The Bonins and their kin!

Royal Flag of the Mi'kmaq Nation

My father's family of Scriptures were a bit hard to trace at first.  However, my mother's side was not too bad once I got over a couple of humps.  My mother was born a Bonin. I knew who her parents were and I knew only who her grandmother was.  The only reason I knew about my great grandmother was that my cousin got pregnant and Mamaw (that's what we called our grandmother) asked her to name the baby after her mother if it was a girl.  That's the one and only time I ever heard Mamaw mention anyone in her family.  Turns out that her mother's name was Camilla.  Camilla Crochet. So the cousin has her little girl and names her after Mamaw's Momma.  She was named Jennifer Camilla.  Mamaw was happy with that.

Back to my story...So I had this new computer and wanted to trace my family tree.  I joined Ancestry and began searching.  Back then you had to actually search.  Nowadays, they have this little green shaky leaf that gives you all these hints and basically works out your family tree for you.  Not so back then in 1997.  So the search was on.  I put my name in the tree and my parent's name and each of their parent's names. And I put in Camilla's name.  And that was as far as I got.  Now keep in mind that my momma had died in 1994 so I couldn't ask her anything.  I did have an aunt who was still alive at that time so I called her and asked her who her grandfather was.  LOL.  She had no clue.  She only knew he was called Pop NoNo.

Listen, you can't look up anyone named Pop NoNo on Ancestry or Cindi's list or even on the LDS web site.  Stumped, I was!!  And that didn't take long either.  But...I have always been lucky and was lucky enough to find a woman who knew how to dig up names.  I knew all of the children's names for Pop NoNo and Camilla Crochet.  It didn't take her long to come back and tell me that the man's name was Eno, Enough, Ena, Ina, and a bunch of other spellings.  Turns out his name was Willie Eno Crochet.  I had passed my first hurdle and was on my way.  His wife, Camilla was born a Landry.  From there things sort of fell into place, but only after much research in some cases.

So here is Pop NoNo

He could have at least left me that chair, right??

I traced my mother's Bonin side all the way back to France in 1653.  And I am proud to say that my mother's ancestors include one special hero by the name of Joseph dit Beausoliel Broussard.

Dit in French means "Also Known As" so basically you can read it as "his name was Joseph Broussard but he was also known ad Beausoliel." The more I researched his life, the more hungry I was to research his life.  I've read a couple of books about him as he was one of the greatest freedom fighters from Nova Scotia during the "grand deportation of the Acadian people."  He and his family had partnered with the Mi'kmaq (pronounced Mik Mak) Indians in their joint fight against the British.  He was ruthless.  He would scalp British soldiers in their beds or on patrol at their fort.  They were so afraid of him they refused to build a fire to stay warm because he would know where they were even to the point of their feet freezing.  He fought hard for our Acadian ancestors. He is also probably the reason that my DNA shows Native American ingredients.

He eventually had to leave Nova Scotia and ended up in Atakapa territory near St Martinsville. He wasn't there long.  He caught the fever from the mosquitoes and died shortly after his arrival.  But he was and always will be my greatest hero.  He stood up for and fought for what he knew was right.