BROSSARD, JEAN-FRANÇOIS, ploughman and settler; b. 1654 in France, d. December 1716 at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.).

He came to Acadia in 1671, and settled at Port-Royal, where around 1681 he married Catherine Richard, daughter of Michel Richard and Madeleine Blanchard. With Pierre Tibaudeau he took part in founding a settlement at Chipoudy. In the spring of 1700 one of Jean-François Brossard’s sons went with Tibaudeau and some other young men to Chipoudy. The young scout chose a lot for his father and made a start on the settlement. Jean-François and his wife visited the new settlement and were delighted with it. However, the pioneer did not go to live there himself.

The Brossards had 10 children, 6 boys and 4 girls. One of the sons, Pierre, settled at Pisiquit. Two others, Joseph and Alexandre, lived at Chipoudy on properties which had been granted to their wives, Agnès and Marguerite, granddaughters of Pierre Tibaudeau. The two young Brossards bore the surname of Beausoleil, after their native village near Port-Royal. Later, Alexandre settled at Petitcodiac, a village founded by Guillaume Blanchard; Joseph*, who distinguished himself in skirmishes against the English in 1755, took up his abode at a place called Le Cran, now Stoney Creek. The Brossards of Louisiana and those of Cape Breton are descended from Alexandre and Joseph.

Clément Cormier

AN, Section Outre-Mer, G¹, 466 (Recensements de l’Acadie, 1686, 1693, 1698, 1700, 1701, 1703). Archives de l’université de Moncton, Placide Gaudet and A. E. Daigle, Personal papers on Acadian genealogies. PANS, MS docs., XXVI (parish register of Port-Royal, 31 Dec. 1716). Arsenault, Hist. et généal. des Acadiens, I, 368. Rameau de Saint-Père, Une colonie féodale, I, 246, 254, 255, 256, 258–59, 261, 266–67. [On the “marriages” of Brossard’s daughters, described by Rameau, see the bibliography for Pierre Tibaudeau.]