In August of 1612 an exploring party from Port Royal, consisting of Sieur de Biencourt, the Jesuit Father Pierre Biard, a small group of Frenchmen, and some Indians, visited what is now northern Cumberland and southern Westmoreland counties. The priest wrote:1
Acadians began to settle in the district about 1676, and within ten years there were 150 living there. 2 The first settlement that became the centre of the region they named Beaubassin. It was located near the mouth of the Missiquash river on the southern side.3 Mgr. de Saint-Valliere, Vicar General of the Bishop of Quebec, visited Beaubassin in 1686; he wrote this description of the chapel:4
On his return to Quebec the Bishop appointed a priest to replace the Recollet Father who had been in charge of Beaubassin and the district, who had been recalled to Quebec.5
World events, particularly the interminable wars between France and England, had little influence on the orderly existence of the inhabitants of Chignecto. Even the final victory of the English, confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 by which Louis XIV surrendered all rights to Acadia, made no change in their lives. Settlements continued to grow, even faster under the English regime and by 1731 there were 150 families in the area.6 Many other settlements sprang up, Pont de Buot (Point de Bute), Tintramar, (Sackville), Minudie, River Hebert, along the Northumberland Straits, and well into the present New Brunswick past Memramcook and Petitcodiac.7 Three miles south of Beaubassin, a short distance east of present-day Amherst, a small number of Acadian families built homes on a small river which they called Les Planches.8
The long struggle between the French and the English over North America, which had lasted through the past century, was fast coming to a conclusion. After 1713 the English made no attempt to guard Acadia against French re-acquisition. The small garrison at Annapolis, the few English here and there in the colony, would have been ineffective to defend the prize against any real attempt on the part of the French to take it back again. There was little peace in Acadia in those years, at least for the English. Should they dare to venture beyond their settlements, they became targets for the Indians lurking in the forests. Besides the French built Louisburg, a strong fortress on Cape Breton, to protect the entrance of the St. Lawrence river. This alarmed the New Englanders who saw in it a threat to their trade and fisheries. Soldiers from New England took the great fortress in 1745 but it was returned to the French by the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapele in 1748. This new activity in Acadia seems to have wakened interest in England for in 1749 in order to protect their territory from French encroachment, they established what became the city of Halifax.
Now the French in their turn saw in Halifax a threat to their possessions so they built a fort on the northern bank of the Missiquash river which they named Beausejour.9 This marked the beginning of a new quarrel between the French and the English, for the former claimed that the Treaty of Utrecht surrendered to the English only the peninsula of Nova Scotia, whereas the English claimed all the land to the Saint Lawrence river. A commission met in Paris from 1750 until 1754 to discuss the question but never came to any decision.
Meanwhile the English decided to take steps to guard their territory from the French. In 1750 Lord Cornwallis, in command at Halifax, sent Major Charles Lawrence with a detachment of troops to Chignecto to destroy if possible the new fort or at least to discover what the French were up to.10 On Friday, May 20, 1750, Lawrence's ship arrived at Cumberland Basin (Baie de Beaubassin). The next day the men Lawrence sent to reconnoitre returned to report that most of the houses were reduced to ashes.11 In his interview with the French Commanding Officer, La Corne, he demanded to know who had burnt Beaubassin and where the inhabitants were. La Corne blamed the Indians for the burning, saying that they claimed it as their own, and that the inhabitants were scattered among the inhabitants of French Acadia. In September of the same year while the English were busy building Fort Lawrence across the river from Beausejour, "the enemy" (whether Acadians, French or Indians) burnt their settlements at River Hebert, La Planche, and the surrounding district.12 Practically all the Acadians moved to French Acadia.
English and French historians agree that the settlements were destroyed to force the Acadians out of English territory so that they could not supply the needs of the enemy.13 No doubt the church was burnt at the express orders of Louis-Joseph Le Loutre, the priest-in-charge of the mission, for very likely both Indians and Acadians would have been too superstitious to do it on their own. This was in accordance with Canon Law to prevent its being desecrated by the non-Catholic soldiery. The Acadians had already had the experience of having their church in Port Royal turned into what they considered a heretical temple when, after Utrecht, it became an Anglican church.14 Besides they knew that the New England soldiers with Lawrence were bitterly anti-Catholic and anti-French; these soldiers were Puritans but they respected nothing sacred and the French had good reason to fear the sacrileges these course, brutal men would commit if they should have discovered a Catholic church intact.15 The only defense was to burn it to the ground. The building of Fort Lawrence, the capture of Beausejour in 1754, the subsequent expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in the following year, are all matters of history. During the expulsion English troops, coming upon the peaceful village of Minudie, killed the inhabitants who could not escape and destroyed every building there.16
By 1755 the Catholic church ceased to exist in the Isthmus of Chignecto and the former inhabitants were scattered all through New Brunswick or, having been deported, were living miserable lives among the Protestant colonies where they were sent.