The Caissie and the Grand Dérangement 

Exile from Acadia

by Vincent Caissie

The Quessy of Quebec

On the 1751 list of refugees at Pointe Beausejour, it is noted that Jean Kessy, his wife, four boys and three girls were at Baie Verte after the destruction of Beaubassin by Lawrence in 1750. That family is also on the 1752 list. In 1755 the records of Quebec indicate that Theotiste Quessy, the wife of Gabriel Messaguay, gave birth to an unnamed child. The couple had probably married in 1754. The record of the marriage has not been found but a detailed study of baptisms of Caissies (Quessy) in Quebec by S.A. White leads to the conclusion that she was truly the daughter of Jean and Marguerite Bourgeois. That event would indicate that Jean, his second wife Marie Richard and their children would have gone to Quebec sometime between 1752 and 1754. The family eventually settled at Batiscan and the descendants are known today by the name Quessy. The first recorded event involving a Quessy in Batiscan was a birth in 1769. That family would have escaped Deportation, but would have been force to leave Acadia because of the turmoil. Having escaped the fate of the other members of the Caissie family, it nonetheless suffered some of its consequences.

Those who were arrested in Beaubassin in the Fall of 1755 were placed on board four ships which set sail on October 13, 1755, arriving in Charles Town in South Carolina on November 17. They were only disembarked on December 4th on Sullivan Island, and they were permitted to enter the town on the 9th after almost two months crammed on ships like cattle. Three of the captains provided a list of the Acadians. The captain of the Two Brothers only indicated the number on board, that is 132. The other three provided the names of the heads of families, and it is only on the "Edward Cornwallis" that there are Caissies. Incidentally the captain of the Edward Cornwallis indicates that 3 persons died at sea but he does not name them.

We find on that list Joseph Kasey with one son, his wife and four daughters. The fact that there were more than one Joseph and Jean makes identification more difficult but I believe this refers to Joseph, son of Pierre and Therese Mirande. In 1763, when deportees in South Carolina asked to return to French territory, Joseph and his wife Marie Gaudet are not on the list, but we find Francoise Quecy, 12 years old, orphan living in the home of Simon LeBlanc and Marie Arseneau. Now Joseph and Marie Gaudet had a daughter Francoise born in 1751, therefore 12 years old in 1763. I have not found other orphans on those lists who could have been children of Joseph and Marie. In 1760, many of the deportees died during a smallpox epidemic. These details lead us to believe that Joseph and Marie Gaudet were deported to South Carolina, that they died there, and that only one daughter survived, although I am not aware of what happened to her afterwards. Incidentally Francoise does not appear to have been related to the family of Simon LeBlanc with whom she was living in 1763.

Among the Cornwallis deportees there was also Alexander See Casie. It is not the only name so badly broken up by Captain St. Clair; it is safe to conclude that this refers to Alexis, a son of Pierre and Therese Mirande, accompanied by his second wife Marie-Josephe LeBlanc. Although St. Clair indicates that he is there with one son and five daughters, I have only been able to find four children. However, if one considers the dates of his two marriages St. Clair's figures are believable. That list is the last indication I have found of the existence of Alexis. His son Jean, born in 1753, first married to Rosalie Richard, will later marry Marie Victoire Prejean in Louisiana. [See Roger/Rogers- Descendants of Roger Caissy in Louisiana by Allen John Rogers]

In 1770, in Louisiana, there is a record of the marriage of Joseph Roger and Anastasie Dugas. That Joseph was the son of Michel, a brother of Alexis. Michel was dead in 1752, when we find his widow married to Jean Baptiste Perial and living on Ile Saint Jean. Joseph who was born in 1744 was with her. In 1760 a list of the inhabitants of Restigouche indicates the presence of Jean Baptiste Perial as the head of a family comprising seven persons. Joseph must have been one of them. He is later in Halifax with his half sister, and he must have gone to Louisiana from there.

Pierre and Therese Mirande also had a son named Jean, born in 1725. I am not aware that he was ever married. However, I think he might have been the John Kase with wife and one child who is on the list of 26 August 1763, of the families deported to Georgia and who later made their way to New York where they were distributed in the counties of Westchester and Orange. On that same list, we find Jean-Baptiste Orillon, son of Charles Champagne and his wife Marguerite Deveau, the daughter of Cecile, herself the daughter of Pierre and Therese Mirande.

The 1763 list of Acadians in Pennsylvania has the name Joseph Quisse, his wife Marie and one child. S. A. White thinks that he is a Joseph who would have married a Marie Vincent in Pennsylvania, even though the patronymic shown in the record is Diezy. I cannot find any Joseph among the descendants of Roger that I have not been able to trace, but this does not exclude the possibility that there was one.

The family of Jean, son of Roger, and his second wife Cecile Hebert went to Ile Saint Jean after the destruction of Beaubassin in 1750. It is from there that it was deported to France at the end of 1758. Many of its members perished when the ship transporting them to France sank off the coast of England on December 13, 1758.

Jacques Caissie, son of Jean and Cecile Hebert, his wife Marie Josephe Olivier and five children, the oldest being 13 years old all perished in the wreck of that ship. Another daughter, fourteen years old, had died in 1754. It is an entire family that disappeared.

Marie-Blanche Caissie, Jacques' sister, her husband Charles Pothier, their two children, 8 years old Modeste and 6 years old Joseph suffered the same fate. A son, Francois, had died in 1752. As in the case of Jacques, there were no survivors in that family.

Jeanne Caissie, a sister of the first two, was also among the victims of this shipwreck. In February 1748, she had married Jean-Baptiste Butteau. There does not appear to have been children, and the husband was not on the list of the victims. I do not know what happened to him.

Paul, another member of this same family was aboard another ship. He and his wife Marguerite Cyr arrived at Cherbourg in France on August 21, 1759. Marguerite died that very day. Their only son Paul, born in 1757, had died during the crossing. Ten months later, on June 3, 1760, Paul married Marie-Anne Hache who had also lost her husband during that tragedy. This second wife died a little over two years later on August 23, 1762. On July 27 of the following year Paul married for the third time to Francoise Cadieux. A few months later, on October 9, 1763, Paul himself died at St-Servan, near St-Malo.

Michel, the eighth of the ten children of Jean and Cecile Hebert, the brother of Paul, his wife Marguerite Henry and their five children between 1 and 10 years of age, were also embarked at Ile Saint Jean. Four of the children died at sea, and only Osite, age 10, will accompany the parents at their arrival at St-Malo on January 23, 1759. The family settled down at St-Servan where eight more children, four of them sons, were born. The oldest, Michel born in 1760, married Marie Boudreau on July 12 1785 at St-Sevan and later came to Bonaventure in the Gaspe Peninsula. In 1788, Pierre Paul, born in 1764, sailed to Ile Maurice, a French possession in the Indian Ocean where he died in 1825. The 1794 Census on Ile Maurice lists him as a dance instructor but the records would also indicate that he was a land owner. His son Jean-Baptiste settled in the Seychelles Islands and became the owner of plantation and had about thirty slaves at his service. He died on Silhouette Island in the Seychelles in 1861.

Cecile, another daughter of Jean and Cecile Hebert also had her share of miseries. She arrived at St-Malo probably on the same ship as her brother Michel and his wife Marguerite Henry. She disembarked with her eleven year old daughter Rose, and her husband Pierre Grossin. A seven years old son Pierre, had died at sea. One month after her arrival her husband died in the Parame Hospital, near St-Malo, and two months later her daughter Rose died. In 1760, Cecile married Nicolas Bouchard, whose wife Marie Chiasson had died at sea. In 1765, she is in French Guyana where she married Alexis Hilaire. That is where she died in 1768.

Madeleine, Cecile's sister, had first married Jean-Baptiste Habel. In 1754 she married Louis Monnier. Deported in France, they decided in 1764 to migrate to French Guyana. She gave birth to a daughter aboard the ship LeFort which was transporting them to the colony, at the end of July, and this girl was baptized in the parish of Saint-Sauveur, in the State of Cayenne, in September 1764. The living conditions were extremely harsh. Madeleine died less than a year later on August 18, 1765, in the parish of Saint Joseph de Sinnamary in Guyana and the register indicates that she was then the widow of Louis Monnier.

Marguerite, daughter of Jean and Cecile Hebert, sister of the two preceding, was first married to Christophe Delaune and was also living at Ile Saint Jean at the time of the 1752 Larocque Census. On October 3, 1759, she was a widow when she married Joseph Prieur in France. A report on the Acadians at Cherbourg dated March 13, 1767 has this to say about that family: "Joseph Prieur of Port-Royal, son of Guillaume who was a merchant and of Madeleine Podevin, was a fisherman and carpenter, 59 years of age, works occasionally at his trade, having had many broken ribs in a shipwreck, the right foot which he uses with great difficulty and pain, the stomach affected for having swallowed by surprise some arsenic water" and "Marguerite Caissie, his wife from Beaubassin, daughter of Jean, carpenter and cabinet maker, and of Cecile Hebert, 51 years old, affected by many illnesses and very infirm". She died at Chantenay, Nantes, in 1787.

Marie, also a daughter of Jean and Cecile Hebert, was the wife of Michel Grossin and had been living on Ile Saint John since 1732. Deported to France with her family, she disembarked at St-Malo on January 23, 1759, accompanied by a son Jacques and two daughters, Francoise and Henriette. Michel had died at sea, and on April 1759, Jacques and Francoise died in Parame. Marie was married again in Parame in 1764 to Charles Hebert. Another of her daughters, Marie Louise, the wife of Pierre Quimine, crossed on the same ship. Two children of this couple did not survive the crossing and Marie Louise herself died in September 1760 at age 32.

Summarily, this is the toll of the tragedy that struck the descendants of Roger Caissie and Marie Francoise Poirier.