Acadian/Cajun

[Thirtieschild]

I've been looking at the ancestry of my sister's son-in-law, whose family goes back every which way in Louisiana, St. Landry, East Baton Rouge, St. James, Ascension, Iberville + other parishes, a bit of Orleans here and there. I've come away with amazement tinged with sadness for what they went through when they were kicked out of Acadia so the English could turn it into Nova Scotia. We lived in New Orleans in the early 60s, lived there without air conditioning but with electricity and running water, which gives me a vague feel for what it's like there. I can't imagine what it felt like to be transported from Canada to the swamps of Louisiana. In my wanderings through the Internet, I came across a page of deaths in the 1800s. No one died of a heart attack or cancer, but of accidents (their word), burns, drownings, cholera - lots of cholera, a whole family died of it in the space of a week or two. So, a salute to those who survived - and those who didn't.

An aside - I hadn't realized just how well I know my German/Swiss, English and Celtic (Scottish, Scots-Irish and Welsh) ancestors until I met these Cajuns. It's been an education.

Edited for spelling mistakes/typos

[sybylla]

1. No Cajun roots, but I always think of them as cousins

I have French-Canadian roots on my father's side that go back to the founding of the colony of New France in the early 1600's. My ancestry shares a lot of family names with Cajuns.

I get the feeling it was tough all around when the English took over. That's not to minimize what the Cajun's went through. They certainly got the worst of it - kicked out of one country to become second-class citizens (and worse) of another. They say all's fair in love and war. Looking at the past through family history, some facets of war seem more cruel and inhuman than others by leaps and bounds.

[Thirtieschild]

2. I get the feeling it was tough all around when the English took over.

And at this point I'm afraid the same can be said for us.

The fun I'm having looking for my neice's husband's Cajun roots tell me that the fun of genealogy is the hunt. As if I didn't know that already.

[Maq]

3. Nova Scotia Genealogy Network Association

http://nsgna.ednet.ns.ca/

The Nova Scotia Genealogy Network Association

The data here may help you in your search for some cajun roots.

It should be remembered that NOT ALL relocated cajuns ended up in Loiusiana during the expulsion of the 1750s'. The French by this time had inter-married with the Mi'Kmaq (micmac) Indian quite often. They were co-habitants of the Maritime provinces for over two hundred years prior to the expulsion. Thus many just faded into the woods to live with their blood relatives and were helped by the Mi' Kmaq to evade the British. Many of these french relocated or were assisted in their escape to Quebec and the western or northern frontier.

[NOLALady]

4. Curious. Could you discuss some of the Cajun surnames?

I know a few people who are researching that area. Some of their surnames....
Darensbourg
Leblanc
Breaux
Sorapuru

BTW, I have a German/Swiss line. They arrived in PA 1788.

[Maq]

5. Nola your question seems to be directed to the European names

However, in regard to the Nova Scotia Cajun names. Only one comes to mind this minute.
Bernard seems to be an english rendition of French RENARD. Renard is Fox. This is an inference that an ancient Mi'Maq was named Fox.

Some common Mi'Kmaq sur-names today are: Marshall, Paul, Wilmot, Benoit or Benwha, Jarvis, Doucette, Pierro, and more.

[sybylla]

6. Don't forget that the "dit" names often became the surnames

Renard is a somewhat common "dit" name.

These names, for those who don't know, were more than nicknames and often appeared in documents with the surname or instead of - just to make searching for them a little more interesting. Some of these "dit" names began as a nom de guerre when the Carignan Regiment and others came to New France to battle the Iroquois nations back in the 1600's. Others were used simply to identify one Louis Bonhomme from another.

Some of my favorite dit names from my ancestry include Antoine Courtemance dit Jolicoeur (Happy Heart), Francois Chagnon dit Larose (the Rose), Pierre Guilbert dit Laframboise (the Raspberry), and Jean Langois dit Lachapelle (the Hat).

Some of these could very easily be confused with a translation of a native name, so researchers should be careful.

[Thirtieschild]

8. Thanks for explaining the dit. I've wondered what it meant.

[sybylla]

9. You're welcome - and I forgot to say

In French "dit" means "called" - like our aka, only with much more importance. In many circumstances over the generations it became the surname.

[Thirtieschild]

7. Still learning about Cajun ancestry

The names that have come up most often are Guillory, Fontenot (nephew-in-law is descended 11 times from Jean Louis Fontenot, born 1686 in France), Joubert. I'm stuck on Prudhomme (Opelousas/Saint Landry), Sharon and, of course, various wives, Evia, Lelia, Amelie. I've made some guesses (some educated, some not) about the wives and leave it to my sister to figure out whether or not they're right. Made a leap on Breaux/Braud. Nephew-in-law has the most complete genealogy of any family I've worked with, thanks I guess, to the Catholic Church. Sharon must be Irish or Scots-Irish: Tom, born in Tennessee in 1840, his brother George (who spelled it Sherron occasionally) and mother Sarah also born in TN, Sarah's parents born in Maryland and North Carolina.

There are also Germans from the German Coast (we lived in New Orleans for a couple of years but I'd never heard of it), French from France as well as Quebec, Spanish from Spain and Mexico, Portuguese from Mexico (came to LA when it was under Spanish rule), an Italian from Naples, even one woman whose last name was given as Amerindian, fantastic mixed ancestry. Much more interesting than my PA Dutch/New England/Scots Irish.

I've worked through the census as far as I could on the computer (no way I can get to Baton Rouge to look in the state archives), turned to One World Tree for earlier work so can't guarantee much after the 1850 census. Looking at places born and places died gives one the idea of how wide the dispersion was - people born in Canada died in London, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, back in France, one woman in a shipwreck. Most of this particular group seem to have ended up at Fort Toulouse in Alabama before coming to Louisiana.

Compared to other research I've done, I'm struck by so much intermarriage, so much early marriage, so much early death, particularly among the women. I wonder if there was more death in childbirth, or if geography played a part in the early deaths. (My mother, born in South Georgia in 1908, had malaria as a child and South Louisiana is swampier than South Georgia.)

Makes me want to go back and read Evangeline, which I vaguely remember from the eighth grade.