I always thought it interesting that my Dad was born in New Iberia, Louisiana and my Mother was born fifteen miles down the road in Abbeville, and that they both ended up in the Beaumont, Texas area just a few years apart. Mother never talked much about her family; her mother had died when she was eight years old and her dad was killed in an accident in 1930, the same year she married Daddy. I don’t know if she was unaware of much of her linage or just didn’t wish to share it. I, of course, knew that Mother was Cajun and I was aware of the Cajun history back to Acadia, Canada and France. As a child I would listen to Mother and her aunt Eula Boudreaux speak in Cajun french dialect. I always figured that they spoke that way when the subject matter wasn’t for my ears to hear.

I never thought that much about Mother’s ancestry until a few years ago when I found out about the Nauck history, which piqued my interest in exploring my maternal history. I reached out to some cousins in Louisiana with no success. The name Boudreaux is as common in Louisiana as Jones or Smith anywhere else! I finally tried entering her name online at FamilySearch.Org, and got no immediate response. Then, three years later I got an e-mail from Family Search stating they had found a link. When I checked their site I couldn’t believe that they had a family tree going back to the 1500’s!! I was amazed, and although I don’t know anything about anyone in that tree, at least I have the names and locations.

Our family goes back to my 12^th great-grandfather Mathurin Boudrot, born in 1540, somewhere in France.

My 10th great-grandfather, Pierre Martin Boudrot, 1580-1643, is the last in the tree located in France at Cougnes, LaRochelle.

Great-grandfather number 9, Michel Boudrot, 1601-1686, is the first listed in Acadie, Nouvelle-France, in Nova Scotia.

Jean Boudrot, born in 1740, was my 6^th great-grandfather and was among those expelled from Acadia by the British during the Great Upheaval or the Expulsion, as it was known in Britain, lasting from 1755 to 1763. Many were sent back to France, and in 1785, approximately 1600 of these Acadians immigrated to Louisiana. Over a six month period, seven ships were commissioned to carry them back, one of them being the Le Saint-Remi, which carried Jean Boudrot and his family.

My 5^th great-grandfather, Jean Charles Boudreaux, 1762-1807, was the first to bear the new sur-name. I don’t know why the end of the name was changed. There were families named Comeaux and Thibedeaux among the Acadians. Perhaps the inter-marriage among families may have occasioned the change. Maybe further research will provide an answer.

Probably there are few people that have never thought about “what if” concerning their past, or that of their ancestors. I know that I have done so, more than once. But after learning of both sides of my family, I’m truly amazed. If not for the great suffering of the Acadians and the determination of many of them to escape France a second time for a future in the new world, my maternal ancestors would have never ended up in Louisiana. And, if not for the independent, if not rebellious, nature of my great-grandfather, Kurt Nauck, to leave behind his heritage in Germany and sail the seas, leading him to Louisiana, my Nauck lineage would not exist. And even so, how close he and his family came to being wiped out in the hurricane of 1879!

The Acadian and Cajun histories are fascinating, as well as sad, and I intend to write about them later on.