Hello, this my site for genealogy research.

        My name is Thomas Alan Moore, I am 55, married and am in a  computer class at a local community college.  I enjoy hiking/walking, genealogy, and reading novels. The photo is a recent one of me. The other two photos are of my Cajun relatives.  I have my family history file on ancestry.com, but it viewable to those who I invite, so this site is for my genealogy data that does not fit in the little fields on their website.

   My maternal ancestors were Cajuns (Hebert and Bordelon) and the paternal ones were Scotch Irish southerners (Moore and Horton). I will first examine the maternal lines.   

     In 1606 the king of France, Henri IV,  wanted to establish a colony in North America, as the English had already begun doing. He put Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts in charge of the mission. Here is an excert from the book "A Great and Noble Scheme" by John Faragher, which describes the life and the expulsion of the Acadians. Among other things de Monts was to  

                    "establish, extend, and make known our name, power, and authority, and to subject, submit, and render obedient thereto all the tribes of this land...to summon and instruct them , provoke them and rouse them to the knowledge of God and to the light of the Christian faith and religion, and  to establish it among them" 

It would not be until the late 1630s for the expierment to really get going. Frenchmen, both single and married, were recruited from an area called Poitou about 150 miles southwest of Paris. Among the single men were Antoine and his brother Etienne Hebert. The correct pronunciation of the name Hebert is "A-Bear". They left because of religious wars and the resulting epidemics that had devasted the region just a few years before.

For about the next few decades the Acadians would have pleasant lives in their new homeland with the Mikmaq Indians. Unlike the settlers from England in the colonies of America, the Acadians would intergrate themselves with the natives; learning their language, customs, marrying them and would become be good neighbors. They were fishermen, farmers, and fur traders.

Two wars among the English and French would decide the fate of the Acadians, King William's War (1689) would escalate the tensions between the different colonies and Queen Anne's War (1702); both wars were named after the ruling British monarch of the time, would be the beggining of the end for the Acadians. In 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, France would cede their land in Acadia, Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and St Kitts to the British. The British wanted the people of the these new lands to sign a loyalty but the Acadians refused. In 1755, the British decided to expel the Acadians without any regard for their safety or well being. An unknown correspondent wrote to Boston about the decision of the expulsion, he wrote in part: 

"We are now upon a great and noble Scheme of sending the neutral French out of this Province, who have always been secret Enemies and have encouraged our Savages to cut our Throats..."

Houses and crops were burned, single men and some married ones were taken prisoner, and there was some resitiance among the Acadians but it was futile. Famalies were separated and sent elsewhere. It would be among  the first episodes of ethnic cleansing in the Americas. Many of these people or their descendants would go to  Lousiana, where they would began new lives and intermarry among the natives, among them the Creoles, whose ancestors came directly from France and married Indians and those of African descent.

The following link gives a more in depth history of the Acadians. www.acadian-cajun.com

This link is for Acadian Cajun history, recipes and jokes.  http://cajuncrawfishpie.com/

Here's the offiicial website for those with Nova Scotia heritage

http://novascotiaheritage.ca/en/home/default.aspx

Below is a photo of a sign honoring the Acadians in the Historic Gardens located in Annapolis Royal. Here's their link: http://www.historicgardens.com/index.php