ARRIVAL AND EXILE IN MARYLAND (Note: Firmin Landry and his family were aboard the Sloop Ranger) Sunday November 30, 1755 ‑ The following is an announcement that appeared in the "Maryland Gazette" of December 4, 1755: "Sunday last (Nov. 30) arrived here two last of the vessels from Nova Scotia with French Neutrals for this place, which makes four within this fortnight who have brought upwards of Nine Hundred of them. . . . As the poor people have been deprived of their Settlements in Nova Scotia, and sent here (for some very Political Reasons) bare and destitute, Christian Charity, nay, Common Humanity, call on every one according to his ability to lend assistance and to help these objects of compassion." (THE GREAT WAR FOR THE EMPIRE ‑ The British Empire Before The American Revolution ‑ Vol. VI by Lawrence Henry Gipson Chapter "Farewell To Acadia p 304) Sunday November 30, 1755 ‑ The last two ships of the four ships that had been sent to Maryland reached Maryland and because of the dreadful overcrowding and the delay due to the storms, the ships' stores were depleted. Sunday November 30, 1755 ‑ In all, five transports, bearing some nine hundred and thirteen people, ascended Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis, most of them overcrowded and with their burden of sick people. These were the inhabitants of the Minas Basin region, 493 from Pisiquid and 420 from Grand Pré (Lauvriere, La Tragedie d'un peuple, II, 103) also (THE GREAT WAR FOR THE EMPIRE ‑ The British Empire Before The American Revolution ‑ Vol. VI by Lawrence Henry Gipson Chapter "Farewell To Acadia”, p 304) "In view of Maryland's origins as a refuge for persecuted English Catholics and neighboring Pennsylvania's beginnings as a Quaker colony, one would expect the Acadian experience here to have been relative mild, and, indeed, it has been depicted as such by Anglophile historians. Yet, this chapter of the Acadian diaspora is among the bleakest of many dark episodes along North America's Atlantic Coast." (Carl A. Brasseaux ‑ SCATTERED TO THE WIND ‑ Dispersal and wanderings of the Acadians, 1755‑1809 ‑ p. 15) (Basil Sollers Maryland Historical Magazine, March 1908 vol. III no. 1, pp 1‑6)"The Acadians (French Neutrals) Transported to Maryland" This was an English colony, predominantly Protestant, who at the time was in an undeclared war with France. The Acadians were French and Catholic, and what was even worse, they were penniless. Rumors spread that the Roman Catholic Acadians were plotting to stir up insurrection amongst the Negro slaves, capture the colony and turn it over to Catholic France. In the midst of all this, stood the Acadians. They were there through no fault of their own. Their only "crime" had been refusal to take a "loyalty oath ” of allegiance to England. When the Acadian exiles were landed at Annapolis, Maryland, Governor Sharp was away attending a governor’s conference in New York. The Council, not knowing what to do with them, held an emergency meeting of the Provincial Council and ordered the Acadians dispersed from Annapolis and scattered throughout the colony. Two vessels were sent to the Eastern shore, sending one ship to Somerset and a second to Wicomico counties (the Wicomico River) on the lower Bay. Another was sent to Oxford in Talbot County, another to the Pauxent River on the lower Eastern Shore and another to the Choptank River and one to Baltimore; the fifth was permitted to land its passengers, about one hundred and seventy, at the provincial capitol". (THE BRITISH EMPIRE BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ‑ Gipson ‑ pp 304‑305) ‑ (Carl E. Brasseaux ‑ SCATTERED TO THE WIND ‑ Dispersal and wanderings of the Acadians, 1755‑1809 ‑ p. 16) They were distributed as follows: 169 at Oxfiord, 157 at Port Tobacco, 78 at Annapolis, 77 at Baltimore, 68 at Georgetown and also Snow Hill, 58 in Upper Malboro, 44 at a place called Newton, 33 at Princess Ann, and 26 in Lower Malboro (Affaires Etrangeres, Angleterre, 450, folio 436)(THE BRITISH EMPIRE BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ‑ Gipson ‑ footnote no. 98, p. 308) On Monday December 8, 1755, my ancestor, Firmin Landry, his family and the other Acadians (181 in all), from Pisiquid were aboard one of these ships that anchored in Oxford harbor. The captain unceremoniously dumped them on the wharf, gruffly telling them he had no more provisions to give them, and as far as he was concerned, they could starve. He then sailed away leaving them amongst a population who hated everything they stood for. Firmin Landry, along with his family and the other Acadians at Oxford, had been abandoned with an uncertain legal status and appearing to the citizens of Oxford as a bunch of miserable beggars. But they were not. In Acadia before their expulsion, they had been successful farmers with comfortable houses, barns, livestock, chickens and good annual harvests of flax, wheat and hemp, who as one English officer wrote of them "Rarely did quarrels arise among them.... I have never heard of marital infidelity among them." Most of the Acadians who landed at Oxford were from closely interrelated families. Five of the family heads were brothers named L'Andre (Landry) sons of Abraham L'Andre (Landry) and his wife Marie who lived at the Acadian settlement called Pisiquid. They were the grandsons of René L'Andre (Landry), one of the original settlers of Acadia who had migrated to Acadia from France in ca. 1659 and had been in North America far longer than the forebears of the proud Talbot county citizens who looked down their noses at them. Firmin Landry and his family stay in Maryland, where he and his family are enumerated in the Census of July 7, 1763. Firmin's first wife Françoise, dit Elizabeth, dies sometime after the census of 1763, where she is mentioned along with Firmin and their 4 children. Firmin leaves Maryland sometime ca 1766-67 when he emigrates, with his family, to Louisiana. Firmin Landry was the first Landry to settle in the Attakapas where he took land on the upper Bayou Vermilion in 1769‑1770. He is married a second time to Théotiste (dit Sally) Thibodeau, daughter of Charles Thibodeau and Brigette Breaux. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.