06/14/2025
Hi everyone! I’ve just released Part 2 of my Acadian Expulsion Memorial List project. I released Part 1 six months ago on 13 December 2024 with just over 2,400 names added. I have added 2,500 more names totaling over 4,900 names for Part 2, published 13 June 2025.
Here are the links to Part 2 of the project spreadsheet, available in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel.
Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YvbEhQ7PgQsrfA6nZY1ZHOfc_js4C9lU8FPT0yqfYro/edit?usp=sharing
Link to Microsoft Excel: https://1drv.ms/x/c/620c5da0ab95f338/EUOIT-dCZX9BqU9dnPy_KVgB82-NQjqNlwEY6Nwhq0yRSA?e=C6QgUW
I wanted to provide some information about the project and explain a bit about the process of adding these names. I apologize that this is in English-only as I am unfortunately not fluent in French as I was born and raised in Massachusetts. I can read French but can’t speak it or write it well enough to translate so I apologize that there isn’t a French version at this time.
I began this project in September of 2024 and my main goal was to list the names of the Acadians who sadly passed away during the period of the Acadian Expulsion. I recorded a 2 hour long video to accompany the release of Part 1 of this list that I published in December of 2024 that explains all of the information you may want to know, if you don’t already, about who the Acadians were, where they settled and all about the events leading up to this expulsion so I recommend checking that out so you will know the more of the backstory of these events. The link to that video hosted by the Have Roots Will Travel YouTube channel is available right at the top of my Memorial List when you open it up in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. A link is also available here: The Acadian Memory Project, Have Roots Will Travel YouTube Channel
The period of the expulsion is generally recognized as starting in 1755 and ending in 1763 following the Treaty of Paris. After this, Acadians were free to relocate from the location they had been exiled to. These places include the U.S. colonies along the east coast, England, France and even from being detained inside of Acadia such as at Halifax. Most were looking to resettle in French Territories and presumably trying to locate their family members they may have been separated from.
The next few years between 1763 and 1767 included a lot of moving around for our Acadian ancestors. We can see distinct migrations happening from certain areas to another, such as the Acadians in Halifax went on to settle in Louisiana, the Acadians in England went on to settle in France, the Acadians in Massachusetts went on to settle in Quebec and the Acadians in Connecticut went on to settle in St-Domingue (Haiti). Not everyone resettled in the same place but just to give some examples.
After 1763 wouldn’t generally be considered part of the expulsion period as most Acadians were now considered free subjects, however there were extensive losses of Acadians even after 1763, especially soon after arriving in new locations. Louisiana, French Guiana, Haiti and Quebec saw significant losses as Acadians landed in these new areas. This continued even until 1785 when Acadians from France were attempting to settle in Louisiana, nearly 20 years after the early groups of Acadians arrived there. There were even still deportations happening to the Acadians in St-Pierre and Miquelon which were French territories just off the coast of Newfoundland. The Acadians there were deported multiple times to mainland France and many did not survive. This was happening in the 1760’s and 1770’s.
So when I went about compiling this list, I didn’t have a set criteria in mind when it came to specific years or locations. I kind of went with my gut and if I felt that this persons death could have been a direct result of the expulsion, they were included. This criteria may change over time as I edit the list, but this is how I have done it so far. I tried to take certain factors into consideration, such as knowing that the infant mortality rate was already high during this time period to begin with. Most couples had several children and it’s uncommon to find a family that didn’t lose at least one child young even before the hardships of the expulsion, so it’s tough to say if a child who died during this period was simply an expected infant mortality loss or a loss as a direct result of hardship. Either way, they were included just in case.
I also took into account how long someone was living in a particular area before passing away. Let’s say someone arrived in Quebec in 1755 but didn’t pass away until 1763. I might look a bit deeper into that person, more than just their year of death, and I would look at their age. Were they already in their 60’s or 70’s and could this have just been a natural death due to old age? Or were they 15 years old when they would have been out of that ‘danger zone’ of the expected childhood loses and by all accounts should have survived until adulthood had they not experienced the physical and mental trauma of the expulsion that may have hastened their demise? I took that into account. I also look at the children lost, again keeping the infant mortality in mind but also considering the physical and mental trauma the mother would have experienced. Did the events of the expulsion impact her ability to develop and nourish a healthy child? In some cases I saw losses of several children in a row during and following the period of the expulsions. If that mother had remained in Acadia, living her normal life, would she have had 6 children perish young? Hard to say, but those children are noted just in case.
So how did I go about finding the people whose names are listed? Ideally we want to find a burial record and in a lot of cases we do have those but in most other cases we don’t so I had to rely on other records to help figure out if they were still alive at a certain time. There were censuses taken in Acadia, such as in Grand Pre and the Beaubassin area that let us know if someone was living at that time. I then tried to find them on subsequent censuses or records. For example, we know that the Acadians around Chignecto were sent to South Carolina so I checked those records upon arrival in 1755/6 and then again in 1763 to see who was still present or who was lost. I did this for each location that the Acadians were exiled to. I used a variety of sources, which I’ve cited at the bottom of my Memorial List, in order to try to pinpoint particular years and locations where our ancestors were. I also used the records of family members to help, such as if a spouse remarried by a certain date, if a child married and listed her parent as deceased on that date, the burial record of a spouse or child that may list their family member as deceased. All of those are examples of other ways I tried to determine a particular person was alive or not at certain times and I did this for each person on the list.
When I published Part 1 I was asked a few questions that maybe others were thinking as well so I figured I would mention them. The abbreviation NFI that you will see in the Notes section stands for No Further Information. It just means that this person has disappeared from paper trail records at the time of my current research. As I keep researching, I may find a burial record for them somewhere that I’ve overlooked or I may find them alive and well in another location 20 years later so the list will be edited as needed as I conduct more research. NFI just means for now, I don’t know what happened to them during the expulsion period.
The different columns of the list are pretty self explanatory. It’s the name of the person who died (or likely died) and the name of their spouse, or spouses, and their marriage year. Then the name of their parents and the parent’s marriage year. Followed by their date of birth or baptism. A lot of these birth years are estimated based on subsequent records such as censuses or burial records where an age may be provided. They are not always accurate, but more of an estimation. When a specific date is noted that means there was a baptism record found for them mentioning their date of birth. Then a column for their location of birth or baptism.
Their last known location in Acadia is the next column. Again, I would primarily use census records for this information or even perhaps a baptism, marriage or burial record of a family member that puts them in a specific location at a certain time that I can reference. If we know they died at sea in 1758/1759 en route to France then we know they would have been in Prince Edward Island or Ile Royale in 1758 so that’s how I determined that. There are still plenty of gaps in my research where I haven’t figured out exactly where someone was just prior to the deportations. That may be because I couldn’t find them on any records or simply because I didn’t have enough time to research that aspect of their lives prior to Part 2 being published. At some point I will go back and try to fill in all those gaps but I ran out of time for this publication as I’m having shoulder surgery in a couple of weeks and won’t be able to use my arm much for at least the first month of recovery so I will follow up with a Part 3 in the future which should tie up any lose ends I can.
The next column is their date of death or burial. If the exact date is known from a burial record or even a declaration made by a family member and recorded later on, that would be where that information came from. If it’s a generalized date then I based that on the availability of other records, such as the censuses and family members records that I mentioned before. It we know they died sometime between 1755 and 1763, I would note that.
The next column is the location of death. If it’s known, it’s noted, if not I may have written “likely died in Quebec” and that would be based on where their family ended up or other factors such as the general movement pattern of folks from a specific area to another such as those at the refuge camp Camp d’Esperance, they mostly went on to Quebec. We know that most of the Acadians on Prince Edward Island and Ile Royale were sent to France although there were quite a few who left the area in 1756 and 1757 and headed for Quebec so those patterns are considered as well. If the location is noted “Unknown” then that means there were no further records found in a specific area and we just don’t know for sure what happened to them. It’s the same for the date of death column where it may say “died 1755+” which just means “died sometime after 1755”. They would have been found on a census in Acadia and then disappeared from further records so their fates are just a mystery and hopefully someday we can learn more about their stories.
The next column is the Notes section. I used this section to note other family members who had perished because it really shows the impact the expulsion had, especially on the Acadian community as a whole, but really focusing on each individual family. There were some entire families that perished. Both parents and several children in one fell swoop. Absolutely heartbreaking. So that Note section is important for showing the impact and possibly explaining a bit about how their year of death or location of death was estimated.
The final column is new to Part 2 that I didn’t include in Part 1 but is incredibly helpful. This last column provides the WikiTree ID number for each person listed. These profiles are managed by the Acadians Project on WikiTree and all the information you may want about each person, including the sources and records for them, will be on each profile so you just type in the WikiTree ID and you can have access to what us Acadian researchers have. I think that is so important because a lot of you will want to see the actual records, when possible, and learn even more information about each person that my list wasn’t able to incorporate so I highly suggest checking out the profiles.
I added information to thousands of profiles as I worked through my list and also created hundreds of new profiles so if you haven’t looked at your ancestors profiles recently, be sure to check for updated information I may have added. I can’t thank Gisele Cormier and Cindy Bourque Cooper of the Acadians Project enough. They were so kind and generous through this whole process...to help me locate records or just to get a second, or third!, set of eyes on a family I was researching that was driving me crazy with my mind going in circles, they are so great to collaborate with. They created a category specifically for my Memorial List so everyone added to my list will be added into that WikiTree category so all the profiles can be found in one place online which will be so helpful. The Acadians Project is a wonderful team of researchers and genealogists who go above and beyond to make early Acadian research accessible to everyone and that is so amazing. I’m very proud to be part of that team.
Finally at the bottom of the list you will see a section devoted to the statistics of the losses. I counted up how many people died in each specific location and I estimated the average age of death based on the people I have listed so far. That averaged age is just 24 years old. It’s incomprehensible to think of how many young Acadians were lost. I also think it’s important to see how many people died in a specific area.
Who is who is not represented on the list? There were many folks who we just don’t know what happened to. For example this includes children who could have been born after the 1752 census in Prince Edward Island and then died at sea in the sinking of the ships the Duke William, the Violet or the Ruby and therefore there’s no record of them at all as a lot of baptism records from that time were lost or destroyed. There must be hundreds if not thousands of them who were completely unaccounted for but we figure must have existed as we know that a few children could have easily been born in each family in that 6 year gap, but we just don’t know.
Also not included on the list are folks who were last recorded on the censuses in 1763 and then disappear from records elsewhere. I am still researching those who fall into that category and will likely add all of them in later as I research further but for now I haven’t made note of them. Those would be the folks who were last recorded on say the 1763 census in Massachusetts for example, and then seemingly vanish. A lot of Acadians in Massachusetts in 1763 moved on to Quebec in the next few years so you would expect to see them in records there. Maybe their children would be baptized there or marry there mentioning their parents? Maybe we would find a burial record for them? But sometimes they just vanish so it’s possible they died just after 1763 or it’s also possible that the search engines I use to try to find them doesn’t have their name transcribed quite right and maybe the records don’t pop up during a search. It could be that simple. So the research into those disappearing people is ongoing.
For the most part I really tried to focus on the 1755 to 1763 time period and then also focused on transition periods such as 1763 to 1767, among others, that I felt were connected to the expulsion events. Had they not been deported in the first place, they wouldn’t have had to relocate in 1764 and perish in say Haiti, if that makes sense. So they were included.
In Part 1, published in December 2024 I had 2,408 names added. For Part 2 published in June 2025, I now have 4,936 names. I could have added more but again I ran out of time before my scheduled shoulder surgery so I will pick back up on the research in a few months when I’m able. You’ll see that some people don’t have a WikiTree profile yet and that’s just because I ran out of time and didn’t get a chance to create one yet. I really want to further my focus on the families in Ile-Royale and Cap-Breton and the Acadian families of Newfoundland that don’t get as much research attention so I started to research and document them in Part 2 and will continue to do so when I can.
So that’s the brief explanation of the project and how I compiled this list. Again, it’s going to be edited over time as more research is done and hopefully as more records are found to provide some closure to the lives of these wonderful people.
I really wanted to have the names of those lost listed in one place, to aid in research of course but also to be a kind of memorial for our cousins who were put through unimaginable devastation and without whom we wouldn’t be here today so now we can say their names to honor them and we will remember them always.
If you have any questions as you are looking through the list or watching the video for Part 1, please reach out. You can message me on Facebook or email me. I added my contact information on the list. Additionally if you come across any errors or know of a source for different information, please let me know. I’m always around and would love your thoughts and feedback.
Vive l’Acadie!
