Pisiguit

Pisiguit is the pre-expulsion-period Acadian region located along the banks of the Pisiquit River from its confluence with the Minas Basin of Acadia, which is now Nova Scotia, including the St. Croix River drainage area. Settlement in the region commenced simultaneous to the establishment of Grand-Pré. Many villages (Rivet, Foret, Babin, Landry, Thibodeau, Vincent, etc.) spread rapidly eastward along the river banks. These settlements became known as Pisiguit or (Pisiquit, Pigiguit, Pisiquid, Pisiguid). The name is from the Mi'kmaq Pesaquid, meaning "Junction of Waters". In 1714, there were 351 people (in 56 families) there.

By the mid-18th century, a memoire from 1748 noted that there were 2,700 people in Pisiguit compared to 2,400 in the Grand Pré and Canard area. But the area lost its population rather quickly. Pisiguit was the Acadian settlement closest to Halifax, which was the newly forming English settlement. In the late 1740s and into the 1750s relations between France and Britain remained tense. After the establishment of Halifax in 1749, tensions broke out into open conflict across Nova Scotia in an undeclared war that would eventually become part of the larger conflict of the Seven Years' War. Both French and English powers created disturbances that destabilized the Minas area. Attacks on English forces at Grand Pré led to the building of Fort Edward in 1750. Attacks such as that at Five Houses on the St Croix River (Battle at St. Croix) and the intrigues of Le Loutre and his Mi'kmaq followers further led to difficulties. This led many Pisiguit Acadians, particularly along the Cobequid shore, to pack up and leave, heading mainly toward the Chignecto area and Ile Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island). By 1755, based on Charles Morris's remarks concerning the removal of the Acadians, there were about 1400 people left there. (about 800 on the left bank, about 100 on the right bank & Kennetcook River, and about 500 on the St. Croix River and today's Windsor area.

Pisiguit had two parishes: La Sainte Famille and L'Assomption. At first, Pisiguit had only one parish (Sainte Famille), founded on Aug. 8, 1698. Population increases and difficulty crossing the heavily tidal Pisiquit River necessitated the creation of a second parish. The Bishop of Quebec issued an edict creating the second (l'Assomption) on June 28, 1722. Ste-Famille retained the lands to the west of the Pisiquit while the new parish of l'Assumption covered the lands to east. Although these parishes were established seldom were there enough priests to oversee the needs of the people. Being stationed at a particular parish, they would then travel to surrounding parishes as regularly as possible (for a list of Acadian colonial period priests at or serving Pisiquit see separate section below). The shortage of priests is evidenced by the fact that in 1749, the l'Assomption parish protested to the bishop of Quebec that they had no priest.

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