54 THEISLAND ACADIANS

to the census of 1768, except for fishermen at sea most of the 203 Acadians did so'®. In his diary, Monseigneur Joseph-Octave Plessis describes the confusion that appears to have prevailed with regard to this oath:

...because of a religious misunderstanding, some of them believed that they could not, in good conscience, swear an oath of loyalty to a heretic prince; and others that did foolishly convinced themselves that such an oath was not binding, consequently they broke it and joined the French armies again. (TR)!

Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the governing author- ities on the Island appear to have questioned the loyalty of some Acadians. During the American Revolution, the acting governor, Phil- lips Callbeck, wrote to the Privy Council in London that Acadians were not obedient, and that they all had hunting rifles (but fortunately no ammunition). In his opinion, if the Acadians had the means they would eliminate the English population”. Callbeck had undoubtedly heard about a group of Acadians in south east New Brunswick who had taken up arms in support of American rebels against British soldiers’.

An incident that took place in Rustico in 1794 shows that the loyalty of certain Acadians was still in doubt. The inhabitants of Grand Rustico refused to gather on the order of the captain of the militia. As a result, Governor Edmund Fanning went to Rustico accompanied by a troop of soldiers and several civil officials. He rounded up the members of the population suspected of disloyalty and made them take the oath of allegiance. It could well be that these were the people who had come from Miquelon and who had already refused to take an oath under the French constitution. Whatever the case, the event took place without incident and the governor was pleased to have acted in a decisive manner and to have solved once and for all the problem of civil disobedience amongst the Acadians in Rustico".

The main Acadian families, often interrelated, were thus estab- lished on the Island by the end of the eighteenth century and were located, as we have seen, in Malpeque, Rustico and Bay Fortune. Almost all the Island Acadians today can trace their ancestry back to these families.