A bona fide Cajun in Maritime land

SUSSEX, NEW BRUNSWICK: It was this past weekend up in New Brunswick, when I attended a reunion of the Kelly family — mostly from Canada — who are mostly descended from Michael Kelly who came across the Atlantic in 1829 with his wee sons James and John and little Mary, along with his wife Mary, whose maiden name was Connelly — all from County Cavan in the midlands of Ireland.

So there I was within these rolling hills in the Village Norton. I should note here that I only recently learned of my relation to these folks, they are kin to the mother who birthed me, whose name I didn’t know until the past two years, an RCAF veteran who bore me at 20. She started out, I learned, as a farm girl and even taught school. She now rests forever in a Vancouver cemetery that I recently visited, but that is another story for another time.

I got to meet my cousins Graham and Juanita Kelly, who have a lovely home and were kind beyond belief.

There was a presentation of family history by my sainted cousin, Grace Zipprich. I got to meet my uncle, George Kelly, whose existence I had not known of until the last three years because my adoption, which resulted in me becoming an American citizen, was shrouded in mystery. He didn’t know me either until now. But this brother of my late birth mother, he accepted me as his nephew and told me stories from a long time ago and for that I shall always be grateful. So there in Notton, at the Sacred Heart church hall, during a raffle for green hats and other favors I heard the name of a winner called and it was a fellow named Ray LeBlanc, who is the husband of a Kelly and has lived in these hilly parts all of his life, making him not — that we know of — of the LeBlancs who sell cars in Louisiana.

But he is aware of his heritage. He knows of the tragic Grande Derangement in 1755 and of the Acadians who were deported to other places from this place that was then part of Nova Scotia.

Some of his people went to Maine and some maybe to other places like Massachusetts or Vermont, all places where names in the phone books of Thibodaux and Houma are found to this day.

“I know that some of them went to Louisiana,” he said. But he isn’t sure who they were, or who might share his name and genes that are possibly walking around here in the Bayou Country today.

I told him I would help and when I return that is one of my first tasks. I owe this to him and myself because — even if just through marriage — he is also my family. And I owe it to whomever of the LeBlanc’s lives here in Louisiana to introduce them to their Canadian Kin.

In the photo below see if you can pick out the newspaper editor and the Cajun. Let me know if you have and I’ll let you know if you’re correct.

DeSantis