422 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OE CANADA 



completed it had the effect of shutting out the tide from six hundred 

 acres of valuable marsh land. The fact that these people were 

 experienced in dyking shows that they were refugees of the Expulsion. 



The request for a resident priest was complied with in 1767, when 

 Father Charles François Bailly came to Aukpaque — or, as he terms it, 

 "la mission d'Ekouipahag en la rivière St. Jean." The register of 

 baptisms, marriages and burials during his term of residence is still 

 to be seen at French Village in the parish of Kingsclear, York County. 

 His flock included Acadians and Indians. 



For some reason the presence of the Acadians on the St. John 

 was not approved by the government of Nova Scotia and provincial 

 Secretary Bulkeley wrote in 1768 to John Anderson and Francis 

 Peabody, who were justices of the peace: 



"The Lieut. Governor desires that you will give notice to all the Acadians, 

 except about six families whom Mr. Bailly shall name, to remove from Saint 

 John's River, it not being the intention of the Government that they should 

 settle there, but to acquaint them that on their application they should have 

 lands in other parts of the Province." 



What the magistrates did or tried to do is not recorded. At any 

 rate they did not succeed in removing the Acadians, for the little 

 colony continued to increase. At times the inhabitants were obliged 

 to adopt the mode of life of their Indian neighbours to save themselves 

 from starvation, yet they clung to the place and when the Loyalists 

 arrived in 1783 a committee of exploration, sent by Major Studholme, 

 found an Acadian colony above Saint Anne which numbered 354 souls, 

 viz., 61 men, 57 women and 236 children. 



In their report the committee state: — 



"Above St. Anne's we formed a considerable number of French settlers, 

 many of whom had been in possession a number of years. They in general 

 appeared to be an inoffensive people, but few if any have a legal title to their 

 lands and as they are in general nearly in one and the same situation, we thought 

 it unnecessary to be very particular in our account of every individual. Those 

 who have more than a simple possession to plead in their favour we have properly 

 noticed." 



The names of the settlers, the number in each family, the length 

 of time settled on their locations and some other particulars are re- 

 corded in the report of the committee." 1 Those claiming longest 

 residence were Joseph Martin, who came in 1758, and Joseph Doucet, 

 who came in 1763. Of the sixty-one families mentioned, thirty-six 

 came at the time the Abbé Bailly took up his residence there, or in 

 the course of the next two or three years. There is ground for believing 

 that some of those who settled in the vicinity of Sainte Anne had 

 fled from Beaubassin to Canada at the time of the general deportation 



1 Collections of the New Brunswick Historical Society, Vol. I., pp. 110-113, 117 



