The Canadian Caissie

The Canadian Caissie/Quessy

by Vincent Caissie

This segment of this short history of the family is particularly interested in two of the four sons of Roger, Jean and Michel, the two responsible for perpetuating the line in Canada and particularly in New-Brunswick. The other two sons, that is Guillaume and Pierre do not appear to have left traces in Canada. Guillaume died in Quebec about 1711 and had fathered two girls only. Pierre's descendants were deported to the American colonies, and later moved to Louisiana, a French possession at the time. His descendants now go by the name Roger or Rogers.

Jean Quessy

We are interested in Jean, the oldest son, because his descendants either remained in Canada or found their way back from France after the 1755-1758 deportations. His son by his first wife, Jean apparently made it to Quebec sometime between 1752, when he was a refugee at Beausejour, and 1754, when his daughter married to a Gabriel Messaguay gave birth to a child in Quebec City. Jean, the son, died in 1789 in Batiscan. The family took on the name Quessy. A half brother of Jean, the son, was deported to France, and one child born in France, returned to the Gaspe area of Quebec. Another son sailed to Ile Maurice in the Indian Ocean and some of his descendants are now living in Australia, while others have remained in the Ile de Reunion.

Michel Caissie

Of greater interest to Acadians living in the Maritime Provinces of Canada is Michel the youngest son of Roger. One of his sons, Joseph aka "Grand Jos", managed to escape the deportation. He, and apparently Jean who went to Quebec, were the only two among the Caissies to do so, and Joseph was the only one who chose to flee to the woods when the British started rounding up the Acadians of Beaubassin in 1755.

Let us backtrack a few years. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht ended yet another war between France and England. That treaty gave what is now Nova Scotia to the British, and reserved all the islands for the French. This meant that Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland remained French along with St-Pierre et Miquelon, two islands in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence that are still today French possessions. As for New-Brunswick, the treaty was not clear. Article 10 did stipulate that a commission would be created to establish the demarcation line between the two territories. This was never done. As far as France was concerned the line was the Messagoetche River, the present day border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; the British operated on the basis that it was much further North.

In the spring of 1750, Governor Cornwallis sent Charles Lawrence to attack Beaubassin. He had 450 soldiers aboard 5 vessels. Meanwhile there were 83 French soldiers in the process of building a fort at Pointe Beausejour. A 350 strong Acadian militia joined the French soldiers and forced Lawrence to leave. The town of Beaubassin which was just across the Messagouetche River, on the British side, was put to the torch and its inhabitants fled to the Beausejour side of the river. That is where Roger's homestead was located and it was only a stone's throw from Fort Beausejour.

A few months later, Lawrence came back to the ruins of Beaubassin, and erected the British fort which bears his name. The forts were almost within each other's cannon range, and La Butte a Roger (Roger's knoll) was almost in the line of fire. That was the situation for the next five years. It is not known who was occupying the homestead at that time. It does not seem that it was Grand Jos. He was an inn keeper at Beaubassin and presumably had lost everything when it was burned down in 1750. There is a list of refugees made in early 1752, in the area of Beausejour and it contains a number of Caissies. Later in 1752 there was a census taken of the Acadians at Ile St-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and it lists quite a few descendants of Jean and Cecile Hebert. Some of them, the girls married to the Grossin brothers, had moved there as early as 1713 and were established at Riviere du Nord where the others joined them after 1750. All of them were deported in 1758.

In June 1755, 33 British ships moored in front of Fort Beausejour determined to put an end to the French resistance. Only a few shots were fired at the fort and at the first casualty the French Governor decided to capitulate. He made certain that he and his troops would be given safe passage to French territory, but the Acadians did not fare so well. When the fort was attacked only about 350 Acadians had accepted to take arms against the British. The others still felt that the Oath of Allegiance taken in 1730 bound them to neutrality in any dispute between France and England.

During that summer of 1755, the British commanders started rounding up the Acadians. As a first step they were summoned to the church to hear an important communication about land distribution. The men were disarmed and kept prisoners until ships could arrive to transport them away. But not all of the men fell into the trap. About 2000 persons out of a population of about 13000 at that time decided to hide in the woods instead of obeying the summons to such meetings. Grand Jos Caissie was the only one among the Caissies to do so with his wife and seven children.

The group with whom Grand Jos had escaped first set up camp in Cocagne, an area not far from Beaubassin, but it was much too close to the British patrols. They broke camp and went further north towards the Bay of Miramichi where a more permanent camp was set up. In this movement they were assisted by some French troops who did their best to keep the English soldiers at bay by waging a constant guerrilla warfare against the British patrols who would venture too far from their base at Beaubassin. For five years they lived like tracked animals in conditions beyond description. There were few guns around and no ammunition to hunt wild animals for food; supplies that were to be sent to them from Quebec ended up making dishonest functionaries richer, and the Acadians kept dying. In the early days of the camp, the bolder ones among the Acadians would venture in the area of their old farms to capture the stray cattle and drive them back to the camp. To make matters worse, the winter of 1757-58 came early with frost killing what little they had managed to plant, and dumping six or seven feet of snow on the ground amid a prolonged period of intense cold. A priest who had visited them wrote a long letter to the Governor at Louisbourg, pleading for help for a people slowly starving to death.

The strength of Grand Jos Caissie is amazing. He and his wife lived through that hell and came out without having lost any of their children, or so it would seem. There remains a question as to whether there was a birth and a death during the five years. Be that as it may, the fact that they survived is a testimony to their determination to stay in Acadia.

Finally in 1760, after five years of this, the commander at Fort Beausejour (by then renamed Fort Cumberland) agreed to allow the Acadians to return to the vicinity of the Fort and assured them that they would not be deported. The Acadians really had no choice. The alternative was death by starvation.

Grand Jos lived around the fort until 1763, getting some rations and managing to feed his family. By then, at least three of his boys were able to help out. The situation could not last forever and Jos finally accepted to go to Inverma Farm, at a place called Jolicure, where he was employed by a William Allan. That choice led him to more trouble, but all remained quiet until the American Revolution in 1776.

William Allan had a son named John who had visions of taking Nova Scotia away from the British as the American colonists were about to do at home. Grand Jos was not left with much choice and had to join the rebels, along with the members of the other three families working Allan's farm.

In September of 1776, Allan decided to go to Cocagne, over a day's march to meet the Micmac Indian chiefs and solicit their support. On the way, there was an accident and a tree fell on Grand Jos. His companions were sure that he was dead. When he was finally freed, he was alive but in very bad shape. Historian Placide Gaudet will say later that he had a broken back. This happened on the Monday, and after rudimentary treatment, he was left behind with a companion while Allan went on to Cocagne. Incidentally, at Cocagne the meeting was to take place at Joseph Goguen's establishment. This Goguen had married Grand Jos's daughter Marie who had lost her husband and two children earlier. Allan came back on Friday and Joseph was still incapable of moving on his own, so they sent to Memramcook for help. It seems that those who came to help carry the handbarrow were Pierre Caissie and Isaie Boudreau.

That was not the end of involvement of the Caissie in the guerre folle "crazy war" as it was called by the Acadians, seeing two groups of Englishmen fighting against one another. Isaie Boudreau, who helped carry Grand Jos back home, was single and eager to fight (His brother Hilaire was married to Madeleine, a daughter of Grand Jos). He accompanied Colonel Jonathan Eddy, the ranking officer in the Canadian forces, to George Washington's camp to meet the general and ask for his support, promising that they could raise an army of 600 men. Washington refused to export his rebellion and Colonel Eddy decided to go at it anyway. In November, he came back to the Beausejour area with a troop of only 200 soldiers. One company was made up of 22 Acadians. Isaie Boudreau was the Captain and Pierre Caissie, "Grand Jos" son was First Lieutenant.

A first attack on the fort on November 14 failed and Eddy decided to lay siege. Two weeks later, 400 British troops arrived from Halifax, and during the night of Nov. 30 to Dec. 1, made a surprise raid on the rebel camp. Everybody ran, some back home when they could, others (including Isaie) all the way back to the American side. As a measure of retaliation Inverma Farm was burned to the ground. Some years later, the American Congress paid Allan for his losses, but nothing was ever offered to the Acadians, except the pay for 14 days of military duty; at least it appear they were paid as would indicate a payroll record. The Caissies again lost everything and this time took refuge in Memramcook where relatives of Jos's wife were living. They were not pursued as the British felt that to do so might raise the ire of the Acadians who had remained neutral.

After the destruction of Inverma Farm, we find Grand Jos at Memramcook where he was listed with his wife and a daughter in 1781, living on land held by W. Des Barres. Earlier, his son Jean-Baptiste had married and settled at Bay des Ouines (shore of Miramichi Bay) where he raised his family. Michel, a son of Jean-Baptiste, returned to the Memramcook area later and his daughter Pelagie (Armand Landry) would become the mother of the first Acadian judge and knight Sir Pierre A. Landry.

The youngest son of Grand Jos, Etienne had also married and first settled down in the Fredericton area. After the American Revolution, the Loyalists came to Canada and a large number settled in that same area. Although Etienne had received a land grant, one of the very first Acadians to do so, he decided to sell to a Loyalist and move back to Baie des Ouines with his brother Jean-Baptiste. After a few years, he moved further North and settled down at Pokemouche.

Pierre and Joseph, the other two sons of Grand Jos first settled down on land belonging to an absentee landlord. W. Desbarres had been given some 10000 acres of land, heretofore Acadian farms, and in 1775 he had bought the New-Brunswick Grant, a further 30,000 acres from Joseph Goreham. He was using Acadian and English share croppers to farm it. For the first few years the occupants had not signed any leases, but in 1784, for fear of putting his title in peril, Desbarres insisted on proper leases. Pierre Caissie and two others were delegated to meet the land agent in Pisiguit (now Windsor, Nova Scotia) and sign the lease for himself and the other 25 sharecroppers who were living at Le Village d'en Bas (Present day Taylor Village). In very broad terms it called for the Acadians to give Desbarres one-third of all their produce and one-half of the increase in the cattle and sheep herds. Desbarres was supposed to pay a salary to the Acadians while employed at the construction of dikes along the shore. Two years later nothing had been paid, so Pierre and his brother-in-law Joseph Goguen were again sent to Pisiguit. They were given partial payment and promises for the rest.

The following summer the land agent came visiting at Memramcook and told the sharecroppers in no uncertain terms that they would never be given the opportunity to buy their land. That is when the Caissies decided to move again. When the Province of New-Brunswick was created, "Grand Jos" sons Pierre and Joseph asked the Province for a grant of land In 1791, it finally came in the form of two hundred acre parcels of forested land along the shores of Shediac Bay. Pierre's land was close to the present day Town of Shediac. He sold it in 1803 and bought new land in Richibouctou Village, where he died about 10 years later. As for Jos, his land was at a place called Cap des Caissie, best known today for its fishing and cottage rental business than for its farming activities.

Joseph and his wife Anastasie Leger had eleven sons who gave them at least 42 grandsons. He and his wife died only a few days apart in 1832. With so many sons, it was impossible to have them all stay in the Grande-Digue area. Five of his sons managed to get land grants in the same area before land availability ran out and the others moved to other locations in New Brunswick and later many moved to the Eastern seaboard of the USA.