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The Evangeline
Region of Prince Edward Island could be called the Arsenault capital of
the world. More than half of its population carries the Arsenault family
name and most of the other residents possess a good dose of Arsenault
blood. It is not uncommon to find an Arsenault married to an Arsenault
while some individuals can boast that their four grandparents carry the
name!
On the provincial level, the Arsenaults yield only to the MacDonalds and
the Gallants in numbers. About half of the Island’s Arsenaults live in the
eastern part of Prince County in the area extending from Summerside to the
Evangeline Region. In fact, the Arsenaults have been associated with that
part of the Island from the early part of the 18th century. They were the
founders of the first European settlement in Prince County when, in 1728,
Pierre Arsenault Jr. and his married son Charles settled on the western
shore of Malpeque Bay in the vicinity of today’s Port Hill. They called
their community Malpeque. A Lambert family also came to Malpeque that year
but stayed but briefly. By the 1734 census, the nascent community was made
up of four families, that of Pierre Jr. and of his three married children.
These Arsenaults had not been born in France but in Acadie, today’s Nova
Scotia. It was Pierre’s father, who was also named Pierre, who came to
Acadie from France as a young man in the early 1670s. He settled in
Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal) where he married Marguerite Dugas and had
two sons. After his wife’s premature death, Pierre married Marie Guérin
and they had six sons and one daughter.
In 1686, Pierre Arsenault Sr. moved with his family from Port Royal to
Beaubassin (near Amherst, N.S.). It is from there that his son, Pierre
Jr., came to Malpeque with his family. Later three of Pierre Jr.’s
brothers also moved to the Island : Claude (also known as Ambroise),
Abraham (called “le Petit”) and Jacques. By 1752, the settlement of
Malpeque had grown to 32 families and 40% of these carried the Arsenault
name. The Arsenault “clan” evidently dominated the community as many of
the other Malpeque families were intermarried with them.
Fortunately, the Malpeque settlers, including the Arsenaults, escaped
deportation from the Island after its conquest by the British in 1758.
Most managed to flee to the mainland before the British ships arrived to
deport them. But many of the Arsenaults came back to the Island in the
early 1760s, recruited as fishermen by British merchants. However they
didn’t return to the Port Hill area. They first settled on the eastern
shore of Malpeque Bay in the vicinity of today’s Malpeque village. Later
they were to relocate to the head of the bay as tenants, settling between
Rosehill in Lot 16 and Lower New Annan in Lot 19. By 1798, there were 51
families enumerated in that Acadian community, 30% of which carried the
name Arsenault.
Shortly after the 1798 census, the Acadian tenants began leaving their
Malpeque Bay settlement for other areas in Prince County because of
problems they encountered with their British landlords. Thus the
Arsenault’s started migrating to Tignish in 1799, to Cascumpec in 1801 and
to Egmont Bay and Mont-Carmel in 1812. Among the 61 Egmont Bay and
Mont-Carmel settlers to receive land grants in Lot 15 in 1828, 32 of them
were Arsenaults! It is not surprising, therefore, that four communities of
that area, called the Evangeline Region, are named after Arsenaults :
Abram-Village, Maximeville, Urbainville, and Saint-Hubert.
A number of prominent Island Acadians hail from this impressive family.
The Island’s first Acadian senator was Joseph-Octave Arsenault from
Abram-Village. In 1917, his son, Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, became the
Premier of Prince Edward Island, the first Acadian to become Premier of a
Canadian province. And one of Canada’s best-known Acadian artists is
Angèle Arsenault, a native of Abram-Village, whose career as singer,
songwriter, and performer has spanned more than 30 years.
Unravelling the Arsenault family tree can be a very challenging task. A
visit to the Acadian Study Centre, located at the Acadian Museum in Miscouche, is highly recommended to anyone researching his or her
Arsenault genealogy. You might even find, in this well-documented centre,
situated in the heartland of Arsenault country, a picture of one of your
ancestors.
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