Daniel LeBlanc (settler)

Daniel LeBlanc (born France, 1626) was an early settler of the Port Royal area of Acadia.

Biography

LeBlanc was born in France in 1626 and came to Port Royal from Martaize, France in 1648 aboard the French ship La Verve, a ship chartered by Emmanuel Le Borgne to bring recruits and supplies to the colony. LeBlanc settled on the north banks of the Port-Royal River, about 9 miles (14 km) up river from the fort at Port-Royal. He lived here until his death in 1693.

LeBlanc married Francoise Gaudet in or around 1650. By 1755, the descendants of Daniel and Francoise LeBlanc had created the largest family in Acadia. Le Grand Dérangement (The Great Deportation) of the 1750s scattered this huge family to the winds. Since most of the LeBlancs lived in the Minas settlements, dozens of them fell into the hands of the British in the fall of 1755 and ended up on ships bound for Maryland, Virginia, and other English colonies down the Atlantic seaboard. Some were sent to Louisiana. LeBlancs were among the first families of Acadia and some of the earliest Acadians to find refuge in Louisiana. The first descendants of Daniel LeBlanc to emigrate to the colony reached New Orleans in February 1765 with the party from Halifax via St.-Domingue led by Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil. After a brief stay in the city, during which one of them exchanged his Canadian card money for Louisiana funds, they followed the Broussards to the Atakapas District, where they helped created La Nouvelle-Acadie on the banks of Bayou Teche. All of the LeBlanc's in Louisiana are direct descendant's of Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet. It is now estimated that there are somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 descendants scattered over all the continents of the globe, the biggest concentration being in Canada (in the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec) and the United States of America (in Louisiana and the states of New England).