[ganong] historic SITES IN NEW BRUNSWICK 291 



A. Settlements. 



A.— De Chauffours* Settlement at Richibucto. The Seigniorial grant to the 

 Sieiir de Chauffeurs of 1684, states that on the border of the river Richibucto, 

 on the coast on the southwest, he had two years previously taken up three 

 arpents of land, and had built a fort of stakes and two houses for his resi- 

 dence and to store the grain he had raised the previous year. The site of 

 this settlement we do not know. Tradition places the earliest French 

 settlement at Richibucto Cape. It was possibly on the south side of the 

 harbour not far west of Indian Island. Cooney states that before 1755 

 the French were pretty thickly settled at Richibucto, (where the town now 

 stands,) where there was a village of about forty houses, and another small 

 one at the mouth of the Aldouane. Aside from these, however, I know of 

 no reference to pre-expulsion settlements in this region, though there must 

 have been settlers about the different harbours. 



The years between 1751 and 1755 were troublous enough for the Aca- 

 dians about the head of the Bay of Fundy, and many of them retired to 

 Shediac and the other harbours of this coast, and yet more who escaped the 

 . expulsion in 1755, retreated to the same region. Bellin in 1755, speaks of 

 all this coast as inhabited. From 1755 onwards considerable settlements were 

 forming about these harbours, and unlike those at Miramichi, Nepisiguit and 

 Restigouche they appear not to have been again disturbed by the English. 

 Much about the history of these settlements has been published in news- 

 paper articles by M. Placide Gaudet, from whom the following facts are 

 taken : The original settlement at Shediac was at Grandigue on the north 

 of the harbour where a large settlement still is, and the present site of Shediac 

 was not occupied until the present century. In 1767 lands were assio-ned to 

 twenty-four Acadians at Shediac and Cocagne [Murdoch. IL, 472]. In 1772 

 lands were granted to Acadians at Cocagne. The settlement of Buctouche 

 was not founded until 1785, and Richibucto in 1790. In 1791 several Acadians 

 petitioned Governor Carleton for lands on the south bank of Richibucto and 

 in 1798 they were given a grant of what is now Richibucto village. There 

 were, however, no doubt Acadian settlers much earlier on this river. The 

 large island south of the entrance is on the charts called French Island, but 

 is also known as Indian Island. St. Louis de Kent was established in 1805. 

 On the condition of these settlements in 1811, 1812, the Journal of Bishop 

 Plessis is very valuable. 



B.— Belair vers Cocagne in Abbé le Guerne's letter of 1756, was, according to M. 

 Gaudet, six or seven miles up the Cocagne on the north side. 



At Cocagne Cape, according to M. Gaudet, is a place still called Camp de 

 Boishébert, where Boishébert spent the winters of 1755-56. 



B. Forts. 



The Fort of DeChauffours, already spoken of, was, of course, merely a 

 palisaded dwelling. 

 ■A- — Shediac. But a single fort of importance in this region is known, that at 

 Shediac, often mentioned in early documents and shown on maps. It was 

 built by LaCorne in 1749, and is spoken of in one report as " premier étab- 

 lissement du Roi." Franquet speaks of it in his report as "the first estab- 



