Mark B. Arslan
Many of the Richard families in Canada trace their ancestry to Michel Richard dit Sansoucy, who settled in Port-Royal, Acadia in the mid-1600s.This web site is intended to be a compendium of the research done on him and his descendants. Much has been published on this family in various historical books and family histories, some of it accurate, some not so accurate. As is often the case with family histories, once something is in print, it often is considered to be "gospel". It is my hope that this web site will facilitate a critical examination and discussion of the facts, legends, and myths surrounding this Richard family and to allow us Richard researchers and descendants to learn more about our origins and our relatives' contributions to early America. The best way to separate fact from fiction and to resolve conflicting information is to go back to the primary sources (see Documenting Your Genealogy Research - Guide to Citing Sources). These include records of marriages, births and baptisms, deaths and burials, census listings, Bible records, tax lists, probate and land records, etc. The information in the descendant listings on this web site will include documentation of the primary sources as much as possible, and transcriptions of many of those sources will be presented in links below. This is a working document and not necessarily definitive, since much of it is based upon information found on the Internet or in published secondary sources. It will be modified and (hopefully) improved as more researchers provide input and, most importantly, evidence.
My database currently includes 508 descendants, of whom 485 carry the Richard surname.
Historical Narrative
The land of Acadia was a originally a French colony in what is now Nova Scotia in Canada's Maritime Provinces. Since the initial settlement of Acadia by the French in 1604, control of the colony was contested by France and England, exchanging hands a number of times. England captured Acadia's capital of Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) in 1710 and the resulting Treaty of Utrecht (1713) put control of Acadia into the hands of the British. The descendants of the French settlers of Acadia (including the Richard family) remained there, living under British rule until most of them were deported in 1755 for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to Great Britain at the outset of the last of North America's French and Indian Wars (1756-1763). Some of the Acadians escaped deportation by fleeing westward into Quebec, into the backwoods of New Brunswick, or on the various islands of the region.
Michel Richard dit Sansoucy arrived in Acadia by the early 1650s, settling in Port-Royal. (Some say that he was a soldier under Emanuel Leborgne. Can anyone provide a primary source to support that?) Shortly after arriving (ca. 1656), he married Magdeleine Blanchard (daughter of Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert). They had 10 children: sons Rene, Pierre, Martin, and Alexandre, and daughters Catherine, Anne, Magdelaine, Marie, Cecile, and Marguerite. The daughters married into the Brossard, Terriot, Babin, Vincent, Forest, and Leblanc families, respectively. After Magdeleine Blanchard's death (sometime between 1678 and the early 1680s), Michel remarried to Jeanne Babin (daughter of Antoine Babin and Marie Mercier). Michel and Jeanne had two sons of their own: Michel and (another) Alexandre. Michel Richard dit Sansoucy died (probably in Port-Royal) between 1686 and 1693. His widow Jeanne Babin then remarried to Laurent Doucet. The Richard family lived along the Riviere-Dauphin on the right (southeast) bank upstream of Port-Royal.
Several of the children of Michel Richard and Magdeleine Blanchard left Port-Royal (after his death) and moved to Grand-Pre in the Minas Basin (Baie-des-Mines). The descendants of Michel and his two wives remained (for the most part) in Acadia until the French settlers were expelled from that region by the English in the 1750s. While some of the Richard descendants later made their home in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, others settled in Quebec (primarily Nicolet County area), and some went much further abroad to Louisiana and even back to France.
Note: On this web site and in my records, I have chosen to omit the correct French accent marks (e.g., grave, acute, circumflex) since I am not fluent in the French language and am using an American English keyboard. My apologies go out to my French-Canadian cousins!
Here are listings of known descendants (through nine generations):
[Note: To view the Adobe Acrobat files, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. This can be downloaded free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. You can download the files to your disk to view them, or use your web browser with the appropriate plug-ins.]
Children of Michel Richard dit Sansoucy & Magdeleine Blanchard & Jeanne Babin (Adobe Acrobat document; 48 KB; 11 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Rene Richard (#1) & Magdelaine Landry (Adobe Acrobat document; 171 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Pierre Richard (#2) & Marguerite Landry (Adobe Acrobat document; 60 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Catherine Richard (#3) & Francois Brossard (Adobe Acrobat document; 42 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Martin Richard (#4) & Marguerite Bourg (Adobe Acrobat document; 155 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Alexandre Richard (#5) & Elisabeth|Isabelle Petitpas (Adobe Acrobat document; 57 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Anne Richard (#6) & Germain Terriot (Adobe Acrobat document; 39 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Michel Richard (#B) & Agnes Bourgeois (Adobe Acrobat document; 49 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Descendants of Alexandre Richard dit Bouti(n) (#C) & Marie Levron (Adobe Acrobat document; 38 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
GEDCOM (Richard, Generations 0-9) (GEDCOM file; 214 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Index of Names
(Adobe Acrobat document; 85 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Explanation of Format of Descendant Listings
Acadia Censuses (Adobe Acrobat document; 428 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
1851 Quebec Census (Adobe Acrobat document; 312 KB; 30 Aug 2009)
Beaubassin, Acadia Notes
(Adobe Acrobat document; 177 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Grand-Pre, Acadia Notes
(Adobe Acrobat document; 167 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Port-Royal, Acadia Notes
(Adobe Acrobat document; 384 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Quebec Notes
(Adobe Acrobat document; 346 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
Nicolet Co., Quebec Notes
(Adobe Acrobat document; 1,791 KB; 16 Nov 2010)
GenForum - Richard
RootsWeb - Richard
PRDH,
Research Programme in Historical Demography
ArchiviaNet: On-line Research Tool - Library and
Archives Canada
Acadian Genealogy:
The True Acadian Period: 1604-1755
Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
Quebec Parish Register Lookup
If you would like to comment on any information contained within, or wish to correspond with me about this family, please send me an e-mail message at: marslan@nc.rr.com. Additions and corrections are greatly appreciated. I am especially interested in receiving information obtained from primary sources (parish registers, census listings, Bibles, cemeteries, vital records, probate and land records, etc.) and photographs and digital images relating to this branch of the Richard family so that I can incorporate them into this page. Also, I would like to provide links to other pages on the Internet that deal with Richard genealogy.
Mark B. Arslan
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