BAUDOIN, JEAN, priest, Sulpician, missionary at Beaubassin (Chignecto) in Acadia; b. c. 1662 at Nantes; d. towards the end of the summer of 1698 at Beaubassin.

Abbé Baudoin studied at the Collège in Nantes, at first taking up a military career and becoming a musketeer in the king’s guards. He soon embraced the ecclesiastical life and after beginning at Nantes theological studies that he concluded at Paris under the direction of Abbé Tronson, he became a priest in 1685. Since he aspired to be a missionary and was preparing himself for that at the Séminaire des Missions étrangères in Paris, he met there, in 1687, Bishop Laval* who had just resigned as bishop of Quebec, and Bishop Saint-Vallier [La Croix*], his successor. Abbé Baudoin’s choice then fell upon Acadia, where he arrived in 1688. From Port-Royal he soon moved to Beaubassin, where, together with the Sulpician Claude Trouvé*, he carried on his priestly duties in the farthermost reaches of the Baie Française (Bay of Fundy). He occasionally took part in Indian expeditions against New England.

During his stay in Acadia, Baudoin was accused of exerting undue influence in civil matters, and he had clashes with Governor Joseph Robinau de Villebon in this connection. A stern letter from Versailles required him to go to France with Bishop Saint-Vallier in the fall of 1694 in order to exonerate himself. He returned in the spring of 1696 with Pierre Le Moyne* d’Iberville, who was entrusted with an expedition against the English. Abbé Baudoin accompanied him both as chaplain and as an expert on Acadian problems. He thus took part in the capture of Pemaquid and in the conquest of Newfoundland, leaving a detailed diary of the whole expedition. He returned, exhausted, to his mission at Beaubassin, and died there towards the end of the summer of 1698.

Honorius Provost