Let's write about Acadians!

This blog I wrote titled "Learning About Acadian Blind Spots", was published on the Bangor Daily News Franco-American News and Culture website. By republishing on Let's Write, I am able to send it to readers who live outside the United States. Unfortunately, the Bangor Daily News blogger page is blocked by many international security screens.

Learning about Acadian “blind spots”

January 21, 2022

Franco-American News and CultureKerri Arsenault, Sanford Maine, Thibodeau 

By Juliana L'Heureux

L’Heureux family photograph dated 1909, in Sanford, Maine. Lumina Savoie L’Heureux is on the top row, far right.

Writer Kerri Arsenault was spot on when she explained the meaning of “Blind Spots”, the sub title in one chapter of her autobiography titled “Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains,” during a book talk, hosted on ZOOM, on January 17, by the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine at Lewiston Auburn College.

“Blind Spots” is a sub-section of the book, where she describes the Arsenault’s family’s history, and how her ancestors came to Mexico, Maine from Prince Edward Island, in Canada. But, conceptually, the sub-title captures the lack of awareness about Acadian history and information about the impact the Franco-American immigration had on Maine and, particularly, in her home town of Mexico.

As a matter of fact, this “blind spot” was revealed in our family, as described below in an article I published in September, 2006. The article (below), gives evidence to the point Arsenault makes in her book.

Merci beaucoup to Kerri for the excellent presentation she gave to nearly 100 on-line participants, when she was the guest speaker for the Franco-American Collection’s community program series. Moreover, she presented “virtually”, speaking from an apartment where she is temporarily living in Paris, France, while working on a special project.

Her autobiography “Mill Town, Reckoning with What Remains” is about growing up in Mexico, where her family lived while her father worked at the Rumford, Maine paper mill. Her family experienced middle class prosperity as a result of the employment provided by the mill, but, at the same time, the toxins produced by the paper production also polluted the local environment, and likely caused her father’s death from lung disease and asbestosis.

In “Blind Spots”, Arsenault opens up a discussion about how many of Maine’s people and others are unaware, or choose to not become aware, about Acadian American history and Franco-American immigration from Canada. These blind spots are not taught in the schools. Therefore, she found ways to locate the sources of her family’s blind spots by researching her genealogy.

Some blind spots she identified, because they are not taught, includes:

• Blind to Franco-American and Acadian American history.
• Blind to the impact that immigration has had on Maine’s manufacturing companies.
• Blind to the impact of the Franco-Americans who built the workforce in the paper, shoe and textile mills.
• Blind to the history about the Acadian deportation of 1755.

All of which reminded me about our family’s “blind spot”, described in a September, 2006, article titled “Acadian Connection 8 Generations Back”.

We were actually surprised to discover Acadian ancestors in the L’Heureux family, traced to the Thibodeau name.

In fact, numerous Franco-American families are connected through 11 generations of genealogies from Canada, but ancestors with Quebecois heritage are often distinguished from those with Acadian ancestral roots. In other words, colonial Quebec’s French settlers did not intermarry with the families that lived in Acadia (today being in western Nova Scotia). This was because the two groups developed, independently. Until 1755.

Some Acadian settlers managed to escape the brutal British deportation of 1755, known as Le Grand Dérangement. Many refugees that escaped ultimately fled to territories in Quebec and the Madawaska region, where they eventually started a new lineage. Later, many of those that were deported and sailed away to random destinations on the east coast, where they were abandoned, are among those that ultimately settled in Louisiana. The Acadians and Quebecois began to intermarry after the deportation.

My husband’s family immigrated into New England and Maine in the early 20th century, but it wasn’t until 2006, when we figured out how they are connected to the Acadians. Up until then, the family believed all of the ancestors were Quebecois. Family oral history did not appear to support Acadian connections into the genealogy. Franco-American genealogies can be complicated and may be tedious to figure out beyond four generations, because so many family names are interrelated.

Therefore, we missed the sixth generation great-grandfather connection with Charles Thibodeau, an Acadian through the genealogy of Marie-Lumina Savoie, who was my husband’s paternal grandmother.

All the Thibodeau ancestors are related to the first generation Pierre, who settled the Pine Grove area of western Nova Scotia, around 1690. Thibodeau’s eldest son of 12 children was also named Pierre. Therefore, my husband’s genealogy through his grandmother is directly descended from Charles Thibodeau, one of Pierre’s siblings. In fact, the lineage leaps directly from Thibodeau, to Savoie, to L’Heureux, although it took eight generations to reach my husband’s family group.

Marie-Lumina Savoie and Narcisse L’Heureux married and are my husband grandparents. Charles Thibodeau is, therefore, my husband’s sixth great-grandfather.

Kerri Arsenault, author of "Mill Town"< presented background information in a book talk sponsored by the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine Lewiston Auburn College on January 17, 2022, via ZOOM.

Consequently, as Arsenault pointed out, the Acadian “blind spot” was found and confirmed by checking with Kennebunk summer resident Dick Thibodeau*. He studied genealogy and knew quite a bit of detail about his ancestors and the family’s ties to Nova Scotia.

Thanks to Thibodeau’s meticulous research, we can reveal our family’s Acadian blind spot. Every L’Heureux family member who was born in Sanford and descended from Marie-Lumina Savoie are directly connected to the Thibodeau family and they are therefore Acadian through the “Savoie” name. On the L’Heureux side, the family name is totally Quebecois.

*We are delighted to have met Dick Thibodeau and to learn about his interest in genealogy. Sadly, he died a few years ago, but you can read more about him in a research paper submitted to the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine Fort Kent, submitted by Anne Chamberland and available in the public domain at this link here.

Although our family has revealed our blind spot, American history continues to overlook the Franco-American “fact”, being, the French precedence over the arrival of European settlers in North America.

More information about the Franco-American Collection at USM LAC is available at this site here. 

About Juliana L'Heureux

Juliana L’Heureux is a free lance writer who publishes news, blogs and articles about Franco-Americans and the French culture. She has written about the culture in weekly and bi-weekly articles, for the past 35 years.