Comeau family history from 1765 to 1860
The Comeau and Spoor family history was looked at from 1861 to 1960 in a previous post. Now we will look at the Comeau, Touchette, Henley, Deschênes, Spoor, Gauthier, Brault, and Hade families from 1755 to 1860. The year 1755 is important since the British brutally kicked the French Acadians out of Nova Scotia then. That event in full will be in the last of the three Comeau family stories that will come later.
Jean Comeau our 6th great grandfather was 50 years old when the British marched on the village of Chipoudy in New Brunswick. His family and 200 other Acadian families had settled that village in order to keep away from the British rule. That was on the isthmus that joins Acadia to New Brunswick in Canada. The families hid in the woods while the British torched their homes. They actually wanted to destroy the Acadians totally but the British could not find them. They returned to their village and rebuilt it in the ensuing months. Thus they were some of the few Acadians to escape the deportation of 1755. His son Joseph Comeau moved two later to Quebec City and married Isabelle Élisabeth Laurt in 1759 in Notre Dame Cathedral. They would settle into Pointe-du-Lac, Quebec which would become the second ancestral village of the Comeau family. Among their 13 children would be a son Joseph Comeau who would marry Marie Anne Livernoche in 1786. Comeau and Livernoche would have 12 children themselves. Thus you sense that there are a lot of Comeau that come out of Pointe-du-Lac.
Joseph Touchet and his son Louis were farmers in the townships around Saint Mathias, Quebec. They owned small farms but these through the decades were becoming more and more difficult to farm. Overpopulation was a problem and mechanization of agriculture was on the increase. Few Quebec farmers ever tried to pick up a trade and move into the commercial cities of their province. Most when they moved would do so to the small and medium sized towns of New England. Connecticut and Massachusetts were only a one-day train ride away from southern Quebec. When Joseph’s grandson Jean Louis became the first of the family to immigrate it was not as permanent as it would seem. Summer returns were frequent to both help with the farming and to visit. Additionally, 50% of all Quebec immigrants did not stay in New England but rather returned permanently to their ancestral villages in Quebec.
James Henley came from Ireland in the 1770s when he was a teenager. He settled in Perce on the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. He formed a union with a local named Catherine Chicoine dit Cotton. About five years later a priest from France finally shown up and they had a formal marriage and baptisms for their first three children. This was common in such remote villages and was called a natural wedding and natural children. In 1791 in a violent storm, James Henley drowned in the ocean. He was a fisherman by trade and met his untimely demise. His wife petitioned for help from the government and received it since she had so many young children. Their son Patrick moved to the village of Sainte-Anne-des-Monts in the Gaspe and had many children. There are still many Henley in that village today.
The Deschenes family of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Quebec was for over a century tied with the Henley family. These were both fishing villages and very close to each other. The patriarch of the family in that area would be Jacques Miville dit Deschênes. He moved from the western neck of the Gaspe called Rivière-Ouelle to the fishing village eastward. The same pressures that drove the Henley family south to Fall River did the same to the Deschenes.
Johannes Spoor was from a long line of Dutch settlers in the Hudson River Valley. His brother inherited the family home so he moved to Sheffield Massachusetts. His marriage to Catharina Halenbek Capersen gave him five sons. The fourth of them Abraham Spoor is the 3rd great grandfather of the Spoor family of New Bedford. With his 8 children he would move northward to Saint Albans Vermont in 1790. After 25 years there they would all scattered across the USA. A poor economy and religious fervour hit the USA in that era and they got caught up in it. His last son Orange Spoor had opened a sawmill in Saint Albans but needed to move so he opened one next in Farnham Quebec. With his son Edwin he would be a great success in the wood business of the area.
Michel Gauthier and his son François and then his grandson Charles were tradesmen in the medium and small cities along the Saint Lawrence River. They must have had success since they stayed in the native cities for long periods of time. Charles had a son Jean-Baptiste Gauthier dit Marcoux that moved to Farnham. His daughter met William Spoor and they decided to move to a better life in New Bedford. There was no mass movement from this extended family although when Jean-Baptiste died his wife Rosalie Hebert moved to join her daughter.
The Acadian deportation was harsh on the Paul Brault family. In 1755, Grand Pre was brutally destroyed by the British and all citizens moved afar. Paul and his children moved to Saint-Jacques-L`Achigan, Québec. This was one of a series of villages north of Montreal along the L`Achigan River that was settled by Acadians. Five generations of Brault would stay in these towns – Paul to Jean-Baptiste to Alexis to Julian to Damase. They would marry into the Landry, Dupuis, Meunier, Piquet, and Gendreau families there. Most were farmers and successful but large families pushed Damase south to the eastern townships.
The last family is the Hade family who settled in Chambly and in Saint Mathias. François Hade was a military man and many of his offspring were too. He was a late immigrant from France since he only came over as a soldier to fight one of the many wars against the British. His son, grandson, and great grandson were all named François. They all lived near Fort Chambly (it is the largest fort in Quebec). Gradually, they moved into agriculture in the towns around Chambly and Farnham. Even the families that they married – Menard, Gemme, Sansouci, and Alix – followed the same path of military and later farming. Quite the story so far but next we will go back in time to the France to North America immigration of the 1600s.