History of the Mighty Miramichi
The Miramichi River is the water gateway into the history of northern New Brunswick.
The Miramichi
The Family Roots
The Acadian Breau Tree
The Acadian Breau(lt) ancestry is rooted back to the French settlement of Acadia in the 1600's.
In about the year 1652, a young man from the Poitou region of France, Vincent Brault by name, arrived in North America. He had been recruited as an agricultural worker for the fledging French colony called Acadie, which was then just a small settlement of 300 habitants.
Vincent settled at Port Royal, now Annapolis Royal in present day Nova Scotia. Several years after arrival, he married a daughter of another colonist from the same region in France, and they became the parents of five sons and six daughters.
Thus starting the original family of the Breau, Breault and Breaux descendants, still living in New Brunswick, Louisiana and elsewhere.
The Irish Fogan Tree
The name Fogan is not found in great numbers anywhere in the world. Early New Brunswick Census returns and other records have shown that my great-great grandfather, John Foggin landed in New Brunswick in 1831 from Ireland via Nova Scotia.
In the N.B. Census of 1851, John and his wife (the former Mary Haskett from Tipperary) and family were listed as residents of Chatham. Research of marriage records of New Brunswick, indicate that they were previously married in Bathurst on April 13, 1836. They had five children and were living on the Miramichi at the time of the 1851 census. James was 11 months old when his mother Mary Haskett Fogan died in Chatham at age 39 on August 4, 1852. James survived and married Mary Jane Kirkpatrick on July 16, 1870. Their marriage produced eight children.
The Fogans on the Miramichi can trace their roots back to this common ancestor.