houses farther away from the marshes, so that the Terriot landmarks for the greater part still remain undisturbed. Some of their houses were forty-five feet square, with huge chimneys built outside ten feet square at the ground, traces of which still remain.

The Le Blancs (Grand-Pré)

Among the later arrivals were the Le Blancs, whose children added considerably to the growth of population, and whose importance and prosperity make them outstanding persons in the country.

The first Le Blanc was Daniel, born in France in 1626. Thousands of his descendants are to be found in America to-day. He arrived in Acadia in 1650, with his wife, Françoise Gaudet. He settled in Port Royal about nine miles above the fort. When that place fell to the English under Phipps, in 1690, Le Blanc was among those appointed to administer the affairs of the Province until the arrival of a Governor. His name is found on the census of 1671, 1686, and 1693. He had probably died before the next census in 1698, as his name does not appear then or afterwards. He lived to be about seventy years old, in spite of the trying and laborious period through which the people of Acadia lived.

The four sons of the first Port Royal Le Blanc settled upon the present Grand-Pré lands very soon after Melanson had become established on the Gaspereau and Terriot on the Cornwallis.

The village, Jean Le Blanc, in 1775, had eight families. Village Pierre Le Blanc had fourteen, and Grand Le Blanc had thirteen. The Le Blancs appeared also in other villages.

This family was related to all the older stock of Acadian families, to be found in 1755 throughout the whole of settled Nova Scotia.

The history of Grand-Pré, by which is meant, the annals of the country contiguous to the Memorial Park, the Grand-Pré of the present day, in a sense, is the family history of the Le Blancs. One member of the family, René, was an historical character.

Other Names

In the census made of Minas in 1618, about five years after Pierre Melanson’s advent to the Gaspereau, the families of

are mentioned with particulars of their worldly condition and size of family.

Three of the Minas inhabitants mentioned on the 1686 list, de la Bove, la Pierre, and Rivet, were newcomers to Acadia, and for some reason failed to make headway in the country. Their descendants were few, and the names disappear from the annals.

The Canard District

The Melansons’, Terriots’, and Le Blancs’ holdings all extended east or west, south of the Cornwallis River. North of this stream, another section was expanding, but more slowly, although conditions were favorable there for colonization.

As the Canard region become populated, crossings were made to reach the villages at low tide over the Cornwallis River. A road was made connecting the up-river settlements with Grand-Pré to the Gaspereau, where the principal centre of Minas developed, with its church, its protected landing-place and port for vessels, its store-house, and the office of the Deputy, where deeds and important documents were kept.

Thus Canard grew, and finally a beautiful church was built there. The Cornwallis River divided the parishes of Canard and Grand-Pré, but the whole region was rapidly growing in population and wealth, till it was entering upon the period preceding the Deportation. A thousand Acadians departed from Minas about 1750, so that in 1755 there were about three thousand remaining in the two parishes.

Leading Up to the Expulsion

The French colonists of Nova Scotia were constantly subjected to attacks by British colonial forces. In 1613, Port Royal, again in 1654, La Have, and in 1700, Minas were razed and completely destroyed by these armies. The older Acadians and their sons, accustomed to the conditions of the country, quickly recovered from these attacks. The later comers, however, were not so well fitted to cope with the difficulties of the new life, and the new names died out or did not increase so quickly as the original stock, the hardy, thrifty peasantry from the west coast of France.

These repeated expeditions against the French colonies were the outcome of strong inimical feeling both at home and abroad. The British colonies of America greatly outnumbered the French of Canada and the Province, and the desire to remove the Acadians from the peninsula, and thus break the backbone of the French colonial enterprise, had been growing for several years.

This sorry task finally fell to the lot of Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow, under the specific orders of Governor Lawrence of Halifax. In August, 1755, he came with three hundred men, and in conjunction with Captain Murray, then in command of Fort Edward, arranged the details for the capture and removal of the people.

At the time of Winslow’s arrival with his troops in ships, the priests of Grand-Pré and Canard had been removed to Halifax as prisoners. All the guns owned by the Acadians had been seized, yet the coming of the troops and their use of the church and burying-grounds as an encampment did not arouse suspicion as to the purpose of the visit. The people had frequently seen both French and English soldiers quartered in their country.

The Acadians were gathering their harvests when Winslow arrived from Cumberland and marched from Gaspereau Landing to the church at Grand-Pré. As we read his own account of that stay, we realize his repugnance at the harsh duty before him—the task of using military force to expel a quiet, happy people from its home-place—particularly in the face of the total inadequacy of ships provided for the purpose.

As the winter set in, the miseries of the people bore heavily upon him, and his feeling in the matter is thinly concealed in the account of the affair as set down in his Journal.

From this same Journal we learn that he used the Presbytery as his headquarters, and that in the churchyard the tents of the soldiers were pitched; that the camp was protected by a pallisade, and that full military discipline was enforced.

The Deportation

The poem, Evangeline, tells the story of the 5th of September, 1755, and what followed.

As the crops were to be gathered early in that dry year, this date was fixed upon for summoning the men and boys of the district to the church to receive their brutal orders—to hear the proclamation declaring them prisoners of the Crown; their homes, their lands, their holdings, confiscate. It was a bitter time for both those who spoke and heard. It is not difficult to imagine the emotion of Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow, as he delivered his blighting message of exile to these strong sunburnt fathers and sons of Minas, anxiously waiting his words.

When Winslow departed from Grand-Pré in November, all the outlying villages had been destroyed. Canard’s church, the mills, houses, and barns were in ashes. Except for the shelterless animals that wandered about close upon starvation, nothing remained. The inhabitants, carrying with them as many of their household effects as the weather and the cramped accommodations of the ships would permit, had gone. A pitiful season followed. The pathetic scenes of the deportation are almost indescribable. Through military necessity, perhaps fear of insubordination, parent was separated from child, lover from lover, brother from brother. As many as possible were loaded immediately upon the waiting vessels. Six hundred and fifty were quartered about the villages of the Le Blancs, three hundred of whom were embarked in December. A week later, the remainder were sent off, and the houses they had occupied destroyed. The church which the soldiers had used as quarters was probably the last building to stand.

Two Interesting Incidents

Two rather interesting incidents in connection with the Deportation which have come to notice, follow.

Although all records of births, deaths, etc., were destroyed or in part lost, one of the Piziquid exiles carried the deed of his grandfather’s property with him to Philadelphia. The writer saw this document in 1920, still held by a descendant as a precious relic.

René Le Blanc, mentioned above as figuring in history, came to notice at this time in the following manner. Winslow, evidently touched by the man’s age and gentleness of character, made a special request to headquarters that Le Blanc be permitted to return to his home in Marshfield, but the old man was sent to New York with his wife and two children, out of the twenty of his family. His grandchildren numbered over a hundred. Later he found three more of his children in Philadelphia, where René died.

The Acadians were scattered throughout the British colonies. A few who escaped, wandered over the country to be later apprehended and deported. A number more found their way unharmed into the wilderness of New Brunswick, but by 1763 there were less than 1,500 who had escaped the removal.

There is a tradition based upon traces of dwellings found in the woods south of New Minas, that a few escaped Acadians lived there through the following winter. These few either were captured or later joined those retreating into New Brunswick.

After the expulsion of the French settlers, Great Britain, to induce settlers to come to the country of Horton and Cornwallis from the older English colonies, sent out an invitation with a description of the country:—

“One hundred thousand acres, of which the country has produced wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, flax, etc., without failure for the last century; and another hundred thousand acres are cleared and stocked with English grass, planted orchards and embellished with gardens, the whole so intermixed that every individual farmer might have a proportionate quantity of plowed land, grassland, and woodland.”

This appeared in 1759. In June, the next year, after the country was viewed by agents from New England, the people came to occupy the vacated lands. With the assistance of the Acadian prisoners remaining at Fort Edward, the dykes were repaired, and the country began to thrive with new life upon the grave of the old.

The last written trace of the Acadians in a body, appears in an order issued from Halifax in 1762, causing one hundred and thirty of them to be sent from Hants and King’s counties, where they were working for English inhabitants.

For the English settlers, the farm lands were divided into hundred-acre lots. New roads were laid out, and the old Acadian landmarks are now gradually disappearing. A single farm to-day perhaps occupies the site of a whole village of Acadian times. Willows still mark roads or the buried foundations of their homes. Their apple trees yet bear fruit, sometimes found among the wild, recent growth, or in pastures. Roads and dykes may be traced, and numerous cellars in out-of-the-way places where they have not been disturbed.

In the history of the English colonies during the next twenty years following upon the re-settlement of the Acadian country of Grand-Pré, affairs went topsy-turvy. French Canada was lost to France through the operations and strength of the colonies under English rule. New England strengthened Nova Scotia for England by removing the Acadians, and then bringing her people to the deserted farmlands.

Conclusion—Acadia Then and Now

The memory of the courageous heart-high peasantry that first peopled and made home of a wilderness, remains fresh in the present-day Acadia.

The garden-plots cleared upon the uplands near their homes, their orchards laid out in rugged rows, still bloom for us who know that country. We still find the roads leading to the dykes by the rivers, even traces of the trails originally reaching back to the wild pastures; the dykes upon which so much time and labor were expended season after season—an arduous work when Acadia’s population was yet so small. The wild luxurious beauty of the place to-day, its blossoms, its fruit, its vivid dunes, its picturesque water-ways, the daily romance of the rushing tide for which the little boats thirst on the sand hour by hour—bring back afresh the quaint pictures of its early days. The quiet grazing cattle might still be the hardy kine that lived through those early winters on the abundant after-feed of the settler’s dyked lands. Every aspect of the place, the almost hidden ruins here and there, Evangeline’s well, the rough stone cross that marks the grave of a village, the virility of the bronze Evangeline, make real the pathos of this people now scattered broadcast through America, in whose souls the love of their country, Acadia, is as potent now as then. Neither time nor the Deportation have caused them to lose their identity as a distinct people, for a quarter of a million in America are the same Acadians who went into exile from Nova Scotia from 1755 to 1763.

The Origin of “Evangeline”

There is a close connection between the story which supplied the basis of the poem, Evangeline, and the Acadian people. In 1838, Hawthorne entered in his Note-Books the following:

“H. L. C.—Heard from a French-Canadian a story of a young couple in Acadie. On their marriage day all the men of the Province were summoned to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, they were seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England, among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in search of him, wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at last found her bridegroom on his deathbed. The shock was so great it killed her likewise.”

Longfellow’s final decision to adopt the name Evangeline for his poem, rather than Gabrielle (which was the name of the heroine of Mrs. Williams’ story of “The Acadian Exile”) has given existence to a character that will live for all time.

Origin of Names in “Evangeline”

Another name to be perpetuated by history is Acadie, or Acadia as it is known at the present time. Whether we accept the statement or not that the Italian navigator, Verrazano, who explored the American coast as far as New York, called the country “Arcadie”, because of the magnificence of the trees, there will be preference for the Micmac Indian origin of the name, “Acadie.” The country was visited by Breton and Basque fishermen a hundred years before the settlement of Port Royal in 1605. From that time the Maritime countries of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine, were named Acadie. Many places to-day retain their original Micmac names. We have Benacadie, Katakaddy, Shubenacadie, Shunacadie, with the meaning, “abundance of,” or “the place of” certain things. As we know, Nova Scotia is in truth Acadie.

The Bay of Fundy comes from “au fond du Baie,” as the Port Royal people designated the head of that great tidal stream. The discovery of native copper and coal led to the naming of the headland at the upper end of the Bay of Fundy, “Les Mines.” This name was extended to designate the country about the Basin of Minas connected by Minas Channel with the great Bay.

Grand-Pré and Canard, the original names of the Acadian period, are still used to distinguish the townships of Horton and Cornwallis. The Gaspereau River and Valley, New Minas, Habitant and Pereau, remain the memories of the Acadian period.

THE POEM EVANGELINE

EVANGELINE.

Prelude.

II.