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Primary Source Analysis: 'Black Samuel' and the Doucet Family's Farm, 1796
I’ve studied the papers of the eighteenth-century Acadian merchant captain, Pierre Doucet, for over five years, and every time I revisit and review the archival collection, I turn up new evidence that I overlooked previously. The documents left by Captain Doucet and his son, Colonel Anselm (or Samuel) Doucet, constitute the Fonds Famille Dousett (or Doucet) at the Centre Acadien, Université Sainte-Anne . While a microfilm of this fonds is held at the Nova Scotia Archives in
Colby Gaudet
Oct 15, 20253 min read
![“Saw Mount Surratt [and] Saint Kitts Is.”: Navigation and Notation in an Acadian Merchant Captain’s Voyages from Nova Scotia to the West Indies](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/0d0423_68165a84649c44169f60608f34f3fa7c~mv2.jpeg/v1/fill/w_1331,h_1000,fp_0.50_0.50,q_30,blur_30,enc_avif,quality_auto/0d0423_68165a84649c44169f60608f34f3fa7c~mv2.jpeg)
![“Saw Mount Surratt [and] Saint Kitts Is.”: Navigation and Notation in an Acadian Merchant Captain’s Voyages from Nova Scotia to the West Indies](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/0d0423_68165a84649c44169f60608f34f3fa7c~mv2.jpeg/v1/fill/w_1816,h_1364,fp_0.50_0.50,q_90,enc_avif,quality_auto/0d0423_68165a84649c44169f60608f34f3fa7c~mv2.jpeg)
“Saw Mount Surratt [and] Saint Kitts Is.”: Navigation and Notation in an Acadian Merchant Captain’s Voyages from Nova Scotia to the West Indies
Documents authored by eighteenth-century Acadians are rare. The French settlers known as the Acadians had been deported from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755, and Roman Catholic education in the province was soon thereafter reduced to non-existence. The generation of eighteenth-century Acadians born and raised in exile seldom had access to formal education.[1] There were exceptions, however, and some Acadians born in the tumult of the 1750s rose to prominence through lucrat
Colby Gaudet
Aug 13, 202410 min read
Rachel, Daughter of Hagar, Daughter of Bathsheba: Some Preliminary Observations on Late-Eighteenth-Century Black Anglicans of Digby, Nova Scotia
During the research I conducted for my PhD thesis, I spent several visits at the Nova Scotia Archives looking through the parish records of Roger Viets, the Anglican missionary at Digby from the 1780s into the early 1800s.[1] Viets was a Loyalist clergyman who migrated to Nova Scotia from Connecticut during the American Revolution. In 1786 he was appointed to the Loyalist congregation at Digby by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (the missionary arm of the Church
Colby Gaudet
Aug 12, 20249 min read
'The Testament of Ann Lee' and Eighteenth-Century Enthusiastic Religion
The prospect of the new film, The Testament of Ann Lee (about to be released), is exciting for a historian, such as myself, with a passion for studying eighteenth-century religion.
Colby Gaudet
Primary Source Analysis: Quaker Philanthropy and Indigenous People in the Maritimes
My interest in the history of religion often gravitates to the topic of Christianity and Indigenous people. I’m particularly compelled to study the ways that Christian groups interacted with Indigenous people in the contexts of settler colonialism.
Colby Gaudet
From Rural Roman Catholic to Urbane Freemason and Transcendentalist? Louis A. Surette in Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia and Massachusetts
In a previous post, “ Ecclesiastical Kinship at Pointe-de-l’Église ,” I discussed the ‘presbyterial household’ of the Abbé Jean-Mandé Sigogne. Among the children who lived (for a time) as part of this ecclesiastical kin-unit were three Surette brothers from Argyle Township, near Yarmouth. These boys were sons of Athanase Surette and Louise d’Entremont, Acadian parishioners at Sainte-Anne-du-Ruisseau.[1] Louise and Athanase produced a prodigious family, having twelve children
Colby Gaudet
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