Key Waves of Immigration.

The French.

Louis Hébert, an apothecary, (and the seventh great-grandfather of Willy Ernest Collins) first traveled to Port Royal (now called Annapolis Royal) before he returned to France to bring his family to Québec to help establish that city. By 1607 Port Royal was abandoned but then re-established in 1610. Conflicts with the British led to the destruction of Port Royal in 1621 and King James I of England gave Acadia to Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Sterling, who was Scottish. The area was then renamed Nouvelle Escosse or Nova Scotia. 

 Acadia was returned to France in 1632 with the Treaty of Saint Germain en Laye and serious settlement of the area began with an influx of families from France. These people established the building infrastructure in the area, and they were joined by two more waves of French settlers from 1639 to 1649 and in 1651. Although largely made up of French Roman Catholics, the people who would become known as the Acadians also included French Protestant Huguenots, who emigrated from France to escape religious persecution. 

 Some of these early settlers include ancestors of Willy Collins, such as Germain Doucet Laverdure, who was in Acadia from 1632 to 1654 but returned to France. But the name Doucet endured through his children such as Marguerite Louise Doucet and her husband Lieutenant General Abraham Dugas. Others included Martin Aucoin, Guillaume Trahan, and Jean Gaudet. But once again, Acadia became British when it was captured in 1655, yet most of the French Acadian families stayed in the colony.

 The conflicts between the French and the English shifted the claims of the two countries back and forth but ceded the area to France with the 1667 Treaty of Breda and then back to the English with the 1713 Treaty of Urtech. Although the fighting and claims were more nuanced, the Treaty of Aix-La-Chappelle in 1748 gave final control of the primarily French colony to the English, who then firmly established its current name Nova Scotia, with Halifax as its capital city.

Arrival of the Foreign Protestants.

Halifax was founded in 1749 by the English as the capital of Nova Scotia. By 1750, desertion and disease had drastically thinned the population of the predominantly English community around Halifax. However, the early townspeople included some steady, industrious Germans and Swiss whose dependability impressed local officials. The local government persuaded the British authorities in London to recruit replacement Protestant settlers like them, from various German states and principalities along the Rhine River in western Europe.

 The British promised these new immigrants free land, a year’s supply of food, tools and implements necessary to till the soil, as well as some building materials. If they could not pay their passage, they were still welcome to come, but after their arrival would be required to labor on public works such as forts and roads until they redeemed their debt. 

Mr. John Dick, an agent of the British Lords of Trade, successfully led the recruiting drive that provided free passage to the colony, free land, and one year of rations. In 1750 and 1751 circulars written in German were distributed throughout the independent "German" princedoms by John Dick. They described Nova Scotia and the opportunities for Foreign Protestant immigrants, including the benefits the British government was prepared to provide to them in the new colony, including materials for building houses, necessary furniture such as beds, kettles, pans, etc., as well as equipment for agricultural operations (such as axes, saws, hoes, ploughs, seed grain and breeding livestock). The new immigrants arrived between 1750 and 1752, in twelve ships that included the Ann (1750) and the Sally (1752). 

As a result, some 2,700 new settlers arrived in Halifax, coming mostly from the Palatinate, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Switzerland and Montbéliard – a small principality near the French border with Switzerland. The new arrivals spoke German, except those from Switzerland and Montbéliard, who spoke French. Since religion and political allegiance were often linked in those days, the immigrants were almost all Protestants, and during their early years in Nova Scotia were known collectively as “the Foreign Protestants” to distinguish them from the Acadian French.

 Among these early Foreign Protestants was the Shankle (Schenkel) family who arrived from Switzerland in 1750 and the Baltzer family who arrived from Hessem Germany in 1752. On 10 April 1766 Henry Shankle and Carey (Anna Catherine) Baltzer married in Granville township, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia. They are the second great-grandparents of Willy Collins. The discovery of their stories is a whole new chapter in the Collins family history. 

In 1753, about half of the Foreign Protestants were taken from Halifax by boat to settle a new planned community called Lunenburg, on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. There was a period of adjustment as land was cleared, homes were built, crops were planted, and the settlers learned to fish as well as farm, but within a generation they were self-sufficient.

Before long, some of the Lunenburg settlers pulled up stakes and moved elsewhere in the province, including to Granville township near Annapolis, where the Shankles resettled. The Foreign Protestants of the 1750s were not the only German-speaking immigrants to migrate to Nova Scotia. At the end of the American Revolution, several dozen Hessian soldiers recruited as auxiliary troops for service in North America remained behind to settle and establish families in the province, mostly near Annapolis. 

Expulsion of the Acadians.  Le Grand Dérangement.

Charles Lawrence, the governor of Acadia, and Governor Shirley in Massachusetts used the refusal to sign the oath as an excuse to rid Nova Scotia of the Acadians. This became known as Le Grand Derangement, when French Catholic Acadians were deported. The goal was to remove Acadians from their fertile farmlands and spread them throughout the American colonies and replace them with English Protestant farmers from Massachusetts, where large plots of farmland were becoming scarce. These 8,000 people became known as the New England Planters, who took over the fertile farmland and homesteads that the exiled Acadians were forced to abandon.

 From 1755 to 1762, as many as 10,000 Acadians were deported to the New England colonies and to England. The Acadians were dispersed as follows: 2,000 to Massachusetts, 700 to Connecticut, 300 to New York, 500 to Pennsylvania, 1,000 to Maryland, 400 to Georgia, and 1,000 to the Carolinas. Being French and Roman Catholic, they were not always warmly welcomed. About 1,200 were sent to Virginia but were not allowed to enter the colony. They were forced to stay at the shore for six months before being sent to England where they were dispersed to Bristol, Falmouth, Liverpool, and Southampton where they were held as prisoners for seven years. 

During their exile, the Acadians made attempts to return to Nova Scotia, head to the island of Saint Pierre et Miquelon, or even head to Louisiana which was then under the control of the Spanish. Some of these exits were successful and others ended with a second round of deportation. In 1758, some Acadians who had left Nova Scotia for Il Saint Jean (Prince Edward Island) to avoid the first wave of deportations were deported to France. Hundreds of lives were lost at sea when the ships the Duke William and Violet went down. 

After the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the Acadians were allowed to return to Nova Scotia in 1764 from all the various places of deportation. However, those who chose to return to Acadia found their lands had been taken over by other immigrants, so they needed to resettle in more remote, less desirable areas of the province. Many chose to stay in the locations where they had been deported, notably Maryland and Pennsylvania, large numbers decided to leave the British colonies, mostly going to the closest French territory. Some settled in the French Antilles, a small group went to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns, but most went to Canada which still had French-speaking Catholic areas such as Québec, and to Saint Pierre et Miquelon which is French territory. Many of the Acadians who had remained in Acadia, or had returned there, also went to Miquelon. The Acadians who were deported to England mostly were repatriated to France. Among the exiled families were Jacques Vigneau and his son Joseph, the third and fourth great-grandfathers of Willy Collins.

The Loyalists.

The last New England Planters had scarcely arrived in Nova Scotia in the 1770s before rebellion broke out in the Thirteen Colonies to the south. Nova Scotia did not join the American Revolution, largely because of distance and divided public opinion. Instead, it became a refuge for American “Tories” or “Loyalists,” forced to leave their homes because of their allegiance to Great Britain.

In 1776 the British evacuated Boston, bringing with them to Halifax nearly a thousand civilians. The revolution continued on until 1783, by which time the British held only New York City. With them, behind the lines, were tens of thousands of “loyal” colonists and their families who had fled from the central colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and Delaware. All of them were uprooted, homeless and unwelcome in the new republic. The British offered refuge overseas and in their remaining colonies. About 14,000 Loyalists chose Nova Scotia, Cape Breton or Prince Edward Island. They were convoyed north in several huge fleets during 1783 and 1784. Many of these people were active Anglicans (Protestant Church of England). As part of this resettlement effort, men could receive a land grant in fee simple (full title) and pay no taxes for three years. If the conditions were not met, the land reverted back to the Crown (escheatment).

Bringing it Together.

These waves of immigrants to Nova Scotia are integral to the Collins family history. In addition to being descendants of the expected French-Canadian immigrants to Québec, both of Willy’s parents were descendants of the Acadians. His mother Marie Odile Samson’s ancestors included the first wave of French Roman Catholic and Protestant Huguenots who settled Acadia and his father Pierre Toussain Collins was a direct descendant of the Swiss and German Protestants and likely the Loyalists or New England Planters who arrived later in Nova Scotia. Many questions still remain about the specific identity of some of these ancestors. The fragments of a story about a Loyalist named William Collins may help to explain the origins of the Collins family name.