Here is part 2 of letter from Mr. Stephen White dated 1984

Françoise Lavergne was married three times,all three of her marriages produced offspring. She first wed, Jan. 7 1721, at Port Royal, Claude Petitpas. Claude was about forty years older than Françoise. he was aschooner Captain and merchant, who also served as an interpreter for the Indains. He had apparently learned the Indian language at a young age and had taken an Indian bride around 1686. He settled with her at Musquodoboit, and their marriage produced at least seven children. This first wife, usually called Marie-Thérese in French records, died sometime before 1717. By this latter year Claude
had moved to Ile Royale ( Cape Breton Island), as is indicated by a census. He sttled at or near Port Toulouse ( now St. Peter's ).where he is listed as a merchant in subsequent censuses of 1724 and 1726. It was thus to Port Toulouse that Claude Petitpas brought his seventeen-year -old second wifr in the winter of 1721. Claude Petitpas and Françoise Lavergne had four sons, all born and bapized at Port Toulouse: Jean, Jacques, Louis, and Joseph. Around this time of this last son's birht about 1731, Claude died in his late sixties.

Françoise Lavergne was thus a widow at age twenty-eight, with four small boys to look after.
Circumstances obloged her to find another husband in short order, and it appears that she remarried the next year. he husband was a navigator from the diocese of Avranches, in Normandy, named Antoine Lavandier. This second marriage produced two more children : Marguerite, born sometime before the census of 1734, and Abraham, born about 1735.

Françoise Lavergne was soon widowed again, but as before did not remain long without a husband. About 1736 she married a third time.Her third husband was also a man of the sea, a coaster, named Claude Clerge. Clerge was a native of the parish of Acre, in the diocese of Langres, in Champagne. He was about forty-four when he married the thirty-three -year- old widow Lavandier and assumed direction of her household of five boys and a girl.He and Françoise addes a sixth boy to the brood, Claude-Gabriel Clerge, and the three more girls: Felicité; Marguerite-Françoise and Anne.

Here is part 3 of the letter from Mr. White

At the time of Laroque's census of 1752, the Clerget-Lavandier-Petitpas family was still settled at Port Toulouse. Only six of the children were still at home; Jean;Jacques , and Louis Petitpas, and

Marguerite Lavandier had all married and started families of their own. Jean and Jacques had not left their mother's habitation, however, and were occupied in the costal trade that employed their step-father. Marguerite Lavandier had married a young widower employed in the fishery, François Bonin; they lived about twelve to fifteen miles nearer to Louisbourg, at Saint-Esprit. Louis Petitpas had taken up an occupation similar to that of his mother's father; he was the servant of the lacal priest, Father Pierre Maillard, who was also the missionary to the Indians on Iile Royale. Louis also acted as an interpreter for the Indians, as his own father had done. This combination of employments was to have great consequences for both Louis and his family.

In the six years between Laroque's tour of inspection in 1752 and the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, one may easily imagine that Françoise Lavergne and her family lived in an atmosphere of uneasy peace.Nevertheless, during this period two more of Françoise's sons married, Joseph Petitpas and Abraham Lavandier. Then , in 1758, the life and society to which the family was accustomed were swept away. Louisbourg was captured, and French rule in the present Maritime Provinces cameto an end forever.

The victorious British rounded uo as many of the French inhabitants of Iile Royale as they could find, and expelled them to France. Most of Françoise's offspring escaped this expulsion.
At least two, however, were caught in the British dragnet. Anne, the youngest of Françoise's ten children, was sent to la Rochelle.Liste of 1761 and 1762 mention her there. She was possibly already married in 1758 and might have been captured with her husband, Pierre landry. She and Pierre were to return to Acadia via Miquelon after a few years, to rejoin the rest of the family. Marguerite Lavandier was also at la Rochelle, as will appear below.

Meanwhile , Louis Petitpas's attachment to Father Maillard was to influence the fate of his mother's whole clan. After the fall of Louisbourg , Father Maillard moved his base of opperations to Merigomish, N>S., and it seems that Louis and perhaps the whole Clerge-Lavandier- Petitpas family went there with him. Then the authorities at Halifax decided to appoint Father Maillard their official missionary to the Indians, principally in order to apease the latter. Maillard then had to move to Halifax to take up his post. Louis Petitpas went with him.Louis's brother Joseph was soon permitted

to go there too. And in September, 1760, Charles Lawrence, the governor of Nova Scotia who had been chiefly responsible for the Acadian Deportation, wrote to Edward Whitmore, governor of Cape Breton, at Father Maillard's request, for permission for the families of Jean Petitpas, Jacques Petitpas, Abraham Lavandier, Jean-Baptiste Roma, Amand Breau, and Joseph Breau to join them. Jean, Jacques, and Abraham were Louis and Joseph's brothers and half- brother. Jean-Baptiste Roma

had meanwhile married their half-sister, Felicité Clerge.The Breaus were brothers of Jacques Petitpas's wife. According to tradition, these refugees did not wish to settle in or too close to the city of Halifax, and chose to fix themselves at Chezzetcook instead. And that is how the Acadian settlement at Chezzetcook first cameinto being.

part 4 soon Rufine