Introduction

INTRODUCTION

This booklet records the history and genealogy of a large Acadian family from Maximeville in the parish of Egmont Bay, Prince Edward Island (PEI). This family was founded in 1901 with the marriage of Léon Arsenault and Marie Arsenault, a union which proved to be very fruitful with the birth of fifteen children, four of whom died in infancy. Today the descendants of this couple number in the hundreds and are scattered across the continent in seven Canadian provinces and six American states. An offspring is even to be found in Haiti and another in Japan.

Although the descendants of Léon and Marie are today more numerous off the Island than on the Island, only two of their children actually married and raised their families off the Island. The remaining nine children were married in their Island Acadian community and raised their children in their native province. Ironically, not a single descendant now lives in Maximeville, however, a few grandchildren have built summer cottages on the near-by shore. The old homestead is gone, although the homes where Léon and Marie were born still stand.

Léon and Marie Arsenault were, in fact, born of neighbouring families with strong local roots, in 1880. Maximeville was named in the memory of Marie's paternal grandfather, Maxime Arsenault, the main pioneer of the village. At the time of their birth, Maximeville was populated mainly by members of the Arsenault and Barriault family as well as by a few Pitre’s from Rustico, two of whom had recently married two of Maxime's daughters. Only one Anglophone family lived in this small community, that of Percie Doyle. Almost all the families were related to each other, including those of Léon and Marie. They were in fact related through both the Arsenault and Barriault family lines.

The people of the Cape, as the place was then called, lived mainly on the farm. Fishing became an economically viable industry with the development of the lobster fishery which occurred in approximately the same year that Léon and Marie were born. Many villagers then became involved in lobster fishing or working in seasonal employment in the many canneries which popped up all around Egmont Bay and on the shores of Mont Carmel.

There once stood on the shores of Maximeville, next to the cape, a high rock named “Dutchman Rock” which was simply called "la roche" in French. Victim to erosion, it fell in 1909. It was because of this distinctive feature that the Acadian pioneers, who left the Malpeque Bay community in 1812 to settle in the Egmont Bay area, called their new home "La Roche". Among them were Léon and Marie's ancestors, brothers Eustache and Abraham Arsenault, as well as their father Jean-Baptiste. We will meet those ancestors, but first let's climb up the tree to meet Pierre Arsenault, the father of the Arsenault family in Acadia.

-4-