In doing an assignment for another Genealogy class, I was to try and find a published genealogy or history on an ancestor of mine. Well, with one branch of my family being Acadian and settling the North East of Canada, there are literally tons of history books out there. But even with all of that history, there are still a few branches of that family that are hard to find. I found one such book as I was looking into the LeBlanc family, but as I began to read I found so much more. There is a story at the beginning of a book, with an excerpt written by a Bob Cholette talking about his grandparents Maurice Belliveau (1881-1953) and his wife Elisabeth LeBlanc (1878-1962). He talks about finding a place called "Belliveau Orchard". This leads into my story...
A few years ago, my husband and I went to visit a place in Nova Scotia called "LeBlanc Cove" which I didn't know existed. It was nowhere near where I grew up and I was surprised to learn of it. When we arrived, we discovered a land untouched: a nice sandy beach, a few older homes scattered along a worn road. There was not a soul in sight. We walked along the beach for a bit, breathing in the salty Nova Scotia air. I tried to imagine my early ancestors attempting to settle this land. I walked back to our van as my husband scoured the beach for some rocks to toss into the Atlantic Ocean. There was a man standing by the back of the van. He wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans. I quickly turned to see where my husband was, and he was off in the distance tossing rocks out to sea. The man spoke to me in a thick, heavy French accent, which I tried very hard to understand. Oh how I wished at that moment I had paid better attention in French class in school. But I finally figured it out. "What are you doing here," he asked? "I'm visiting the area of my ancestors, LeBlanc Cove. My maiden name is LeBlanc." He reached out to grab my hand and shake it. He said, "My name is Belliveau. You should find the graveyard." Quickly I responded, "Yes, oh yes, I would love to know where the graveyard is." He quickly gave me directions to the graveyard which was really just a hop, skip and a jump away. I responded with a very grateful thank you and he looked at me and said again, "My name is Belliveau, Thomas Belliveau - please remember my name." He seemed desperate for me to know this. I turned towards where my husband was, and nearly bumped right into him as he was almost standing right beside me. A little frightened by not even hearing him approach, I said, "Honey, you need to meet Mr. Belliveau." My husband said, "Who?" We searched and searched - and there was no one there! The beach was completely empty except for us. We sought out the graveyard, which was old and small, and every single headstone was one of my ancestors, but there was no Belliveau.
When we got back to Utah, I began to do some work on my family tree. After a few months of looking for names, one evening as I was searching guess what name came up on my direct line about 7 generations back. You guessed it - Belliveau! Yeah that's right - Goosebumps right there! How I love this work! That's why I'm here and that's why I'm driven to find out as much as I can about my dear, dear ancestors.
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