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Ecclesiastical Kinship at Pointe-de-l’Église: A Case of Church and Community Formations
Currently, as of summer 2025, the former Église Sainte-Marie in Nova Scotia's municipality of Clare faces the threat of possible demolition. Amid declining church attendance among Canadians generally, hundreds of communities across the country have faced such a predicament in recent decades. Underutilized and decaying church buildings have been demolished and replaced by other structures. I suggest here that the case of Sainte-Marie is distinct, setting it apart from many chu
Colby Gaudet
Aug 2915 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, 20248 min read
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
Primary Source Analysis: Letters between an Acadian Mother and Son, 1849–1852
The following is a series of letters between Cécile Melanson (née Murat) of Pointe-de-l’Église, Nova Scotia, and her son, Stephen (or Étienne) Melanson of Boston, Massachusetts. As I’ve written for the Acadiensis blog , Cécile Murat was not Acadian by birth. Born in 1780, she was a child of French parents living in Boston and was later adopted by an Acadian couple in rural Clare. In 1800, Cécile married an Acadian, Jean-Baptiste Melanson (brother of Samuel Melanson in my prev
Colby Gaudet
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 Ha
Colby Gaudet
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