Categories: Free People of Color (FPOC), Genealogy, History, Identity, Law, Mythology, Religion, Slavery

Acadians, Privilege & Slavery

Armand BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil, the 7th of ten children born to Joseph BROUSSARD dit Beausoleil and Agnès TIBAUDEAU, had been born in 1745 near Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia. His family had risen to some prominence in French Acadia and later British Nova Scotia. Joseph and his brother Alexandre married two TIBAUDEAU sisters (Agnès and Nanette). In the late 1720s, or early 1730s, Joseph and Alexandre BROUSSARD moved their new families to Chipoudy, a seigneurial domain which their grandfather-in-law Pierre TIBAUDEAU had acquired and established as a community. As historian Carl BRASSEAUX shows, Joseph had for years “defended Acadian homes against British incursions,” and “frequently harassed British patrols in the eastern Chignecto area.” When in 1764 local British and Anglo-Canadians rounded up or arrested Acadians, Joseph and the 600 Acadians he led, arranged for “vessels at their own expense,” ultimately ending up on the shores of Bayou Têche in Spring 1765. Perhaps more fortunate than many of their Acadian counterparts, the BROUSSARD group arrived in Spanish New Orleans on a ship they funded and, unsurprisingly, with money to exchange for local currency (Image 2), testament of the mobility and privilege they had enjoyed in French Acadia and British Nova Scotia. This context helps to explain why the BROUSSARD first cousins (Armand, Isabelle, Simon and Pierre) owned slaves so early in colonial Louisiana.¹C.J. d’Entremont, “Joseph Brossard (Broussard) dit Beausoleil,” Dictionary of  Canadian Biography, web, accessed 2015, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brossard_joseph_3E.html ; Clément Cormier, “Pierre Tibaudeau,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, web, accessed 2015, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/tibaudeau_pierre_2E.html; Carl A. Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: the Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiane, 1765-1803 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1987), 28, 34, 102 n 17.

In 1818, Armand BROUSSARD died on his Fausse-Pointe plantation (present-day Loreauville in Iberia Parish). One edifice at Vermilionville in Lafayette is said to have been his home on that plantation and illustrates the comforts that he enjoyed on the Têche. Rosalie, her siblings and father appear in the slave inventory. Armand’s widow, Anne BENOÎT, retained Rosalie’s family after the estate was settled, and they appear in the slave inventory of her succession in 1830. Armand’s only child from his first marriage to Hélène LANDRY, named Joseph dit Josapha BROUSSARD, acquired Rosalie, her siblings and children, who he owned jointly with his wife Marie-Françoise TRAHAN. Joséphine’s family remained Josapha and Marie-Françoise’s slaves until the couple died in 1836 and 1853, respectively.²Succession of Armand BROUSSARD, dated 24 Feb 1818, St. Martin Parish Court House, Succession #288. Succession of Anne BENOIT, dated 10 Nov 1830. Ibid., Succession #656.