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"Like birds in flight, moving from place to place, having to build new nests everywhere they went, never having a place to call home." Acadian pioneer and resistance fighter Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil was born in Port Royal, Acadie in 1702. In 1720 he with his brother Alexandre established a community at Boundary Creek. During the 1755 expulsion, Broussard ( a former militia captain), his brother, and a group of Acadians evaded capture, and conducted a guerilla campaign on land and sea against the British military. In 1759, however, Broussard and his partisans were forced to surrender. Imprisoned at Halifax until 1764, Joseph led 193 exiles to Saint Domingue (present day Haiti). They must have arrived in southwestern Louisiana in the very beginning of 1765 because his name, and those of seven other Acadian refugees, appear on a contract dated April 4, 1765 in which a retired French army captain, Antoine Bernard d'Hauterive, agreed to supply them with cattle for breeding purposes. The signatures include those of: Pierre Arcenaud, Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, Alexandre Broussard, Jean-Baptiste Broussard, Victor Broussard, Jean Dugas, Joseph Guillebeau and Olivier Tibaudau. Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil died on October 20, 1765, ans was buried near what is today the town of Broussard. On May 4, 1765, and again on May 13, Comissioner Nicholas Foucault recorded the arrival of many Acadian families, a total of more than 200 persons, which he sent to Attakapas and Opelousas. The parish records of St. Martinville, known at the time as Poste des Attakapas, recorded the arrival of the Acadians earlier in 1765 along with the christening of Anne Thibodeaux, daughter of Olivier and Madeleine Broussard. Father Jean Francois, missionary, signed his name as "Cure de la Nouvelle Acadie des Attakapas". In 1780, the Acadians who had been deported and homeless for over 20 years began moving down into the bayous of Louisiana. They began settlements in Lafourche where there was more land. Families settled along the Attakapas Canal between 1793 and 1803. By this means, the Attakapas Acadians sought to reunite their scattered families in their adopted home, which they now proudly called "New Acadie".
SOURCES: History of Louisiana, by Judge F.X. Martin
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