Goals. Some number of years ago, I came across the three referenced articles by Father Adrian Bergeron. They were in French. Being a pure Anglophone, I tried to translate these, and finally went to study the language formally. I spent three complete years (12 quarters) studying at the Alliance Française in Minneapolis. By that time, others and I had discovered a number of other pertinent data. So I began to write my version of this story. Here are the things that I have tried to do:
1. Provide an English version of the information in Fr. Adrian Bergeron’s three biographical articles on the Bergeron family. Many Acadian descendants in America, and even some in Canada, have lost the ability to speak French. I wanted to make these materials available to them.
2. Put Fr. Bergeron’s material in chronological, i.e., historical, order. This makes the story more understandable.
3. Update Fr. Bergeron’s material with Jean-Marie Germe’s and Paul Delaney's data coming out of France, specifically Barthelemy Bergeron’s baptismal certificate and Marguerite Boyleau’s family background.
4. Add the fact that Barthelemy had been captured by the Bostonais in the 1690s, and to add material found in the Anglophone world, specifically the Campobello and “Captain Blinn” information.
5. Thanks to some of the above new material, make some logical deductions that answer some intriguing questions: who was the grandmother that provided Michel de Nantes with his “dit” name? Was Genevieve’s marriage to Barthelemy her first or her second (Fr. Bergeron insisted this was her first marriage)? Where did Michel II learn to be such a “coureur du bois” as he was known to be?
6. Create a biographical/historical article using all the above resources and to try to deduce some information about personalities: languages spoken, closeness to Genevieve’s indigenous relatives, an openmindedness even towards some English individuals, a sense of fairness, a very long-term friendship with persons at Ste-Anne-du-Pays-Bas beginning considerably before 1730, etc.
7. Create an outline for a future book.
There are a number of people who deserve great thanks for helping to make this work a reality. First, my cousin Joan Pepich, whose own recollections and family tree writings launched me into this search. Secondly, Remi Ferland of Laval University, Quebec City, who responded with data about four generations that connected our grandfather Jules to the subjects of this work. Third, Ms. Fredrica Givan of Fredericton Junction, New Brunswick, who did a great amount of research for me in our homeland and discovered almost all of the initial materials relating to the Bergeron d’Amboise family on Campobello Island. I owe her many thanks for her work and for the information she freely shared. I also owe many thanks to my newly discovered distant cousin, Joseph Damboise of Grafton, NH, for his research, shared information and questioning thought.
Eight Bergeron families came to the Americas from France. Two of them grew to be very large families: the descendants of André Bergeron of Aunis form the largest Québecois (French Canadian as compared to Acadian) Bergeron family; the descendants of Barthélémy Bergeron d’Amboise became the Acadian Canadian and the Cajun Bergerons. I will often refer to our family as Bergeron d’Amboise. Our founding ancestor himself, Barthélémy, was usually known as d’Amboise, not Bergeron, and we have relatives (Joe, mentioned above, for example) who still carry the surname of d’Amboise, D’Amboise or Damboise instead of Bergeron, though often anglicized to be pronounced like "DAM-boyz" instead of the French pronunciation of "dawm-BWAHZ."