When a Scot is not a Scot

Antyme Roy is descended from Pierre Melançon (also spelled Melanson) through his mother Angèle Lacasse and her mother Françoise Tanguay. Pierre Melançon has long been believed to be a Scot who arrived in Acadia with Sedgwick. The following notes gleaned from Clarence J. D'entremont's article in the Journals of the French Canadian Genealogical Society (vol XXXV - no4 Dec. 1984) casts doubts on this theory.

The only indication that Pierre Melançon might be a Scot comes from a memorandum written in 1720 by Antoine de Lamothe sieur de Cadillac and addressed to the Duke of Orléans. Cadillac asserts that all Scots brought to Port-Royal prior to the treaty of St-Germain-en-Laye in 1632 had died either from scurvy or at the hands of indians save for the brothers Pierre & Charles Melanson who had married Acadians and whose mother was in Boston.

Father D'Entremont has found a documentary trail suggesting that the Melançon were actually the children of a french huguenot Pierre Laverdure and an english woman Priscilla Mellanson.

In a letter dated September 29th 1720, captain John Adams, a trader of Annapolis Royal and a member of the governing council of Nova Scotia, mentions in a letter to Paul Dudley, then judge of the superior court of Massachussets, a Pierre Mellanson from des Mines (Acadia) whom he says is an english gentleman arrived in the country with Sir Thomas Temple.

Sir Thomas Temple arrived in Acadia on the ship Satisfaction in 1657 to assume the government of Nova Scotia. After the Breda treaty of 1667 in which England returned Acadia to the French, the Melançons' mother and father who had lived up until then on the St-John river sought refuge with the protestant government in Boston along with their son John.

In 1675-1676, John joined others in committing piracy acts along the coast of Maine and Cap-Sable. Arrested in Boston, he was freed on a bail of 100 pounds paid by a man named Sendall. This bail had to be forfeited when John failed to show up at his trial.

His mother wrote to the governor of Massachssets and his council, a letter which
was found in the archives of the Supreme Court for the county of Suffolk in Boston ( vol 18 f 1592, council date May 3rd 1676). This is a retranslation of the french translation given in the Journal:

Humble petition of Priscilla Laverdure desolate widow of the deceased Peter Laverdure.

I am an englishwoman widow of the said Peter Laverdure a protestant frenchman who having lost all of their belongings and having lived in great poverty have come to live in this government to flee the anger of their papist neighbours at the St-John river Fort. The unhappy affair of our son John weighed heavily on my husband's heart and brought him to seek out another one of his sons who had stayed in those regions, in the hope of finding him and his brothers and making them see reason.
But to his great sorrow, not getting word of him, unable to find him, not knowing what had happened to him - he who had been the support of his old age - this struck his heart and left your poor supplicant a poor and desolate widow.
signed P. M.

Father D'Entremont has found people named Mallinson and Mellenson in Yorkshire. He assumes that the children were given their mother's family name to avoid using a french name in England.