The Heir to Grand-Pré

by John Frederic Herbin

Pierre found himself drawn to Winslow as he would have been to his own son had not an accident cut him off in his young manhood. Because of this greatest loss and its resulting sorrow, the whole tendency and purpose of his life had been changed, and in his only daughter, Marie, he had placed the whole of his affection and hope and purpose of life. Yet the maiden had become a great fear to him in the element of uncertainty which necessarily affected his view of her future years. The father realized his age and the youth of the daughter, and the difficulties that might at any time surround her if he were removed by death. He yet mourned his wife, and felt that his life was broken by the loss of his son, but he faced the future calmly and without fear, save for the thought of his daughter. In her young womanhood she made the only concern of his life, and there was as yet no promise for the future.

Yet in her was his only life. To her would descend all the title and history of the Gotros, for the first time since the great banishment of the Acadians in 1755 without a male representative. The name was virtually extinct and the house broken when he passed away.

"This stone house of the Gotros is known among the Acadians as 'Pierre Logis,' and has been the home of the Pierres, as the Gotros of the direct line are known, ever since your ancestor removed our people from Grand-Pré," said the old man, pointing to his house.

"Tell me, good friend," said Winslow, "how this came to be chosen by the Gotros as a place of residence, and how they escaped the persecution that followed your people even after they were driven from their lands and separated."

"It is a long story, full of cruelty and suffering," answered the old man, sadly. "We must go back almost to the first settlement of Grand-Pré. Our name became very numerous, and then gradually through centuries died out. I am the last of our line,—the last of the name Pierre Gotro."

The old man remained for some moments in thought, and a shade of sadness resting on his face darkened the depths of his eyes. His mind seemed to be dwelling upon the things of the past, and his thoughts shaped themselves at last in words calm and unimpassioned, as one who deals with revered things. The strength of his heart and mind, the chastening experiences of his life, the philosophical cast of his reason and understanding, gave dignity to his utterances, and impressed Winslow with the nobility of this son of toil. He began the story of his people and his family.

"The first Gotro came to Grand-Pré from Port Royal, now called Annapolis, after that place had been settled for eighty years. It sent off its people like a hive in summer when, overcrowded, the young bees are compelled to seek a new home. The great meadows of Grand-Pré were waiting unpeopled, and in a few years became the largest of the Acadian centres. The whole section on the south yonder, called Minas," pointing with his arm across the water to the blue hills in the south, thirty miles distant, "saw four generations of our sons, who had become a prosperous and contented people.

"The Gotros in particular were favorable to English rule, as they had rich and large possessions of land and were anxious to avoid trouble with the people of other nationality. Yet, with all the other Acadian people who had taken the oath of allegiance to the English crown, they refused to the last to take up arms against their own kindred and nationality, as they were expected to do by the provincial governors who proposed the measure. This refusal on their part served as a pretext for removing them in 1755 from the province.

"You know how all the people were called to their church, deceived by the order which declared that it was the command of the king, and that they were to hear the wishes of the English king in regard to themselves. Expecting a settlement of all their difficulties, they were thus entrapped and forcibly removed from their homes, and all the houses, barns and mills of Grand-Pré destroyed by fire."