Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the universe.
This is Episode 1 97 The Grand derangement.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I’ll be talking about an incident in Boston’s history that falls somewhere on the moral scale between America’s World War two internment camps and straight up ethnic cleansing.
1 August morning, red coats fanned out across the province, taking entire families into custody, burning farms and crops and killing livestock falling in the middle of two centuries of intermittent warfare.
This grand derangement or grand derangement didn’t take place in Boston or even in Massachusetts.
But Boston did bear responsibility for this terrible act, and Boston would host these French neutrals.
The human byproducts of the and Boston would host the French neutrals, the human byproducts of a purge we remember as the expulsion of the Acadians, who are confined in our city for nearly a decade.

[1:12] But before I talk about the Grand Garage mall or great upheaval, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and upcoming historical event.

Boston Book Club

[1:23] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is a classic, and it’s a book that did more than any other work in English to draw attention to the plight of the A k Deion’s who were removed from their homeland in the grand derangement,
as the curator’s of what we now know as the Longfellow House, Washington’s headquarters National Historic Site point out,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began writing the Idol and Examiners, which would become Evangel Lean in November of 18 45 shortly after the birth of a second child.
He was a respected professor, had been teaching foreign languages at Harvard for almost 10 years and a published author and translator fluent in many European languages, classical, Greek and Latin.
He’d recently married his second wife, the wealthy and beautiful Fanny Appleton, and the two were living in the impressive Cambridge mansion known locally as the Craigie House.

[2:15] Both Craigie House and Longfellow were relatively unknown at the time, but his epic poem of Angeline would help put both on the map.
The main historical society describes how he settled on the expulsion of the Acadians as the topic for such an ambitious work.
On April 5th, 18 40 Longfellow invited a few friends to dine in this rented rooms in Cambridge. The Craigie house.
Nathaniel Hawthorne brought the Reverend Horace Connelly with him at dinner, Connolly related a tale that he’d heard from a French Canadian woman about Nick Etienne couple separated on their wedding day by the British expulsion of the French speaking inhabitants of Nova Scotia,
the bride to be wanted for years trying to find her fiance.
Connolly had hoped Hawthorn would take the story and turn it into a novel, but he wasn’t interested.
Longfellow, however, was intrigued and reportedly called this story the best illustration of faithfulness in the consistency of woman that I’ve ever heard or read.
He asked for Hawthorne’s blessing to turn it into a poem.

[3:18] Longfellow wrote the poem and deck TeleCheck Sam Iter, which harkens back to Greek and Roman works.
But he wrote it without a rhyming structure, and he wrote it based on historical events that have been all but forgotten in his time.
The National Park service description says of Angeline.
A tale of a Kedia tells the story an unrivalled verse of the young and beautiful of Angeline and the noble Gabrielle Legend s childhood friends living in Grand Prix Nova Scotia,
the tour members of a peaceful farming community that embodies all the values of virtuous rural life held dear by the Victorian audience for whom the poem was written.
They’re engaged to be married but are almost immediately separated when their entire community is forced into exile.
Following the harrowing scene of their ejection of Angeline spends the rest of her life traveling throughout North America, hoping to be reunited with her one true love.
Only after many years of fruitless searching does Evangelion find Gabriel, probably actually Gabrielle, on his deathbed after a moment of mutual recognition, Gabriel dies, held by Evangelina.
She thanks God for bringing them together one last time.
The poem concludes with the assurance that the two lovers air buried side by side, together for eternity with Evangeline is devotion to be celebrated in the land of their birth forever.

[4:42] Well, I personally find it boring and hard to read today. In his own time, Longfellow’s of Angeline was a cultural phenomenon.
It went through six printings in the 1st 6 months, selling out time and time again and putting tens of thousands of copies into print.
The poem Success cemented Longfellow’s reputation and fortune, and it helped reintroduce the saga of the derangement into American popular history.

Upcoming Event

[5:09] And for this week’s upcoming historical event, I’m featuring a brown bag lunch event from the Mass Historical Society,
as well, learn in just a few minutes the historically French A K Deion’s would be expelled from Nova Scotia in 17 55 due in large part to the question of neutrality.
They hesitated to swear an unconditional oath of loyalty to Britain, but also refused to leave their ancestral homeland that now belong to the British.
So when war broke out between the two nations, their loyalty seem to lie with both.
And neither two decades after the crisis of loyalty among the A K, Deion’s war would break out again.
In her talk interpreting neutrality during the American Revolution in the Northeast borderlands, Darcy Stevens of the University of Maine will examine what neutrality looked like in the same region that have been racked so recently by the grand derangement.
Here’s other MHS describes her talk.

[6:07] Rebellion, neutrality and loyalty existed on a spectrum that inhabitants in the borderlands of Maine and Nova Scotia moved along throughout the war.
Likewise, British and American officials, interpretations and acceptance of neutrality was malleable.
Examining neutrals, rebels, loyalists, New England planters, Waban, AKI indicate Ian’s in the borderlands reveals factors which reveals factors which impacted personal decisions and official policy about neutrality.
Recognizing the complexity of neutrality restores agency to individuals and suggests a new terrain for assessing revolutionary actors as they were buffeted by wartime change.

[6:49] The virtual event begins at noon on August 20th. It’s free, but advanced registration is required to get access to the connection. Details.
We’ll have the link you need in this week’s show. Notes. Hub history dot com slash 197.

[7:05] Before I start the show, I want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who sponsors hope History.
A small group of dedicated listeners contribute $2.5 dollars or even $10 a month on Patri on.
In doing so, they offset the costs of Web hosting and security podcast, media hosting transcription services and all the things it takes to create even a small podcast like this one.
If you’re listening to this and you’d like to help out, just go to Patri on dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support link.
A big thanks again to all of you.

[7:44] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic. Dr. John Thomas of Marshfield, Massachusetts, would rise to the rank of brigadier general in the first year of the Revolutionary War.

Main Topic: The Grand Derangement

[7:55] His division would take the lead in fortifying Dorchester Heights, where Henry Knox is artillery were then forced the British to evacuate Boston.
Unfortunately, the general would die of smallpox while commanding the American retreat from Canada just over a year into the revolution, his third war.
Two decades before he died, Dr Thomas answered Governor William Shirley’s called Arms and joined a provincial regiment under Colonel John Winslow.
It was in his role as regimental surgeon that he wrote this entry in his journal on August 11th 17 55. 245 years ago this week, Colonel Monckton got 250 of the inhabitants into Fort Cumberland and confined them.
Major, born with 150 men, guarded the greater part of them to Fort Lawrence, where they’re confined.
Major Preble with 200 men, was ordered to Tan Tamar. Captain Perry, with 100 men, was ordered to point Abbott in a lay in order to bring in what they could find.
Captain Osgood took a small party as they were driving off their cattle and brought them to the camp.
Captain Lewis of the Rangers march this morning with a party of our men to some other villages 150 miles distant.

[9:08] Acting on secret orders from the royal governor of the province, Charles Lawrence.
The red coats and militia under Winslow staged a carefully concerted attack across the colony of Nova Scotia on a Monday morning. In summer long time, residents of the colony were rounded up and confined in forts, barns and churches.
Some reports say that the action began the day before, with red coats surprising the residents during church services and locking them inside.
But that might also be a misreading of the accounts of what happened the next day.
Certainly, the roundup continued for at least two weeks after August 11 with Dr Thomas writing On August 25th 40 men returned upon party that have been out with Captain Willard, and they brought in several prisoners, burned several fine villages.

[9:57] Their their ancestors had colonized the province over a century and 1/2 before the political grounds had shifted beneath the feet of the people who called themselves a K Deion’s.
Before Nova Scotia was Nova Scotia, it was a French colony known as a Katya.
French trappers and fur traders settled in the region as early as 16 07 And while I’m far from an expert in this area, the French manner of dealing with indigenous peoples in areas they colonized was very different from the British style.
From a very early era, the local McMackin malice eat nations considered the French allies.
Not long after the colony was founded, British colonists began settling in Plymouth, Boston, and up the coast of what’s now made this soon led to conflict with their neighbors.
To the north is the French believed a Kedia encompassed all of modern Nova Scotia, as well as much of New Brunswick and Main, which was then the eastern counties of Massachusetts.

[10:55] The friction between the Catholic French colonies to the north and the Protestant English colony south of them would lead to about 100 years of war,
and the border between what were then Massachusetts in a Kedia wouldn’t be fully settled until it was negotiated by John Adams as part of the treaty ending the Revolutionary War,
by President John Quincy Adams in 18 27 and finally by Daniel Webster in 18 42.

[11:21] In past episodes, we’ve discussed some of the conflicts between French Canada, including a Kedia and British New England.
There were skirmishes as early as 16 10 but the contest between Massachusetts and Katya got underway for riel in 16 89 as part of King William’s war.
Like all but the last of these colonial conflicts between the French and English, King William’s war began as an offshoot of a war between the French in English.
Back in Europe in Episode 1 46 we described how Sir William Phipps let a disastrous 60 90 invasion from Boston to Quebec is part of that war.
Queen Anne’s war came in 17 02 which was followed by Father Rails War in 17 22.
Then came King George’s War in 17 44 which we discussed at length in Episode 1 32 which was about a ragtag Massachusetts armies shocking victory over the French fortress Lewis Borg and father Lou Trice. War came in 17 49.
Finally, 17 54 brought the Seven years war, which you probably learned about in history class as the French and Indian War.
This was the first of these many colonial wars to have been sparked in the colonies, then carried back to Europe and eventually fought there, along with East Asia, India, Africa and North and South America.

[12:42] France was forced to concede a Kadiatou Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 17 13 ending Queen Anne’s war.
However, the Akide Ian’s weren’t ready to concede their loyalty to the French Empire, and they provide aid to the French in their Mick Mac malice eaten Waban AKI allies in the wars to come,
after young George Washington accidentally started a global war by ambushing and massacring a French patrol in Pennsylvania, he witnessed their deaths firsthand.
The first months of the seven years war went poorly for the British, who were driven out of the frontier in New York, Pennsylvania and western Virginia.
The only ray of sunshine was a victory over a French fort near what’s today the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Taking this fort left the Fortress Lewis board cut off, leading to its eventual surrender.
It would also leave the A K D. In population of what have become Nova Scotia on uncertain ground.

[13:37] Since 17 10 the British royal government in Nova Scotia had been pressuring the A k D in population to sign loyalty oaths, and they had been refusing.
If they would sign oaths, they’d be considered loyal subjects of the British king.
If they would not, and they mostly didn’t. They were supposed to be considered neutral.
They would not fight for England. But they also could not fight for France.
The issue of oaths have become one of the factors that sparked the 17 49 war, and it continued to stoke tensions in 17 55,
after the supply lines to Louis board were cut off, the only remaining support the fortress could call on would be the nearby A. Cady in population.
So the British army moved to cut off that potential threat.
Since General Braddock had been killed on the Pennsylvania frontier a few weeks before, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley was acting as commander in chief of British forces in North America.
So is technically under his auspices that Nova Scotia governor, Charles Lawrence, issued the first order of expulsion on August 11th 17 55.
His order describes the operation as sending away the French inhabitants and clearing the whole country of such bad subjects.

[14:54] Yale professor John Farragher tied this plan more explicitly to the Shirley administration.
It had been prepared by provincial surveyor Charles Morris, a Massachusetts native and a protege of Governor William Shirley Morris is thinking echoed that of his mentor.
The Acadians controlled all the best land in the province, he argued, and a program of Protestant colonization would require the confiscation of their farms and the expulsion of the A K Deion’s themselves,
without their removal, he wrote in one of several official reports he authored on the A K D in problem,
I am sure it would be impossible any large number of Protestants can ever be settled in the country.
Morris urged a military campaign to eliminate once and for all the a k d in presence.
They’re at all adventures to be rooted out, and the most effectual way is to destroy all these settlements by burning down all their houses, cutting the dikes and destroying all the grain Now growing.

[15:55] Governor Lawrence would hire a fleet of ships from Boston to transport the Acadians out of the colony, and his August 11th order gave explicit instructions on making sure they were all on board.
You will use all the means proper and necessary for collecting the people together so as to get them on board.
If you find that fair means will not do with, um, you must proceed by the most vigorous measures possible,
not only and compelling them to embark, but in depriving those who shall escape of all means of shelter support by burning their houses and destroying everything that may afford them the means of subsistence in the country.
And if you have not forced sufficient to perform this service, Colonel Winslow in minds will upon your application send you a proper reinforcement.

[16:39] As Colonel Winslow, Dr Thomas and the rest of the troops in Nova Scotia carried out these orders, rounding up colonists and burning their farms and crops.
Word spread through Boston about the ongoing operation.

[16:52] In this book on the French neutrals in Massachusetts, Pierre Beliveau describes how on August 16th 17 55 and the House of Representatives, a member warned the assembly that Thomas Hancock, Boston’s leading merchant,
had a dispatch from Halifax bearing news of concern to Massachusetts.
The speaker of the House summoned the merchant Thomas Hancock, divulged to the house that the governor of Nova Scotia was about to remove the neutral French from Nova Scotia and shipped them into the English colonies.

[17:24] Thomas Hancock, of course, was the wealthy Boston merchant who would leave his fortune to his nephew and founding father, John Hancock.
What Belliveau doesn’t explicitly point out in this passage is that Thomas Hancock had this information because he owned the fleet of ships that would remove the first wave of Acadians from their homeland.

[17:45] His account continues. The House voted that four members with, such as the Governor’s Council, should appoint,
be a joint committee to sit that day, consider and propose some proper method for receiving a number of the French neutrals to be deported from a Kedia.
By probing the Great in General Court delayed further consideration until the South bound transports put into Boston for refuge from the storm.

[18:11] That stormy day would come in November. For months, the Massachusetts militia and their Red Code allies crisscross Nova Scotia, eventually rounding up about 7000 KD Ines out of a total population that probably numbered close to 20,000.
The rest fled from the province into areas still under French control, went into the hills there, Mick Mac allies or formed guerrilla bands to resist the British.
The raids and roundups would continue for years. This first phase of the derangement was complete by October.
On October 11th 17 55 Dr John Thomas wrote in his diary.
Stormy Day. Captain Doggett sailed for Boston.
The last party of French prisoners were sent on board the vessel in order to be sent out of the province.

[19:01] Writing in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1968 Richard Low described what happened when six of these ships blew into Boston Harbor after a stormy crossing.

[19:11] The first group of occasions to reach the Bay Province sailed into Boston Harbor from Nova Scotia early in November 17 55.
Notified of the ship’s arrival, the General Court formed a committee on November 5th to examine the condition of the French and make recommendations about what should be done.
After boarding the transports and searching, the legislators reported that six vessels loaded with 1077 a k Deion’s bound for point south of Massachusetts, had put into the harbor for repairs.
The committee observed that the transports were too much crowded, their allowance of provisions short being £1 of beef, £5 of flour and £2 of bread per man per week, and two smaller quantity to that allowance to carry them to the ports they’re bound to,
especially at this season of the year,
and their water is very bad.

[20:05] According to Governor Lawrence, his expulsion order, the A K D in prisoners were to be divided evenly between Philadelphia, New York, Connecticut.
In Boston, this first group was destined to another port, but it gave the people of Boston a preview of what was coming. In just a few weeks.
This first group was destined to another port, but it gave the people of Boston a preview of what was coming. In just a few weeks.

[20:31] Having seen the hardships the Acadians were bearing past speaker of the Massachusetts House and future royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson developed a strong sense of sympathy for their plate.
When the first party meant to dwell in Boston for the long haul arrived, Hutchinson would be one of their strongest advocates and as much later history of the Bay Province. He described their initial arrival.
About 1000 of them arrived in Boston just the beginning of winter, crowded almost to death.
His account also provides historical support for Longfellow Story of Evangelina.
In several instances, the husbands who happened to be at a distance from home were put on board vessels bound to one of the English colonies and their wives and Children on board.
Other vessels bound to other colonies remote from the first,
five or six families were brought to Boston, the wife and Children only without the husbands and fathers who, by advertisements in the newspapers, came from Philadelphia to Boston.
Being till then, utterly uncertain what had become of their families, one of the most sensible of uM, describing his case said it was the hardest, which had happened since our savior was upon Earth.

[21:48] In researching this episode, I saw a lot of assertions in later publications.
The governor surely wouldn’t allow the refugees to disembark their ships, instead keeping them waiting on Boston Harbor through the winter months until half of them died.
While this was frequently repeated, I didn’t find confirmation in primary sources or in publications that I trust.
Instead, Pierre Beliveau offered this description of the arrival of the neutral refugees in Boston.

[22:17] Over a period of nine months, ending in August 17 56 Massachusetts received 1189 French neutrals.
Almost all arrived in some 200 family groups for effort had been made to keep these families intact.
Throughout the exile, the province permitted entry of individuals to join families.
Such late entries not more than a dozen in tally, usually were young men, sometimes husbands and fathers.

[22:48] From the moment they arrived in the Bay Colony, Thomas Hutchinson would prove to be the A K D. In strongest. Defender Richard Low’s article details how Hutchinson cared for individual refugees and tried to find justice for the entire group.

[23:03] Late November, the ship see Flower put into Boston with 206 additional exiles.
When he heard of the new arrival, Thomas Hutchinson, a member of the council who proved to be the Acadians most valuable friend in Massachusetts, went down to the docks to investigate.
On board, he found the widow, Ben Wa, who’ve been ill for more than two weeks without medical attention.
He probably took the woman with her four sons and a grandson to his own house in Boston.
There he provided medical care, food and shelter for the weary group.
But the ailing widow died. Within a few days, Hutchinson continued to house and care for her family.
A few months later, when the sheriff of Suffolk County attempted to place the Children in another part of the province, Hutchinson secured the permission of the Legislature to keep them under his care.

[23:53] Hutchinson’s humane spirit was not satisfied with housing. Only one family however, he wanted somehow to minister to all the occasions in Massachusetts.
Pitying the unfortunates, he prepared a petition to the British government praying that all the exiles be permitted to return to their home.
Pitying the unfortunates he prepared. Pitying the unfortunates, he prepared a petition to the British government praying that all exiles be permitted to return to their homes in Nova Scotia.
If that were denied, he asked that they be compensated for the losses they suffered in the expulsion.
Moreover, he expressed his willingness to put the petition into the hands off AH proper person in England to solicit their cause.
The neutral leaders considered Hutchinson’s petition, but in the end rejected it because they fear they might lose favor in France if they requested a received aid from the British king.
They preferred to remain in Massachusetts for the moment and hope for a French victory in North America.

[24:54] If they weren’t going to get sent back to Nova Scotia, the Acadians would have to be distributed among many towns in Massachusetts.
They had arrived at the onset of winter a difficult season in New England in 17 55 and they’d arrived without any way to support themselves.
As low explains, the exiles had not been permitted to bring property, livestock tools, furniture or goods or a state of any kind.
With UM, the court did not see how the French could be employed in the winter, when even the English colonists were out of work.
As a result, they were completely dependent on the province, and the Legislature had no choice but to act for humanity’s sake.

[25:37] At that time, it was common for talents to provide a subsistence living for the so called worthy poor.
If a longtime resident of a town with a good reputation should fall on hard times for some reason that wasn’t their fault.
The town could vote to provide relief.
On the other hand, if an impoverished transient showed up in town or if a longtime resident lost their means because they were considered a drunk or they simply had a reputation for laziness, the town could vote toe, warn them out.
In that case, they’d essentially be forced to leave town or starve.

[26:12] In the case of the UK Deion refugees, the provincial government would force towns have taken entire families who are not only strangers but sworn enemies for generations.
They were distributed to the towns and full knowledge that they had no way to support themselves, rendering the old system moved.
In his history, Thomas Hutchinson describes the compromise that was reached to allow the neutrals to come ashore.

[26:38] No provision was made in case government should refuse to take them under its care at length. The assembly passed a resolve that they should all be permitted the land and that they should be sent to such towns as a committee appointed for that purpose should think fit.
And a law of the province was passed to authorize justices of the peace and overseers of the poor to employ them in labor by them, out to service and, in general, provide for their support in like manner as if they’ve been indigent inhabitants of the province.

[27:08] Colonial officials would spend much of the next five years writing letters to the Allies in London.
End of the colonial government, Nova Scotia trying to get reimbursed for the expenses the colony incurred and caring for the a k Deion’s who weren’t bound out to service or otherwise generating revenue.
In the meantime, the occasions were trying to come to terms with what it meant to be a French neutral in New England during wartime.
In the early months of their confinement, they tried to reassemble scattered families, find ways to support themselves.
For example, the Selectmen of Boston would write to their neighbors and Dorchester in an attempt to reunite the Leno family.
As Joseph Leno, one of the French neutrals, is assigned to your town, who has a wife and two Children who are desires of being with their husband and father.
We suppose it will not be disagreeable to you if upon they’re going to you, it should be an objection that they might be a charge.
And some hereafter pleased to let us know immediately, and we will then either engaged to defray the same or otherwise will permit them to return to this town again.
We are, sir, your humble servants, the Selectmen.

[28:17] However, concerns besides family separation would become pressing in the coming months and years.
As the seven years war heated up, the people of Massachusetts began to worry about a potential fifth column.
Living in towns and villages across the province, the Acadians begin to experience increasing levels of surveillance and decreasing levels of personal liberty as their rights were curtailed. Both my custom and by law.
Less than a year after their arrival in the province, the Massachusetts legislature passed and order restraining the French neutrals from traveling of owls.
It being found by experience that the frequent travelling and passing from town to town of many of the French people lately dispersed through this province by order of the General Court have been attended with considerable inconveniences and maybe introduction of, of,
and maybe introduction of much greater.
It is therefore ordered and directed that the Selectmen and overseers of the poor be very careful to keep the French people from idling and wandering about.
And none of that people shall be permitted to travel from town to town without leave.
First obtained from two of the Selectmen or overseers of the poor, where they respectively belong off,
which such people shall produce certificate off or otherwise they shall be stopped and turned back by any to English householders who are hereby empowered to examine and stop her return them,
if they have not excuse in writing as above.

[29:45] The fortunes of the A K Deion’s in Massachusetts would fall and rise inversely with the tides of war.
As the British army enjoyed more success on the battlefield, the neutrals around Boston would enjoy more liberty.
As the French forces surged, the living conditions of the neutrals fell, as Richard Low describes in 17 57 Thomas panel, the new governor tightens security even further.
He ordered the sheriff’s on August 13th to keep strict watch over the French neutrals in their district’s fort. William Henry in New York had just surrendered to French forces, and Fort Edward was under attack.
Paudel apparently feared subversion from within or attempted escape by the Acadians.
When the governor received a letter in October 17 59 from General Wolf complaining that Massachusetts Acadians, as well as letters from Massachusetts exiles were turning up in Canada,
the Legislature ordered town officials toe watch their charges more carefully and to submit perfected lists of the names of the occasions in their towns, giving their ages and capacities for labor.

[30:55] As the war dragged on, thousands more occasions would be deported, and most of them were sent farther from home than Massachusetts to the Carolinas, to Georgia and to Britain itself.
When the war ended and the Treaty of Paris formally granted all of candidate of the British, some occasions will be repatriated to France, a nation that they’d only heard about from their grandparent’s or read about in history books.
A handful of these would return to North America, settling in a region called Louisiana that the French had just seated to Spain, where the word Arcadian would slowly evolved into a Cajun identity After the war ended.
The British government issued an order in July 17 64 that formally allowed the A K Deion’s in Massachusetts to return to former French territories, including Nova Scotia.
However, in the meantime, thousands of families from Massachusetts and elsewhere had taken over their former homes.
Notice the New England Planters thes families settled the farmlands that the occasions have been forced to abandon, leaving most of the neutrals with no homes to return Teoh.

[32:04] Now that they were no longer viewed as a foreign threat, Arcadian families in Massachusetts had to decide whether to live freely in the province where they’ve been captives for nearly a decade, or whether they should leave and take their chances in lands they’d never seen before.
One of the key factors in convincing many families to fleet a far away provinces like Quebec was religion.
Thomas Hutchinson explains how the ancient New England anti Catholic prejudice affected the A K Deion’s in general and one family in particular.

[32:35] The people of New England had more just notions of toleration than their ancestors, and no exception was taken to their prayers and their families in their own way, which I believe they practiced in general.
And sometimes they assembled several families together.
But the people would, upon no terms, have consented to the public exercise of religious worship by Roman Catholic priests.
A law remained unrepeatable, though it is to be hoped it would never have been executed, which made it a capital offense in such persons to come within the province.
It was suspected that some such were among them in disguise. But it is not probable that any venture,
one of the most noted families when they were dissuaded from removing to Quebec, lest they should suffer more hardship from the French there than they had done from the English acknowledge that they expected it,
but they had it not in their power, since they left their country to confess and be absolved of their sins and the hazard of dying in such a state, distress them more than the fear of temporal sufferings.

[33:38] Arcadian families across the province wrestled with these considerations, and as the 17 sixties progressed, more and more would leave the province.
Those who weren’t attracted to Quebec by the prospect of finally worshipping freely were driven from Massachusetts by an outbreak of smallpox in 17 64 that badly affected the remaining Acadians.
In May of that year, the Selectmen of Boston noted the Selectmen, having received information that a number of those people called French neutrals had come from neighboring towns. To this, in order to receive the smallpox, inoculation agreed to visit those persons.
Having performed that service, they found three of the neutrals that Mrs Walk, it’s who’d been in the town 48 hours being sent from Cambridge by bringing Team Brattle.
One of them was broke out with smallpox, the others complaining.
They also went into Mr Chapman’s at the south part of the town where they found one Buckley blowing into Colchester in Connecticut,
and that he had been inoculated eight days under these circumstances and considering the great infection still in town, it was not thought proper to take any method for their removal.

[34:45] Another note from the Selectmen a few weeks later gives evidence that the pox was spreading beyond just Boston.
Colonel Williams of Roxbury appeared and acquainted the Selectmen.
That one, Francis Stegall, a French neutral belonging to Boston, was broke out with smallpox at the same time, praying that as that town was not infected, they would consent to her being removed to this place.

[35:08] By the late 17 sixties, the trickle of occasions out of the province had become a flood historian.
Low describes where the A k Deion’s went and why they didn’t have a notable presence in Massachusetts. That’s our province, hurdled toward war with the mother country in the 17 seventies.
In 17 66 at the invitation of Governor James Murray of Quebec, the main body of Massachusetts, Acadians began to depart for French Canada, where Roman Catholic priests were allowed all the privileges accorded Protestant ministers.
In early September 17 66 The Quebec Gazette reported the arrival of two shiploads of neutrals from Boston,
in March 17 67 the Massachusetts Legislature, after repeated requests when those exiles still in the province adopted a law providing for the transportation of the remaining Acadians to Canada.
Those who could pay for their own removal were to do so and those who could not be moved at province expense.
In addition, several Massachusetts towns voluntarily contributed traveling money to their neutrals.
By 17 75 Quebec had received about 1500 decayed Ian’s from New England, many from Massachusetts, where most of the exiles had lived.

[36:22] Some neutrals traveled overland from Massachusetts back to their homeland, a kedia where they were given land once they had taken the oath of allegiance to the British crown.
By the time of the revolution, only a handful of the A K Deion’s remained in the province, and these were assimilated after a few generations to learn more about the grown develop small or the great upheaval,

Wrap-Up

[36:45] check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 197 I have links to the book by Pierre Belliveau on paper by Richard Low that I relied so heavily on in preparing this episode.
I’ll also link to Dr John Thomas’s diary recording his experience and other primary sources about the initial expulsion of the UK Deion’s,
I linked to financial records showing how deeply involved in the expulsion John Hancocks, Uncle Thomas Waas,
as well as two volumes of Massachusetts Town records from this period filled with notes about how the refugees were distributed among the towns, the work they were forced to do and the times they were supported by the colony.
And, of course, I’ll have information about our upcoming event, as well as Longfellow’s of Anjali, this week’s Boston Book Club Pick.

[37:34] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com.
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Music

Jake:
[38:04] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.