He was a schooner captain and a MicMac language interpreter between 1686 and 1731 Acadie.

ACADIAN EMIGRATION TO ILE ROYALE (CAPE BRETON), 1713-1734
The nineteen families of the fourth group emigrated between 1715 and 1719 but mostly between 1715-1716. The Commissaire-ordonnateur Soubras attempted to found a good agricultural settlement at the Petit Saint-Pierre River.

He was from Port Royal. He was issued rations in 1717. He appears on the 1724 census of Port Toulouse as a farmer and merchant. He also appears on the 1726 census of Port Toulouse as a merchant.
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PETITPAS, CLAUDE, capitaine de goélette, interprète, connu surtout pour sa collaboration avec les Anglais, troisième enfant d’une famille de 15, fils de Claude Petitpas, sieur de Lafleur, greffier au tribunal de Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.-É.), et de Catherine Bugaret, né a Port-Royal vers 1663, mort entre 1731 et 1733.

      Au cours de sa jeunesse, Petitpas fut étroitement lié dans ses courses et dans son activité avec les Micmacs des environs de Port-Royal, où il vécut, chez son père, jusqu’à son mariage. Il épousa vers 1686 une Indienne de cette tribu, du nom de Marie-Thérèse, née en 1668, avec qui il eut, d’après le recensement de 1708, au moins sept enfants. Le 7 janvier 1721, après le décès de sa première femme, il convola en secondes noces, toujours à Port-Royal, avec Françoise Lavergne, du même endroit, fille de Pierre Lavergne, le domestique du père de Breslay, et d’Anne Bernon. Elle n’avait que 17 ans, il en avait environ 57. Le couple eut quatre enfants.

      Petitpas demeurait, du vivant de sa première femme, à Mouscoudabouet (Musquodoboit), où les pêcheurs de Boston étaient très actifs, et, dès 1698, on eut à se plaindre de son association avec ceux-ci. En septembre 1718, une frégate envoyée de Boston par le gouverneur du Massachusetts et commandée par le capitaine Thomas Smart mouilla dans le havre de Canseau (Canso). Les Anglais s’emparèrent d’un bon nombre de pêcheurs français, dont Marc La Londe, gendre de Claude Petitpas. Celui-ci mit sa propre goélette à la disposition des Anglais pour qu’ils pussent mieux accomplir leur dessein.

      Le 30 juin 1720, le Conseil législatif de Boston lui octroya, à sa demande, la somme de £100 pour avoir témoigné des 7Petitpas, en effet, avait obtenu la liberté de ces captifs en payant leur rançon de ses propres deniers. Le conseil résolut en plus que le gouvernement payerait les frais de scolarité de l’un de ses fils pendant quatre ans au collège de Harvard.

      Sans doute s’installa-t-il par la suite dans l’île Royale (île du Cap-Breton), peut-être à Port-Toulouse (St. Peters, N.-É.) même, où plusieurs de ses enfants s’étaient établis et où Joseph de Brouilland, dit Saint-Ovide [Monbeton*], gouverneur de l’île Royale, allait s’enquérir en 1728 de la loyauté des Indiens envers les Français. Claude Petitpas tâchait en effet d’influencer les Indiens, surtout les jeunes, en faveur des Anglais. Saint-Ovide voulut donc s’en débarrasser en l’envoyant vers la fin de cette même année en France avec deux de ses fils du premier lit. Si de fait ce dessein fut mis à exécution, Claude Petitpas ne semble pas avoir été absent plus de deux ans.

      Il mourut probablement entre 1731 et 1733, car le dernier enfant qu’on lui connaît naquit en 1731 ; de plus, en mai 1733, Louis XV donna à sa veuve une somme d’argent pour services rendus par son mari en sa qualité d’interprète. En 1747, le gouverneur Shirley du Massachusetts rappelait que Petitpas avait été un 7Article below, from “Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online”
http://www.biographi.ca/EN/index.html

    PETITPAS, BARTHÉLEMY, navigator, agent to the Micmac Indians,
interpreter; b. 1687, probably at Mouscoudabouet (Musquodoboit Harbour, N.S.), son
of Claude Petitpas* and a Micmac woman named Marie-Thérèse; m. Madeleine
Coste c.1715 and had six sons and two daughters; d. January 1747 at Boston,
Massachusetts.

    From childhood Barthélemy Petitpas’s mores and habitat were those of
the Micmacs. He spoke the Micmac tongue even before he spoke French, and,
through sustained associations with New Englanders trading and fishing in
Acadia, he became fluent in English as well. Petitpas’s knowledge of all three
languages made him an invaluable instrument of the rival diplomacies of
England and France in Acadia, not only among his own people, the Micmacs, but
likely also among the Acadians. It is part of the irony of Barthélemy Petitpas’s
career that he could be branded by a Frenchman as a “bad [type capable] of
doing things that are most prejudicial to our interests” (Pierre-Auguste de
Soubras*, 1717), and at about the same time be accused by an English
official of doing “great damage to my master’s subjects by incensing the savages
against them” (John Doucett*, 1718).

    When he assisted Captain Thomas Smart* in the expulsion of a group of
French fishermen from Canso in 1718 Petitpas was firmly in the British camp.
He spent the next three years as a guest of the English in Boston, p
erfecting his English, and returned late in 1721 to become the official British
agent among the Micmacs in Nova Scotia. Philippe de Rigaud* de Vaudreuil and
Michel Bégon reported that the intention was for Petitpas to return as a
Protestant missionary among the Micmacs, “to win over this nation and make it
change its religion.”

    Petitpas’s return caused grave concern at Île Royale (Cape Breton
Island). Knowing he was fast becoming more dangerous even than his father, who
had also helped the English, Governor Saint-Ovide [Monbeton] contrived to
have Barthélemy captured, probably in November 1721 when his 18-ton schooner
was confiscated at Louisbourg for trading in contraband goods from Canso. In
1722 Saint-Ovide sent him to the seminary of Quebec in the hope that after
years of study Petitpas’s ardours would be channelled to the French missionary
effort. In Quebec, however, Petitpas confided to Bishop Saint-Vallier
[La Croix*] that he desired only to learn navigation. Late in 1722, therefore, he
was sent to Rochefort, France, where he was maintained and trained by a
competent hydrographer at crown expense. He nevertheless remained intractable,
and by the summer of 1723 the intendant at Rochefort, François de
Beauharnois, requested that Petitpas be sent to Martinique as a soldier, as he “won’t
stick at anything, and has been ruined by wine and women.” His conduct was
no better in Martinique, however, and the authorities so feared he would
lead his comrades to desert that he was eventually sent back to France and
imprisoned at Le Havre.

    He was released from prison in June 1730, still proscribed from
returning to New France. It is surprising, therefore, to find him back at Île
Royale as early as the summer of 1731, being warmly recommended by the financial
commissary, Jacques-Ange Le Normant de Mézy, for the post of Indian
interpreter. His father in fact received the appointment, but after Claude’s death
the following summer the position, with an annual stipend of 300 livres,
devolved in course upon Barthélemy.

    Petitpas appears to have been restored to favour at Île Royale in the
interests of the colony. Beauharnois had readily admitted his intelligence,
and Saint-Ovide and Le Normant were quick to recognize there was “no other
person here” fit to act as interpreter. His abilities were appreciated: after
being dispatched early in 1734 to pilot a vessel to New York to purchase
sorely needed supplies of food for the colony, he reminded the authorities
that he could be earning more than 1000 livres in the coastal trade. His
stipend was immediately doubled to 600 livres.

    The final 12 years of Barthélemy Petitpas’s life remain obscure. We
know nothing of the direction of his influence among the Micmacs, nor of his
relations with the colonial authorities. We do know that he was serving as a
pilot in 1745, the year the New Englanders captured Louisbourg [see William
Pepperrell]. Petitpas himself was captured and imprisoned in Boston.
Governor William Shirley maintained his right to detain him even after the exchange
of prisoners because, he claimed, Petitpas “had no right to throw off his
allegiance and go into the french King’s service.” Petitpas died in January 1
747, still in prison in Boston. His widow was reported in a 1752 census as
living with six of their children at L’Ardoise, Île Royale.

   Bernard Pothier

   AD, Charente-Maritime (La Rochelle), B, 265, ff.20–21 (Amirauté de
Louisbourg). AN, Col., B, 45, ff.200, 205; 54, f.42; 59, f.516; 63, ff.535–37;
C11B, 2, f.38v; 5, f.43; 6, ff.107–8; 12, ff.53–53v; 14, ff.3–7; 15, ff.12–
14, 90v, 139; F2C, 3, ff.556–57, 576; Marine, C7, 244; Section Outre-Mer,
G3, 2041, f.52; 2047/1, f.90. PRO, CO 217/2, f.215. Coll. de manuscrits
relatifs à la N.-F., III, 379. PAC Report, 1905, II, pt.i, 12. Arsenault, Hist. et
généal. des Acadiens, I, 477–78. Coleman, New England captives, I, 97–98.
© 2000 University of Toronto/Université Laval.