• 1604    First Acadian settlement on Saint Croix Island (near present-day Calais, Maine)
• 1605    First permanent Acadian settlement in Port Royal (present-day Annapolis Royal, NS)
• 1607    English settle in Jamestown
• 1608    French settle in Quebec
• 1620    Pilgrim Fathers land at Plymouth Rock
• 1632    Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye. England and France are at peace

            July: Isaac de Razilly departs from LaRochelle with Charles de Menou and 300
            settlers including the progenitor of the Theriault family, Jehan Terriault
           8 Sep: Arrival of Isaac de Razilly at Le Heve

• 1636    1 April: The St. Jehan arrives in Port Royal with French settlers (men and women), including recently married Jehan and Perinne Terriault
• 1655    Port Royal is captured by British forces
• 1670    Treaty of Breda. England and France are at peace again
• 1671    The earlier surviving Acadian census is taken. Population in Acadia is 340
• 1672    Beaubassin in northern Acadia is founded
• 1682    Grand Pre, east of Port Royal is founded
• 1687    The first church at Grand Pre is built
• 1690    Port Royal is captured by the British again
• 1697    Treaty of Ryswick. England and France are at peace again
• 1701    Petitcodiac in Acadia is founded
• 1704   Another census is taken in Acadia. Population is 1450
• 1708    Queen Anne's war breaks out and hostilities with the English restart
• 1710    Port Royal is taken for the last time by the English and renamed Annapolis Royal
• 1713    Treaty of Ultrecht. France cedes Acadia to England for the last time
• 1720    Construction of the fortress at Louisbourg begins
• 1749    Founding of Halifax by the English. 2576 English settlers are brought to Acadia
• 1755    Deportation of the Acadians begins. More than 6000 are evicted in this year

• 1758    Acadians who fled to Ile St Jean and Ile Royale are captured and sent to France
• 1763    Treaty of Paris. War between France and England is over. France cedes all North
    American possessions
• 1765    First Acadians settle in Louisiana
• 1773    A census is taken of 2370 Acadians in France
• 1847    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes 'Evangeline', poem of an Acadian heroine
• 1785    1600 Acadians are transported from France to join other Acadians (Cajuns) in Louisiana
• 1881     First Acadian Convention. Acadian National holiday set to 15 August
• 1884    Second Acadian Convention. Acadian flag and hymn is adopted

1500: France enters the sixteenth century with six times the population of England, twice that of Spain, and half again that of Italy. Predominantly Catholic, France has a ravenous appetite for fish and a restless, independent minded seacoast population capable of sailing to the New World to obtain it.

1504:    The first recorded confirmation of a French fishing vessel on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

1515:    King Francis I pulls off a strategic marriage, incorporating the independent Duchy of Brittany into metropolitan France, thus vastly enhancing his political power and beginning to create the France of today.

1516:    Francis I wrangles from the Pope the power to appoint French bishops, thereby establishing royal political control over the French church.

1517:    In response to the political and cultural conflict provoked by expansionist Catholicism, Martin Luther initiates the Reformation.

1519:    The Brittany fishing village of St. Malo establishes a "wet" fishery drying area on rocks near her harbor. This commercial advance permits French fishing vessels to bring their catch back to France "wet" in the hold, rather than putting in on the American coast to dry it first and enables the French fleet to expand its operations to both a "dry" (dried in America) and "wet" fishing season.

1521:    Cortez takes Mexico.

1523:    At least three vessels from the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle are recorded on the Grand Banks.

1524:    A peasants' revolt in the German province of Swabia produces twelve demands, ten of them secular, that graphically illustrate the political problems of the day. They demand abolition of serfdom and the system of "tithe" payments from their crops; removal of restrictions on hunting or fishing on nobles' land reserves; regulation of overlords' often excessive punishments; and the training of priests responsive to their own unique personal and community needs. These demands seek restoration of the social order that prevailed before Catholic feudalism, and suggest the motivation for early Acadian immigration: escape from Christian religious and political oppression.
Giovanni di Verrazano, aided by Protestant merchants from Rouen, sets out to explore the American coast from Florida northwards, hoping to find a quick route to China. An educated Florentine, he knew of Virgil's use of the word "Arcadia" to describe an earthly, secular paradise -- an idea further glorified in a sixteenth century novel by Jacopo Sannazaro. The first New World area to receive the designation "Arcadia" was actually Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where Verrazano was impressed by the trees. In subsequent maps, the word goes through several spelling changes and moves steadily up the coast until it settles on the Nova Scotia peninsula, where the Micmac Indians used the word "Akade" for a similar concept of paradise.

1529:    The fisheries catch of Normandy grows so large that some of the French cod is re exported to markets in England.

1533:    French Protestant dissident John Calvin is convicted of heresy and must eventually flee the country.

1534:    A momentous year: Paul III becomes Pope and attempts to rebuild the Church to counteract the Reformation.
Jacques Cartier sets out for the New World, attempting, too, to find a quick route to China. He discovers Prince Edward Island and the coast of New Brunswick, where he makes contact with the Micmac Indians.

1535:    Cartier's second voyage, with an abortive attempt to found a colony.

1536:    Calvin, now residing in Geneva, writes the treatise that will make Huguenot Protestantism a divisive French political and cultural problem for several decades.

1540:    The Jesuits are founded by Ignatius Loyola in an attempt to counter the Reformation.

1541:    Another abortive attempt to settle Canada, this time by Huguenot refugees, who by now constitute a substantial portion of the fishing and fur trading classes of coastal France, where centralized Catholic control continues to be most remote.
Hernando de Soto discovers the mouth of the Mississippi River.

1545-63:    The Council of Trent attempts to clean up the Roman Catholic Church, while the Reformation rages on.

1547:    Henri II comes to power in France, caring little to pursue his country's American discoveries.

1548:    Gastaldi's map is published, identifying the Acadian/Nova Scotia peninsula as "L'Arcadie."

1550:    The St. Lawrence River Valley as far inland as Tadoussac is visited regularly by French fur traders, following on the heels of the cod fishermen. They barter the skins of beaver, otter, deer, seal, and marten for bread, peas, beans, prunes, tobacco, kettles, hatchets, iron arrow points, awls, cloaks, blankets, and baubles initiating friendly relations that will greatly influence the subsequent development and history of North America.

1559:    A record number of fishing vessels, forty-nine from La Rochelle, are engaged in fishing the Grand Banks.

1562:    Two ships of Protestants leave Dieppe to establish Fort Charles in Florida but they are massacred by the Spanish.

1578:    Troilus de La Roche de Mesgouez sets out on his first attempt to establish a permanent New World base for the French fish and fur trade, but does not succeed.

1589:    Protestant Henri IV becomes King of France.

1593:    Henri IV renounces Protestantism in the hopes of reuniting his strife torn country.

1598:    La Roche finally succeeds in planting a colony/trading post at Sable Island, a desolate, crescent shaped sandbar in the Atlantic Ocean's fishing banks 100 miles southeast of the Acadian peninsula. His ragtag group of soldiers and ex prisoners is gradually whittled down to eleven survivors. Five years later, they are rescued and removed.
Henri IV issues the Edict of Nantes to permit "separate but equal" treatment and development of Catholics and Huguenots.

1600:    Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit, a Huguenot officer given exclusive rights to the St. Lawrence trade by Henri IV, sets off to found a permanent fishing/trading base at Tadoussac. In his expedition: Pierre du Gua, Sieur de Monts

1603:    De Monts persuades Henri IV to grant him colonization and fur-trading rights between the 40th and 46th parallels, including all of what is now New England and Nova Scotia.
Elizabeth I of England dies and James I succeeds to the throne.

1604:    In the spring, de Monts sets off with Samuel Champlain, the king's geographer, as captain, and sails around the southern tip of the Acadian peninsula, discovering the Annapolis Valley and charting the Bay of Fundy. On a minuscule island 300 by 125 yards that they named St. Croix (near the mouth of the river of the same name that currently divides the province of New Brunswick from the state of Maine), they establish a colony with seventy nine men. The rocky island has no fresh water supply, provisions are poorly figured, and Indian medicines and survival techniques learned from Cartier's voyages are apparently not utilized. So, thirty six members of the colony die of scurvy, including both the Catholic priest and the Huguenot minister in the party who are buried in the same grave by the survivors, contemptuous of their petty rivalries.

1605:    When supply ships return the following year, de Monts moves all the remaining colonists and supplies, plus two buildings, to the more protected area of the Annapolis Basin. Champlain draws up plans for a fort-like series of wooden buildings surrounding a courtyard (with a well to assure fresh water), and they name the settlement Port Royal, one of the first permanent European settlements in North America. De Monts and another important member of the party, Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt (who had earlier been granted most of the land around the new habitation) returns to France to attend to business matters.

1606:    Poutrincourt returns to the colony accompanied by Parisian attorney Marc Lescarbot, whose diary contains the first account of life in Acadia. A limekiln is established, along with North America's first water powered gristmill. America's first wheat crop is planted. Poutrincourt and Champlain set out to continue their explorations, leaving Lescarbot in charge. Upon their return, he writes and produces North America's first play, The Tbeatre of Neptune, staged in Indian canoes along the waterfront of the habitation. To pass away the boredom of winter, Champlain devises L'Ordre du Bon Temps, a social club that arranges feasts and other entertainment for dark evenings.

1607:    Jamestown is founded.
De Monts loses his trading franchise from the crown. The habitation is left to the care of Chief Membertou, a Micmac Indian ally and trading partner, until Poutrincourt can return.

1608:    Champlain founds Quebec.

1610:    Poutrincourt returns to Port Royal and finds that Membertou has kept his promise to guard the habitation. Accompanying him is a party of forty men (and two women, whose subsequent lives are not recorded), including a Catholic priest, who converts Membertou and twenty-one members of his family. Acadia's first cattle also make this voyage. Son Charles de Biencourt returns to the French Huguenot port of La Rochelle with the first cargo of furs from the revitalized colony.
Henri IV is assassinated and his widow Marie de Medicis falls under the influence of the Jesuits as she sets out to create the Regency.

1611:    Because of court intrigue, Poutrincourt's Huguenot partners are bought out by the Jesuits, who send two priests to the colony with Charles de Biencourt and his mother.

1612:    The first of several internal power struggles in the colony: a rival trading post is set up across the Bay of Fundy at the St. John River.

1613:    The Marquise de Guercheville, aided by increasingly ambitious Jesuit interests, sends thirty settlers, with goats and horses, to retrieve the priests at Port Royal from the company of Protestant infidels and establish a third, competing settlement this one at St. Sauveur on Mt. Desert Island, Maine.
Late this same year, the Virginia pirate Samuel Argall, with the sanction of that English colony's governor, sets out to sack any French settlements found south of the 45th parallel. He destroys the colony at Mt. Desert Island and moves into the Port Royal harbor. While the men are out in the fields, Argall captures the habitation without a fight and burns it, removing livestock and provisions. The colonists flee into the hills, and those who survive live with the Indians in rude huts at a bare subsistence level for the next decade, continuing, on a haphazard basis, their fur trade with France.

1614:    Poutrincourt returns from France to find his colony burned out, but leaves his son Charles and two important newcomers Claude de Saint-Etienne de La Tour and his son Charles to try to revive the fur trade.

1615:    Poutrincourt and son Charles are killed in France in a religious riot, leaving the surviving son, jean, as the Acadian seigneur.

1616:    From trading posts at Port Royal, Cape Sable, Penobscot, and the St. John River, the colony ships 25,000 pelts back to France.

1619:    Four Recollet missionaries rivals of the Jesuits leave France for Acadia, but flee five years later when the Scottish take over.

1620:    The Pilgrims arrive at Plymouth Rock.

1621:    Sir William Alexander, a Scotsman who gained power at the English court with the accession of James 1, is granted a charter to found a "Nova Scotia" in what is still French Acadia. His first expedition, sent out the following year, gets only as far as Newfoundland.

1623:    Jean de Biencourt (Poutrincourt's surviving son) dies, so Claude de La Tour claims possession of the colony and moves its headquarters to Cape Sable on the Atlantic Coast.

1624:    Cardinal Richelieu comes to power; the Huguenots' days are numbered.

1625:    The Jesuits establish a beachhead in Quebec. Charles I succeeds James I in England.

1626:    The Dutch found New York.

1627:    War breaks out between England and France. Cardinal Richelieu reorganizes the Company of New France and excludes Huguenots from any further economic ownership of the colony.

1628:    Alexander finally succeeds in establishing a New World colony on the Gaspe peninsula of Quebec with seventy men and two women.
In the French religious wars, the last Huguenot holdout, La Rochelle, finally falls.

1629:    The Scottish pirate brothers Lewis, David, and John Kirke (possibly born in the French port of Dieppe) force Champlain to give up Quebec. The Gaspe settlers are relocated in Port Royal, and the captured Claude de La Tour is taken prisoner to London. However, by the end of the year, opportunist La Tour shrewdly persuades Charles I and Alexander to confer Scottish baronetcy on himself and his son Charles, who had remained behind. Neither has a strong attraction to either Catholic or Protestant regimes, and they are able to vacillate back and forth in their political and religious loyalties for decades, while their colony remains essentially out of direct European control. The Treaty of Suza ends the war.

1631:    Louis XIII now King of France wants his Canadian possessions back, and Charles I agrees when Louis hands over the dowry of Princess Henrietta Maria. Charles La Tour wangles an appointment as lieutenant governor of the colony from Louis XIII, his new overlord, and the colony effortlessly returns to French jurisdiction the following year with the Treaty of St. Germain en Laye. Most of the Scottish colonists depart either for New England or home, but the Acadian surnames Melancon and Pitre (originally Peters) survive from Scottish French intermarriages during Alexander's brief possession of the colony.

1632:    Cardinal Richelieu continues dabbling in New World politics, appointing his cousin Isaac de Razilly governor of Acadia. Razilly, in turn, appoints Charles de Menou d'Aulnay his lieutenant governor in a move that creates years of friction with the La Tours. Three hundred additional settlers arrive at Le Have on the Atlantic Coast on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption and eventually retake Port Royal. Unsuccessful Scottish colonizer Alexander is paid £10,000 for the loss of his colony and is granted other English lands in what is now the state of Maine.
Among those names known to be in the 1632 expedition: Doucet, Bourgeois, Petipas, Boudrot (Boudreaux), Terriault (Theriot, Terriau), Daigle, Sire, Poirier, Richard, LeBlanc, Thibadeau (Thibodeaux), Girouard, Granger, Comeau (Comeaux), Cormier, Robichaud, Hebert, Blanchard, Brault (Braude, Breaux), Morin, and Belliveau.

1633:    Charles de La Tour attacks the New England colony of Machias.

1635:    Razilly dies, leaving d'Aulnay in charge of the colony. D'Aulnay repairs to Port Royal, where he establishes a new "Fort Royal" five miles upriver from the original habitation, where the Allain River joins the Annapolis. La Tour, however, asserts a conflicting claim to the colony based on his 1631 commission from Louis XIII, and he moves his headquarters from Cape Sable to the St. John River, where he builds a fort and engages d'Aulnay in a fifteen year civil war. With the help of his father's prior English connections, La Tour secures periodic assistance from Boston in raiding d'Aulnay, while Europe generally ignores the developments.
Additional Acadian names known to be in the colony by this date: Aucoin, Gaudet, Martin, Dugas, Trahan, and Landry.

1639:    La Tour attacks one of d'Aulnay's ships and attempts to storm Fort Royal.

1641:    D'Aulnay persuades the French court to appoint him governor.

1642:    D'Aulnay receives authorization to capture La Tour and arrest him.

1643:    Louis XIII dies, and another regency is established for Louis XIV.

1647:    While La Tour is away, d'Aulnay succeeds in capturing and destroying his fort at St. John. Mme La Tour dies at his hands.

1650:    D'Aulnay's canoe capsizes on a sandbar, and he is drowned. La Tour secures a new patent to consolidate his control of the colony the following year. In a surprise strategic move, he marries the widowed Mme d'Aulnay the following year (at the age of sixty), and has five more children by her.

1651:    An estimated forty families are living at Fort Royal.

1652:    Emmanuel Le Borgne, one of d'Aulnay's creditors, captures Port Royal. Ultimately, his son Alexandre will marry one of the daughters born of La Tour and Mme d'Aulnay, thus consolidating by marriage several decades of conflicting claims to land and power. Alexandre Le Borgne is named seigneur of Grand Pre, which is not settled until 1682.

1654:    Massachusetts forces are armed by Robert Sedgwick to take New York from the Dutch, but just before they embark, a ship arrives (June 20) with news of peace. So, instead of heading south, they head north to cause trouble for the French, capturing Penobscot, St. John, Fort Royal, and a completely surprised La Tour. Exhuming his one time Scottish title, he successfully negotiates, by 1656, his return to the colony as English governor designate under Cromwell. Eventually, he relinquishes control to Boston trader Sir Thomas Temple (an heir of Sir William Alexander), who fights off everyone (including more raiding parties from d'Aulnay's creditors) until his claims to power finally go unchallenged one year later. Meanwhile, the first rudimentary council of colonists is established, headed by Guillaume Trahan.

1657:    After much maneuvering, Bishop Francois Laval is selected to head the first episcopal see in New France, and arrives in Quebec in 1659 with an edict banning Protestantism from the colony.

1660:    Cromwell dies and is succeeded by Charles 11.

1661:    Louis XIV takes possession of the French throne.

1663:    Bishop Laval establishes the first seminary to train Canadian priests.

1667:    Over Governor Temple's protests, Acadia is ceded back to France by the Treaty of Breda. The colony's official population is estimated at four hundred by an English census prior to the transfer.

1670:    Colbert comes to power in France, and Acadia finally assumes the status of a crown colony. Successions of professional governors arrive to attempt to reassert European control over what was by this time a virtually self-administered society.

1671:    Governor Hector de Grandfontaine conducts a census that shows that Fort Royal has sixty-seven families, totaling 340 persons, with 650 cattle and 430 sheep. Scattered settlements are also reported at six other locations. Some fifty new settlers arrive from the vicinity of the former dissident citadel of La Rochelle. Additional Acadian names known to be in the colony by this date: Giroire, Joffriau, Raimbault, Babin, Bertrand, Burn, Cry, Savoy, Dupuis (Dupuy), Bourq (Bourg), and Saulnier.

1672:    Jacques Bourgeois, former surgeon to d'Aulnay, establishes his own and five other families in the Beaubassin area,
thus beginning a process of outmigration and shift of population center from Fort Royal to the other dike-able marshlands of the peninsula. Not all the marshlands around Fort Royal have been depleted; however, leading historians to speculate that these pioneers merely wanted to distance themselves from the government's reinforced garrison and its attempts to regulate such things as illegal trade with the New Englanders.

1676:    The first school in Acadia is founded at Fort Royal by Abbot Louis Petite, a graduate of Laval's seminary in Quebec. Petite becomes the first priest to establish a full time ministry in the colony.

1678:    Within two years, additional Acadian names: Chaisson, Cottard, Hache, Lagace (Lagasse), Leger, Mercier, Aubin, Mignault, Mirande, Perthuis (Pertuit).

1679:    Yet another census shows 515 people in the colony, a remarkable 25 percent increase over the last decade.

1681:    La Salle, a former Jesuit from the Quebec seminary sets off to sail down the Mississippi River from Quebec.

1682:   In April he discovers the Mississippi's Gulf terminus, and he names the surrounding territory Louisiana in honor of his king.

1709:    The continental war cuts off the colony from France. Some thirty-five English ships are taken by Acadian privateers.

1710:    Francis Nicholson, lieutenant governor of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia (governor of Virginia in 1698), broods over the French presence and decides to send a raiding party to capture the Acadian colony. Nicholson, with the aid of New York businessman Samuel Vetch, arrives in Boston on July 15 with six naval vessels and sets out for Fort Royal on September 18. On September 24 he arrives in the Fort Royal harbor with 3,400 men, to oppose Governor Subercase, badly outnumbered, with only 300 men, in a deteriorating fort. Subercase holds out valiantly until October 16 and wins honorable terms of surrender. Vetch becomes governor, and the village is named Annapolis Royal in honor of England's Queen Anne.

1713:    The Treaty of Utrecht establishes English control over most of the Nova Scotia peninsula, excluding Ile Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Ile St. Jean (Prince Edward Island). Control of New Brunswick remains disputed, with the French fort of Beausejour established on the north side of the Missaguash River and the English Fort Lawrence on the south side, defining what would later become the boundary line between the two provinces. Periodic raids and the Indian war of the 1720's would disturb the tranquillity, but the Acadians resolutely remained "neutral" in accordance with treaty terms refusing to assist either European contender for administrative control of their society. Population estimate at this date: 2,300 2,500.

1714:    Queen Anne dies, bringing George I to the throne. Governor Vetch writes a report advocating expulsion as the solution to what he regards as a hopeless political problem. Major Paul Mascarene --a Huguenot officer in the English garrison, later to become lieutenant governor of the colony is assigned the task of authorizing the election of four "deputies" from the major settlement areas to handle communications between the governors and the governed. By 1748, there will be forty-eight deputies, whose leadership abilities enable the widely scattered Acadians to survive the travail to come.
The first permanent European settlement in Louisiana: Natchitoches.

1715:    The French fort of Louisbourg on lie Royale now has a population of 700, and increased fortification efforts begin. Louis XV ascends the French throne.

1717:    Colonel Richard Philipps succeeds the scandal ridden Nicholson Vetch regime as governor, and appoints Huguenot Captain John Doucett as his lieutenant governor through 1726. Doucett remains in Annapolis Royal to run the colony when Philipps moves first to the English speaking fishing village at Canso in 1721, and then England in 1723.
In Paris, John Law's Company of the West is founded to colonize Louisiana with German immigrants.

1718:    New Orleans is settled. Population as of June: 68. Rice is first brought into Louisiana.

1719:    A soldier adventurer named Francois Semar de Belle Isle is marooned after a shipwreck, and forced to live among the Attakapas Indians west of the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana. Belle Isle falsely accuses them of cannibalism, which effectively discourages settlement of their isolated lands until the Acadian immigrations of the latter part of the century require more expansion room.

1720:    The so-called King's Bastion at Louisbourg is completed. Louisiana's population as of this year: 6,000.

1722:    Four years of Indian wars begin in Acadia. 1724 The first Code Noir is adopted in Louisiana, requiring, among other things, that all slaves be baptized Catholics.

1725:    In a manner typical of colonial administrative confusion, Major Lawrence Armstrong is appointed to a lieutenant governorship concurrent with Doucett, and continues in office until 1739.

1726:    At the conclusion of the Indian wars, the Acadians of Annapolis Royal are summoned to the fort to be administered an oath of allegiance to the English crown. They demand that a clause be inserted exempting them from bearing arms, and letters from that period confirm that the demand was penciled in on the French copy though it does not appear on any of the English language versions that are still the only "official" documents to survive.

1727:    George I dies and is succeeded by George 11, who passionately hates Catholics. Residents of Annapolis Royal, upon hearing of his ascendancy, confer with Abbot Breslay and hold a protest meeting to demand that their religious independence continue to be protected under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, that French priests continue to be sent to them, and that they not be required to bear arms. Three deputies sent from the meeting to present these demands are imprisoned and Abb6 Breslay is expelled. But in order to quell the subsequent uproar, which almost results in the town storming the fort, an English officer is sent out to capitulate to the residents' demands.
The first permanent contingent of Jesuit priests and Ursuline nuns is sent to Louisiana.

1729:    Governor Philipps returns briefly to the colony, but departs again in 17 3 1. While there, he determines to obtain oaths of allegiance from all the Acadian settlements, not just the one at Annapolis Royal. Abbot Breslay is brought back as a gesture of appeasement. Philipps gets his oaths, but it is assumed from correspondence and later reports that he does so only by giving verbal assent to the Acadian demands not to bear arms.

1730:    Some 900 people are counted at Annapolis Royal.

1731:   Bienville is named governor of Louisiana (until 1743).
Before leaving Acadia, Governor Philipps issues strong orders against any Acadian trade with Louisbourg. Even though he offers half the value of seized goods to informers, he is unable to stop the smuggling, which goes on along Indian paths over the Chignecto isthmus.
The first lighthouse in Canada is established at Louisbourg.

1732:    Because the Acadian population continues to burgeon, Armstrong is authorized to confer title to "new" crown lands not previously settled.

1733:    Agatha La Tour Campbell, a member of one of Acadia's "first families" who married a succession of English garrison officers after the 17 10 takeover, receives a settlement of £5,000 to relinquish her claims to a defunct French "seigneurie" or feudal land grant. Acadia's seigneuries were never well respected or enforced, and hers was the last to go.

1737:    Another census reveals 7,598 people in those sections of Acadia under English control. There are also 1,463 people at Louisbourg.

1738:    The infamous Abbot Jean Louis Le Loutre ("The Otter") arrives in the Fort Beausejour area from France, determined to keep the Acadian settlers there Catholic and loyal to the French king. His ministry to the Indians produces many headaches for the English, who put a price on his head and detain him twice, unsuccessfully, in prison camps before the Expulsion. Le Loutre's aggressive activities are conceded by most historians to have been the principal cause of much of New England's paranoia about the "loyalties" of the Acadians in the event of another war. When the deportations begin, Le Loutre's bishop in Quebec writes him: "You have at last, my dear sir, got into the very trouble I foresaw, and which I predicted long ago."

1739:    England goes to war with Spain.

1740:    After Armstrong commits suicide; Major Paul Mascarene succeeds him as lieutenant governor (until 1749), ushering in the most benevolent period of English rule.

1741:    Charles Lawrence, the villain of 1755, first arrives in the colony. 1744 Four more years of war between France and England begin.

1745:    In a surprise attack, a group of New Englanders capture Louisbourg. 1747 The French return the favor with an unsuccessful assault on Grand Pre

1748:    The Treaty of Aix la Chapelle restores Louisbourg to French rule. The Acadians henceforth are known in various documents and reports of the day as the "French neutrals."

1749:    Colonel Edward Cornwallis succeeds Philipps as governor and decides to establish Halifax as the new provincial capital and an Atlantic port/fort defense against Louisbourg. He brings 2,000 settlers with him. An English blockhouse is built to watch over Grand Pre. Lawrence joins the, Cornwallis regime's executive council.
Le Loutre becomes the Beaubassin village priest and Fort Beausejour is completed. The French governor of Newfoundland sends out explorers to mark claims to the Mississippi River Valley with lead plates.

1750:    Louisbourg now has a population of 4,000; there are now 10,000 Acadians, half of them living in the Minas Basin region. Throughout the colony, they have diked 13,000 acres of land.
Cornwallis builds a road from Halifax to Pisiquid (now the town of Windsor) and builds Fort Edward in his own honor there, to reinforce his control. From Fort Edward, Lawrence attempts to take Fort Beausejour and occupy Beaubassin, but is beaten back. That summer, the Indians burn the church at Beaubassin, probably on orders from Le Loutre, and the Acadians begin a confused migration to areas of New Brunswick behind the battlelines. Eventually, that fall, Fort Lawrence is built on the site of the burned out church.
In Louisiana, Father Baudoin the Jesuit superior is named the first vicar general in New Orleans for the Bishop of Quebec.

1751:    Sugarcane is introduced into Louisiana from Santo Domingo by the Jesuits, who grow it on their New Orleans plantation.

1752:    As the political situation in Canada worsens, more Acadian refugees head for Shediac and Beausejour just over the de facto boundary line between English Nova Scotia and French New Brunswick, or else they set out for French controlled Prince Edward Island. Most of those 2,663 headed for PEI will end up eventually in Louisiana. Another 2,586, joined by scattered refugees, will begin walking northward along the New Brunswick coast adjoining the Gulf of St. Lawrence, eking out an existence with the Indians and hiding from various English raiding parties until the fall of New France and the later granting of legal permission to reestablish their farms. Cornwallis, meanwhile, resigns as governor and is succeeded by the weak willed Peregrine Hopson.
In the Louisiana Territory, there are now twenty-four French forts and settlements.

1753:    The ambitious Lawrence is named president of the Council after Hopson resigns, and ten months later succeeds to the lieutenant governorship.
Lunenburg, near Halifax, is settled with additional European immigrants, mainly Germans. They, the original Cornwallis settlers, and refugee Tory "Loyalists" after the American Revolutionary War will make up the overwhelming majority of the population base of modern Nova Scotia.

1754:    Five Mouton brothers and one nephew begin their immigration to Louisiana, the first Cajun settlers in the state. Louis, Pierre, Charles, and jean, Jr., all die young or their lines terminate early, leaving only Salvador and jean Diogene Mouton to carry on the family name which disappears completely in Acadia.
Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts accuses the Acadian settlers of the Chignecto region of working with the French garrison at Beausejour to storm the state of Maine. Actually, they just want to return to their Beaubassin area farms, which the Abbot Le Loutre's Indians forced them to leave.

April 6 --The first fully documented arrival of Cajun refugees in Louisiana: four families, totaling twenty people, who had arrived via New York.

July 3 -- George Washington abandons Fort Necessity.

September 17 --Acting Governor Lawrence orders that there be no more grain shipments from Annapolis Royal or Grand Pre to the Beaubassin region.

October 29-- The Lords of Trade in London caution Lawrence not to do anything rash.

1755:    Canadian census figures show 10 11,000 Acadians still living in Nova Scotia, plus another 4 5,000 in PEI. A rough estimate of 18,000 is agreed upon by most historians.

 May 22 -- Lawrence's secretly organized expedition of 2,000 men leaves Boston for Chignecto Bay.

 June 3  -- Lawrence holds council at Halifax, and secretly plots the details of the Expulsion.

 June 4  -- He sends out an order demanding that the Acadians turn in their arms, an order protested because of possible wild animal attacks on their livestock. Troops from Halifax are sent to reinforce the Boston troops now at Fort Lawrence.

 June 16  -- Fort Beausejour capitulates to the English.

 July 28  -- The Council issues Expulsion orders.

 August 13  -- The Board of Trade sends additional cautionary instructions to Lawrence, instructions that do not arrive until the Expulsion is already well underway.

 September 5, a Friday-- 413 men of Grand Pre are lured into church under false pretenses and held captive.

 October 8  -- 27 Ships at Grand Pre are loaded up. In all, some twenty-four vessels carrying 5,000 people are dispatched during the late fall and winter accompanied by three warships.

1756:   Beginning of the Seven Years' War, our first true world war, on May 18. Scattered Acadian refugees dumped in Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia begin heading for Louisiana.
 February 8 -- The Pembroke, the only English ship overpowered by its prisoners, arrives at the St. John River.

1757:    The first chapel is established at St. James Parish, soon to become the principal settlement of the Acadian Coast along Louisiana's Mississippi River.
Lawrence is made a full colonel for his efforts.

1758:    Louisbourg falls, after being besieged by 27,000 troops and three dozen ships. Remaining Acadian refugees found along the St. John River, and half the population of previously untouched Cape Sable, are rounded up for deportation.

1759:    Some 200 additional refugees surrender at either St. John or Fort Cumberland (formerly Beausejour), plus another 152 from Cape Sable, all of whom are imprisoned at Halifax. Quebec falls.

1760:    Forces from Montreal make one last effort to rescue New France, but are surrounded and captured.
Another 300 refugees swept up from the St. John area are imprisoned at Halifax, while 2,000 new English settlers are brought in to take the Acadians' lands.
George 11 dies. George III takes the throne.
Caraquet, New Brunswick, is founded by Stephen Landry of Grand Pre.

1761:    In Louisiana, the first Cajun name appears in the cattle industry's so called brand book: Bernard.

1762:    Louis Jules Mancini Mazarini, Duc de Nivernais, is sent to London to negotiate an end to the Seven Years' War on
September 2.

 October --Nivernais finds out about the Acadians being detained and writes Etienne Francois, Duc de Choiseul, the French foreign minister, for instructions. These are the survivors of 1,500 prisoners sent to Virginia, then expelled from there also.