Signature of John Gyles
After Villebon’s death his successor, de Brouillan, dismantled Fort Nachouac and the fort at the mouth of the St. John river and transferred the garrisons to Port Royal. The French families living on the river soon followed, as they found themselves without protection and did not care to remain in a situation so exposed. The houses abandoned by these settlers had been built upon the interval lands on the east side of the river between the Nashwaak and the Jemseg. The soil was very fertile, entirely free from rock or stone and little incumbered by forest. But the situation had its disadvantages—as it has still. In the spring of the year 1701 the settlers had a most unhappy experience in consequence of an extraordinarily high freshet. This event increased Brouillan’s aversion to the St. John, and he writes:
“The river is altogether impracticable for habitations, the little the people had there being destroyed this year by the freshets (inondations) which have carried off houses, cattle and grain. There is no probability that any families will desire to expose themselves hereafter to a thing so vexatious and so common on that river. Monsieur De Chauffours, who used to be the mainstay of the inhabitants and the savages, has been forced to abandon it and to withdraw to Port Royal, but he has no way to make a living there for his family, and he will unhappily be forced to seek some other retreat if the Court pays no consideration to the services which he represents in his petition, and does not grant him some position in order to retain him in this colony.”
The next year France and England were again at war and in the course of the conflict the fortunes of the d’Amours in Acadia were involved in utter ruin. The gentle spirit of Marguerite Guyon d’Amours did not survive the struggle, and with the close of the century she passed from the scene of her trials. Louis d’Amours, while serving his country in arms, was taken by the English, and for more than two years remained a prisoner in Boston. His brother, the Sieur de Clignancourt, served in various expeditions against the New Englanders and for several years is heard of in connection with military affairs. Eventually most of the surviving members of the d’Amours family removed from Acadia leaving behind them no abiding record of their sojourn on the St. John river.
Two of the daughters of Louis d’Amours were married at Port Royal while very young. Perhaps they possessed their mother’s winsome manners, perhaps, also the scarcity of marriageable girls in Acadia may have had something to do with 64 the matter; at any rate Charlotte d’Amours was but seventeen years of age when she married the young baron, Anselm de St. Castin. Their wedding took place at Port Royal in October, 1707, just two months after young St. Castin had greatly distinguished himself in the heroic and successful defense of Port Royal against an expedition from New England.[14] The event no doubt caused a flutter of excitement in the then limited society of Port Royal. The officiating priest was Father Antoine Gaulin, of the Seminary of Quebec, at which institution the young baron had finished his studies only three years before. Among the witnesses of the marriage were the Chevalier de Subercase, governor of Acadia; Bonaventure, who had for some years rendered signal service as commander of the “Envieux” and other warships; Mon. de la Boularderie, a French officer who had been wounded in the recent siege, and the bride’s farther, Louis d’Amours—who, signs his name D’Amour D’Echofour.
A few years later the Marquis de Vaudreuil entrusted to St. Castin the command of Acadia. After the treaty of Utrecht he retired to his ancestral residence on the banks of the Penobscot, where he lived on amicable terms with the English and kept the Penobscot Indians from making encroachments on their neighbors. His sister, Ursule de St. Castin, married his wife’s brother, a son of Louis d’Amours, a circumstance of interest not only as being a double marriage between the families of St. Castin and d’Amours, but also from the fact that the familiar titles of the d’Amours family seem to have been retained in this, the oldest branch of their family. In proof of this fact, the distinguished Acadian genealogist, Placid P. Gaudet, has shown that among the Acadians residing at the Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon in 1767 (according to the census of that year), were Ursule de St. Castin, widow of the only son of Louis d’Amours, then 71 year of age, who resided with her son Joseph d’Amours, deChauffour, and his family. Joseph d’Amours was at that time 49 years of age, and his wife, Genevieve Roy, 44 years of age. They had seven children and the oldest sons were Joseph d’Amours, aged 19 years; Paul d’Amours de Freneuse, aged 16 years, and Louis d’Amours de Clignancourt, aged 13 years. As the father himself retained the title of de Chauffours it is evident that on his decease it would fall to his oldest son, Joseph.
Marie d’Amours, sister of the young Baroness de St. Castin, married Pierre de Morpain, the commander of a privateer of St. Domingo. It chanced that he had just brought a ship load of provisions to Port Royal when it was attacked in 1707, and he was able to render good service in its defence. Two years afterwards he was again at Port Royal and in the course of a ten days’ cruise took nine prizes and destroyed four more vessels. Being attacked by a coast-guard ship 65 of Boston a furious engagement ensued in which the English captain was killed with one hundred of his men and his vessel made a prize and taken to Port Royal. The commander, Subercase, highly commended Morpain’s bravery and persuaded him to remain at Port Royal where, on August 13, 1709, he married Marie d’Amours de Chauffours.
Louis d’Amours, Sieur de Chauffours, returned to Port Royal in 1706 after a two years captivity at Boston. On the 17th January, 1708, only a few weeks after the marriage of his daughter to St. Castin, he took to himself a wife in the person of Anne Comeau. The marriage was witnessed by Governor Subercase and other officials at Port Royal, also by his daughter Charlotte and her husband, the Baron de St. Castin, and by the widow of his brother the Sieur de Freneuse. It seems probable that his health had suffered through his long imprisonment, for very shortly after his second marriage he was stricken with an illness which proved fatal. The Recollet missionary, Justinien Durad, records in his parish register the burial in the cemetery of St. Jean Baptiste at Port Royal on May 19, 1708, of “Louis d’Amour d’Echauffour, aged not far from sixty years [should be 54 years], after an illness of three months, during which he received the sacraments with great edification.” And this brings us to the last incident in the romantic story of the brothers d’Amours.