Ancestral Pilgrimage

Colonel John Brooks Devoe, Stratham, NH

The increase in the number of genealogical libraries, the great mass of films available at LDS Family History Centers, and the ubiquitous computer, have all aided today’s researcher. Unfortunately, many are so involved in the collecting of names (and the data associated with them) from these close-to-home sources that they deny themselves the pleasure I had some forty years ago; I walked the paths of my antecedents, came to know their land. If you have ever thought of doing that, intending one day to do it, promise yourself now to do so.

For to do so is a unique experience, an odyssey. The greatest single neglect I observe today on the part of those involved in genealogy is the study of (or even an interest in) the history associated with our forebears, and yet without it those men and women are strangers. Even many of those who pride themselves (often with considerable justification) for their prowess in the area of Acadian lineages remain ignorant of all but the most superficial aspects of Acadian history. Part of that history is the land in which our ancestors lived; unless you now reside in the land that was once Acadia (and most of us do not), you are a stranger to it as well.

Make a decision to become acquainted with that land, but before you take to the road prepare to do it intelligently. Come to know your family and its lineage, the place names of where they lived, the history of their times, and above all make an effort to identify in advance some of the Old Folks who have remained in the areas of interest.

While I recommend the above approach, it was circumstance in fact that dictated my own emersion into the lands of Old Acadia (and genealogy as well) before I had more than a two generation knowledge of the identity of my ancestors, and unaware that I bore an (albeit adulterated) Acadian name. In 1961 the U. S. Air Force assigned me to duty at Harmon Air Force Base in Stephenville, Newfoundland and I drove there accompanied by my late wife of fondest memories, Genevieve, and our three children. My paternal grandmother, Margaret Moore, had been born in Cape Breton and often spoke of its beauty and I looked forward to witnessing what she had so often described; she had lived on The Lakes. As we drove north I was unaware of the following: Approaching Amherst Nova Scotia we passed, within a few thousand feet of the highway, the unmarked burial ground of the old Village of Beaubassin where the progenitor of our Acadian family likely lies; after crossing the causeway to Cape Breton we drove through a little town called River Bourgeois were my great-great-grandfather had lived; still later we drove off the ferry in Newfoundland into the town of Channel where grandmother Moore had lived for four years when her father, Captain John Moore, was employed by British Customs…and buried an infant daughter in a chapel burial ground there.

The close proximity of my duty station to what I came to know as the birthplace of seven generations of my Acadian grandfathers prompted several visits there over the course of my 30 month tour of duty. My wife and children joined me in what became an adventure. They visited surrounding attractions while I handled the pages of original documents at PANS, the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, then housed at the University in Halifax, and they tramped countless cemeteries with me (in field and wood), wandered about the properties of the glebe houses of a half-dozen or more parishes as I turned the pages of those precious church registers, found other activities as I poured over the records of three County Courthouses. We talked to the Old Folks. In our travels I had come to know the land, and it was every bit as magnificent as my non-Acadian grandmother had reported; through study of documents I came to know my people.

Upon our return to the States I sought data from the Massachusetts records, continued corresponding with relatives and others from Cape Breton, but yearned to return to the land of Acadia. Only after I retired from the USAF did that become possible and I have managed to do it some two dozen or more times.

In later years I have been accompanied by my present wife, Gwen, who recently discovered an Acadian ancestor; yes, we are 9^th cousins. No consanguinity problems there. From my first real visit to Cape Breton in the summer of 1962, I felt I belonged there…had been there before. I have spoken to others who have visited the land of their fathers who have expressed that same sense of belonging, ending up deciding we felt it because we knew it to have been their home. Perhaps that is true, but perhaps as well there is a deeper thing within us that knows “I have been here before.”

I have watched a sunrise from the promontory where stands St. John the Baptist Church, and from the earliest days my journeys brought me not far from River Bourgeois to a place once called Little Arichat Island (now Crichton Island) on Ile Madame where my great-great-grandfather Pierre DeVaux once lived and great-grandfather Peter had been born in 1832. At that most beautiful spot I found the remnants of either a root cellar or a foundation, the location confirmed by the words of a contemporary adjacent land description “…and to a point in line with the house of Peter Devo.” On the north shore of Ile Madame I tramped a portion of the hundred acres granted to Pierre’s father Joseph DeVaux in 1803. To the northwest I visited the land of Pierre and his second wife, Christina Murphy, at McKinnon’s Harbor near Iona, and along Alder Point Road at Little Bras d’Or I found my grandfather Matthew’s place of birth (and that of his fifteen siblings), the home Captain Peter DeVaux had built around 1854 along the Little Passage where was launched the River Queen and other schooners. The house still stands, occupied by his descendants to this day.

My trips to the lands of Old Acadie were not always investigative journeys. I often came in response to the pleasant memories of previous visits, often to simply stand on the ridges of what had been the bountiful village of Beaubassin and watch a summer sun set across the Baye Francaise, bathing it in sparkling gold, much as my ancestors must have done some three hundred years before, to visit the birthplace of a grandfather and great-grandfathers, to kneel and say an Ave over their resting place, to view the Bras d’Or Lakes once again and contemplate the significance of those sparkling waters to Captain Peter and his splendid River Queen.

Journeys well taken; promise yourself to do it one day.

This article appeared in the MAY 2002 issue of Le Réveil Acadien, the quarterly of the Acadian Cultural Society.

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