Our Cousins in Georgia
The Acadian refugees who landed in St. Marys
When people think of the 1755 British deportation of the Acadians from their homeland in the Maritime provinces of Canada, the road most often follows the revolutionary Joseph Beausoleil Broussard, and the two hundred refugees he brought to Louisiana—who eventually came to be called the Cajuns. But this was not the fate of all the Acadian deportees, or even most of them. One small group made their home in the port of St. Marys on the coast of Georgia.
“Here in this beautiful little haven on the Georgia coast, the French clan gathered until it had almost become a French colony, and so numerous did they and their descendants become that at one time a parish was established with a resident priest,” wrote a descendent of these Acadians, James. T. Vocelle, in The Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association in 1933.
Though some, like Vocelle, would remember the plight of their ancestors, and the town would memorialize their arrival and struggles—unlike the Louisiana Cajuns, the Acadians of St. Marys ultimately assimilated into American society, their distinct culture buried under the mainstream. Today, only graveyard markers prove that they were there.
“Here in this beautiful little haven on the Georgia coast, the French clan gathered until it had almost become a French colony, and so numerous did they and their descendants become that at one time a parish was established with a resident priest,” —James. T. Vocelle, in The Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association, 1933.
The Exile
When, in 1755, under order of Govenor Charles Lawrence, the Acadians were piled onto ships and sent throughout the American colonies, then later to Britain and France—there were two British frigates carrying 400 Acadian men, women, and children to Tybee Island on the Atlantic coast, a few miles east of Savannah.
Then Georgia Governor John Reynolds saw these exiles as potentially hostile people, due to England being at war with France, and allowed them to settle only temporarily. At the time, the Georgia colony consisted of 3,000 residents, half being enslaved. So—as University of Georgia professor E. Merton Coulter wrote in “The Acadians in Georgia” in The Georgia Historical Quarterly—Reynolds assumed “…the Acadians could be as big a danger to Georgia as Lawrence thought they would be to Nova Scotia”.
The destitute Acadians settled in different areas of Savannah, struggling to survive in this unfamiliar land—mostly ignored by the colonial government. In his book Scattered to the Wind, former University of Louisiana-Lafayette professor of history Carl Brasseaux wrote: “Only when they petitioned the colonial government for emergency assistance in January 1756 were they recognized at all, and then only to the extent that those exiles too ill to support themselves were given a week’s supply of rice.”
Over time, these Acadians found meager ways to sustain themselves. They built items for “sea craft” to sell to the West Indies and in 1757 the Georgia Commons House of Assembly passed an edict that required them “to labor for anyone offering them work and to receive for such service their upkeep only, meaning food, clothing, and lodging”. According to the edict, no families were to be separated.
Under this law, the Acadians were not allowed to refuse work or own weapons. Still, few plantations employed them, and many demanded they vacate the lands where they settled in Savannah. Some Acadians left Georgia in hopes of making their way back to their Canadian homes, heading north to South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
“From the very beginning they were biding the time when they might get away,” Coulter writes.
St. Domingue to St. Marys
Sometime after the war between France and England ended, the remaining Acadian exiles in Georgia, now numbering less than half of the original transport, left for French Saint Domingue, now the island of Haiti. France had offered them a home on the Caribbean island, with plantation tools and two years’ worth of provisions.
But once again, war would threaten their survival. In 1791, enslaved residents of Saint Domingue rebelled against the French aristocracy and government, and the Acadians fled up the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
“Some Acadians from Beaubassin [Nova Scotia] did prefer returning to Georgia rather than settling in a Spanish Louisiana after they had left Santo Domingo (Haiti),” write lay historians Jean-Marc Agator and Jean-Pierre Bernier in the article “In Georgia, Acadians have been recognized for their contribution” on the website Acadie.
Today, it’s unclear if Georgia was always their desired destination. Vocelle, who was born in 1897 in St. Marys, is a descendant of James Vocelle, who arrived in Georgia from Saint Domingue in the late 1700s. Vocelle believes his paternal grandfather and other Acadians first set their course for Charleston, South Carolina, but ultimately sailed back south and landed at St. Marys, only a few miles north of the Florida border.
“…it was to what was then the prosperous seaport of Saint Marys that many of the French exiles found their way,” Vocelle wrote in 1933 in the Southern Cross Bulletin. There, Vocelle’s paternal grandfather James met and married Angelique Desclaux, a descendant of the distinguished Acadian family, the Comeaus.
In their new home, the Acadians gathered for Catholic service above a grocery store until they acquired a former bank building donated by Marie Ponce DuFour. The church later became Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and Vocelle’s aunt would perform services when a priest was not available. As a young lawyer, James Vocelle wrote down his unique family history and their return to Georgia in a 1930 booklet titled Triumph of the Acadians.
“This brief resume of the Acadians and their descendants in Georgia contains no spectacular incidents, but it demonstrates and reflects the same traits that have characterized these people throughout the course of their history,” Vocelle wrote. “It shows that with characteristic fortitude, they brushed away the bitterness of the past and, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow citizens of other races and creeds, joined in making America the land of opportunity.”
Marking Their Presence
Visitors to the historic hamlet of St. Marys will find a marker detailing the Acadians’ initial arrival in Georgia and their later settlement in St. Marys on the town’s “History Walk.” Next door is Oak Grove Cemetery, where many of the Acadian graves rest within an
enclosed wall. Their section was marked in 1936 by a placard that reads: “Acadians deported from Grand Pré, Nova Scotia. First found refuge in St. Domingo. Later, insurrection of natives drove them to St. Marys. Evangeline’s friend buried here.”
Some of those resting in this cemetery are Joseph Desclaux of Sète, France, whose French tombstone reads that he left “St. Dominque by the political unrest which desolated this colony”; Pierre and Marie Cormié; Bernard Baratte; and the Vocelles. Marguerite Comeau, who married a Carbon, appears to be the only St. Marys Acadian born in Acadie. She was born about 1749 in Canada and died on February 1, 1829, on Georgia soil.
Find information about visiting St. Marys, Georgia, and the town's "Tragic Acadians" historical markers, at visitstmarys.com.