The earlier community, the Acadian deportations, and French family connections that continued into the parish’s later history.

On this page

• Before Scottish settlement
• Conquest and deportation
• Where families went
• A changing Naufrage
• Family connections
• Sources

Naufrage’s history did not begin with the Scottish settlers of the 1770s. The parish’s own historical account remembers an earlier French settlement and cemetery. To understand how the community changed, we must look back to the upheaval of British conquest and Acadian deportation—and also recognize that French and Acadian family histories continued after French colonial rule ended.

The community before the newcomers

The name Naufrage, French for shipwreck, preserves an earlier layer of the coastal landscape. Roddie J. MacDonald’s 1982 parish history describes French settlement around the harbour before the arrival of Scottish families in 1771 and 1772. It says evidence of that settlement and its cemetery remained when the newcomers arrived.

The account connects this early community with shipwreck survivors and remembers its residents attending Mass in the Rollo Bay area. These details belong to local historical tradition. They establish what the parish remembered; they do not give us a complete list of households or tell us what happened to each one. ¹

French settlement was itself one stage in a much longer history. Epekwitk was part of the Mi’kmaq homeland before European colonization. The French and British periods should not be treated as the beginning of human life on the Island. ²

1758: a forced rupture

The end of French rule was not simply a peaceful exchange of neighbours. In 1758, during the Seven Years’ War, British forces took Île Saint-Jean, now Prince Edward Island, and ordered the removal of its French and Acadian population.

Parks Canada’s national commemoration records more than 3,000 inhabitants forcibly transported to France. It estimates that over half died through shipwreck or disease. Around 1,100 evaded deportation, some hiding on the Island and many finding refuge in nearby French territory. ³

Those figures concern the Island as a whole. We do not yet have evidence identifying the fate of every Naufrage household. Nevertheless, deportation and flight are essential to understanding why an earlier French community might no longer have had its former population when Scottish settlers arrived more than a decade later.

The distinction in timing matters. British military action in 1758 and the arrival of Scottish families in the 1770s were separate events. Calling both simply “the English moving in” obscures who acted, when they acted, and the circumstances faced by the people already there.

France, New Brunswick, and Louisiana

The destinations remembered in Acadian family history reflect different stages of displacement. Some people were deported overseas; others escaped, moved between places of refuge, or migrated again years later.

Place	Its place in the wider story
France	The principal destination of the British deportation transports from Île Saint-Jean in 1758. Arrival did not end the hardship or subsequent movement of displaced families.
New Brunswick and other mainland refuges	Places of refuge and later resettlement within the wider Acadian dispersal. A family’s arrival there must be traced individually; it need not represent direct deportation from Naufrage.
Louisiana	A later destination for Acadians within the larger diaspora. A Louisiana connection does not establish a direct 1758 voyage from the Island.
Prince Edward Island	Some inhabitants evaded removal, and Acadian settlement continued after the war. Later French surnames can reflect survival, return, or new migration.

Parks Canada describes the wider Acadian odyssey as including migrations to Quebec and Spanish-controlled Louisiana, as well as returns to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. There was no single route shared by all displaced families. ^{2 3}

For Naufrage, the next step is to connect a named household before the upheaval with records after it. A familiar surname in France, New Brunswick, or Louisiana is a lead, rather than proof that its bearers came from this particular harbour.

What the Scottish arrivals found

MacDonald’s parish history places early Scottish settlement around Naufrage and between the Cow and Naufrage rivers. Its description of an earlier settlement and cemetery suggests a place with a remembered past, rather than an untouched landscape.

The surviving account does not say that every French resident departed when the Scottish families arrived. Nor does it establish one common destination for those who left. A changing population could include people who remained, families displaced earlier, returning descendants, and later arrivals.

Over time, the developing parish brought households of different origins into shared religious and community life. MacDonald explicitly remembers French people among those who continued to make their homes in the parish after the initial Scottish settlement. ¹

A later Acadian movement nearby

The same history describes a further movement eastward from Rustico to the Burke Road area around the early 1880s, remembered as New Acadia, and connects it with the development of St Charles Parish. This is a later chapter of settlement, not evidence that those households had remained at Naufrage continuously since the French period. ¹

The regional history therefore includes both loss and renewed settlement. The end of French government did not mean the end of French-speaking people, Acadian kinship, or connections between neighbouring Catholic communities.

Longuépée and Gallant: names that keep the question alive

Local recollection of families such as the Longuépées and Gallants is valuable. It directs attention to people who can be missed when a parish history concentrates on its Scottish founding families. Our family material contains both names, but their connections require careful distinctions.

The Longuépée family connections

The supplied family research of Helen MacDonald includes Martine Longuépée in a Cheverie family connection and Marguerite Longuépée in a Boucher family connection. These are useful examples of French family lines carried into the wider network of relatives represented in the archive. ⁴

They do not yet establish that these particular women lived at Naufrage or were among the last residents of its earlier French community. Their family records provide a starting point for tracing places of residence and marriage across generations.

Gallant families in the later parish

The cemetery material includes Mary McVarish Gallant, who died in 1897, and Gallant children recorded in the 1890s. Sarah Gallant, who married Frank MacKinnon and later served as Shipwreck Point lightkeeper, provides another documented connection: McQuaid identifies her as coming from St Charles Parish. ⁵

These examples show the Gallant name within the later parish and its neighbouring family connections. They do not by themselves establish descent from a particular pre-1758 Naufrage household. The surname’s wider Acadian history and a person’s specific family history are related questions, but they require different evidence.

Marriage, burial, and residence records can help recover that individual story. They may also show that a family returned or arrived later, rather than simply remaining in one place throughout the upheaval.

The end of an era, not the end of a people

The earlier French settlement at Naufrage belongs within a history of conquest, forced removal, refuge, and changing communities. Its dispersal cannot safely be reduced to families choosing to leave when Scottish neighbours appeared.

At the same time, the later parish was not exclusively Scottish in its ancestry or relationships. French and Acadian connections continued through families, marriages, neighbouring settlements, and burial. Preserving those connections gives Naufrage a fuller history—one that recognizes both the disruption of the eighteenth century and the people whose stories continued afterward.

Sources and further reading

1. Roddie J. MacDonald, History of St Margaret’s Parish – Bear River – P. E. Island Up to 1982, owner-supplied text; online transcription at Island Register. Principal local source for remembered French settlement, early Scottish arrivals, and later parish communities.
2. Parks Canada, Skmaqn—Port-la-Joye—Fort Amherst: Culture and history. Island colonial history, Mi’kmaq context, and the wider Acadian dispersal.
3. Parks Canada, Deportation of the Inhabitants of Île Saint-Jean National Historic Event. Source for the 1758 deportation, destination, losses, and people who evaded removal.
4. Helen “Arty Johnny V” MacDonald, supplied family research, Ancestors of Margaret “Helen” MacDonald (report dated 3 November 2003), associated Cheverie and Boucher family accounts. Used for Longuépée kinship connections, not as evidence of Naufrage residence.
5. Supplied cemetery and parish-register research for Gallant burials; Jenny O’Hanley McQuaid, Genealogy of St Margaret’s Parish, Chapter 3, printed page 37, for Frank MacKinnon’s marriage to Sarah Gallant of St Charles Parish.

The precise fate of Naufrage’s pre-1758 households remains to be traced. Later surnames are included as family connections, without assigning undocumented deportation routes, uninterrupted residence, or descent from the earlier settlement.