6 Early Footprints

family was that of J oseph Leblanc (White), his wife Mary Bourg, both newly arrived from Acadia (one year) and their sons: Ambroise (14), Simon Joseph (12), Benony (3), Joseph (8). Their baby Charles (4 months) was born on the Island. Another was that of Abraham Daigle (Deagle) of Acadia and his wife Marie Boudrot of St. Charles, Quebec, and their family of nine: Aima- ble (21), Jean (20), Jean Eloy (14), Francois Marie(12), Pierre (10), Joseph (5), Nicolas (2), Margueritte (23), and Marie Rosalie (16). Today, desoendents of the names Daigle (Deagle), Leblanc (White), and Chiasson (Chaisson) are numerous, especially in Lot 44.

It is difficult to follow the trail of the early French who came to the Island and still more difficult to trace the Acadians who came later, especially those who eventually made their homes in Lots 44 and 45. These early settlers were well suited to pioneer life as described by Dr. J. Henri Blan- chard who was an authority on Acadian history. He writes: “They were hardy, laborous, frugal, capable of turning their hand to almost any species of work, light-hearted and easily made contented.”23 Their crops grew well and the sea teemed with fish. They should have been able to enjoy life undisturbed in their new land, but they were beset by disasters, both natural and man made, which kept them on the move and time has obliterated many of their footsteps.

A forest fire out of control was a terrifying sight then as now. One, at East Point forced the settlers to move from South Lake to Tranche Montague (Surveyor’s Inlet) on the north shore a distance of two leagues from the Point.“ Dr. Blanchard writes on this topic: “In the month of June (1742), a forest fire ravaged the country around St. Peter’s Harbour and 13 persons perished in the flames”.25

This may have been the same fire that Holland describes in his survey report of 1765 to the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations: “The woods upon this coast from East Point as far southward as Hillsborough River to Bedford Bay on the west were entirely destroyed by fire about 26 years hence; it was so extremely violent that all the fishing vessels at St. Peter’s and Morell River in St Peter’s Bay were bumed...”.

Fires, storms at sea, blight and swarms of locusts the pioneer could understand. But the destructive mice that frequently and unaccountably swept over the fields, destroying the crops so desperately needed for survi- val, must have been almost too much to bear. Mice do not hibernate. They make nests to prepare for winter but only one species, the white-foot or deer mouse, lays in a store of food. All the other species continue to live and breed in colonies under the snow in winter, chewing the bark of tree trunks and foraging for food wherever possible, increasing in numbers all the time. A winter of heavy snowfall protects them from owls, foxes and other preda- tors. In the early years of the Island settlement there were, at least, four plagues of mice: 1724, 1728, 1738, and 1749. Troubles were compounded in 1738 with the addition of a disastrous fire. The destruction by the mice was not in the early spring but later when the grain was growing. The mice covered the fields in swarms, ate every blade of grass and went on to devour the marsh hay, so essential for the livestock.

So numerous and so determined were the mice that swarmed over the land, that they frequently raced through the settlers’ homes. The late Mrs. George Mellick of Souris told the story of how her grandmother, as a small girl, was given a horsewhip and told to whip the mice away from her father, John Longuephee, as he lay in bed in pain from a broken leg.26