when you're having a good time

I will be traveling with my family from now until July 30th, so blogging will be minimal if it does not cease entirely for the rest of the month.

We are going to Nova Scotia to research our Acadian roots. The Acadians were expelled from their Maritime colonies in 1755. Until then, they had led a bucolic and classless existence, depending upon the resources at their disposal, keeping fair trade with the native American Indians, and trusting at all times in Divine Providence. They had maintained a fine neutrality with both the French and the English, regarding themsleves as distinct from both. They were willing to submit to British government provided they did not have to take up arms (very much like the pacifist Anabaptists); this the British would not accept for fear that the neutral Acadians would ultimately side with the French. Unlike the Anabaptists, they were devoted Papists, a fact that elicited greater dislike from the British. Meanwhile, the native American Indian chiefs threatened dire consequences should the Acadians side with the British, who did not treat First Nations with the same regard as did the French, namely as trading partners rather than subhuman freaks.

Thus these pacifist Papists found themselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place. They wanted merely to continue building dikes, milling cloth, and tending livestock in cooperation with the land, as had been their pleasure for multiple generations. Alas, they were torn from their life and livelihood in 1755 in a little known event called La Grande Derangement.

One of the original families to settle Acadia was the Pitre clan. Jean-Baptiste Pitre found his way from Quebec to Detroit and married into families that had settled Fort Pontchartrain with Antoine de la Mothe-Cadillac. His son Francois Pitre was the first of my lineage to be born in Detroit. Francois also married into premier Detroit families (for whom streets in the city are named). Francois Pitre died Francis Peters. We are off to find out more about the Pitre Acadians, and Jean-Baptiste in particular. What drew him to Pontchartrain? Why did Francis change the spelling of his name? Who were the generations in Acadia that succeeded Jean-Baptiste and from what part of France did they set forth to colonize the New World?

The most important point in all of this genealogy is that Papism runs in my blood. The Acadian flag differs from the French tricolour in the inclusion of a yellow star in the blue pane, representing Mary, the Star of the Sea. It is known as the Papal Star. I am off to meet these people who preserved the faith through my paternal line.