Charles Mellanson dit La Ramee

• General Notes
  • Melanson Settlement was located on the north shore of the Annapolis River, 6.5 kilometres from the town of Port Royal (present day Annapolis Royal). It was situated on a point of high ground overlooking a salt marsh. To the east and west were marshes, dyked and drained for cultivation. For almost a century, until the British Deportation of the Acadians in 1755, the settlement was home to Charles Melanson and Marie Dugas, and their descendants.
    
    Charles Melanson was born in 1643 to a French Huguenot father who had moved to England and an English mother. The family sailed from England in 1657 and settled on the Saint John River; moving in 1667to the Port Royal area when the Treaty of Breda returned Acadia to France.
    
    Melanson renounced Protestantism in 1664 when he married Marie Dugas. The two settled into working the land, and husbanded cattle pigs and sheep. They had fourteen children. Charles lived until 1700, and Marie died in 1737.
    The Treaty of Utrecht ceded Acadia back to the British in 1713. The Melanson Settlement at the time had nine households with sixteen adults and twenty-five children. Rather than move, the families chose to live under British rule.
    
    There is mention of six to eight buildings on the site in 1753. After the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, some of the family escaped to Québec, some to France, with the fate of others unknown.
    
    An accidental grass fire in 1984 brought the Melanson settlement to light. Evidence of the settlement was found by the Nova Scotia Museum in 1984 and Parks Canada conducted site surveys and excavationfrom 1984-1987. The survey and excavation on the settlement ruins located 18 separate features, many of which were cellars. The archaeological dig concluded that none of the site was used after 1755, and is thereforeof great importance. The Melanson site is the only pre-expulsion Acadian settlement that has extended ruins with detailed historical documentation.
    
    One incident of interest concerns the attack on the settlement in 1710 by British sailors of the ship, Dragon. The sailors were looking for cabbages, and one of the Melanson settlers fired on and killed a sailor and wounded another. The crew of the ship burned two houses and two barns in retaliation. Archaeologists have discovered that when the inhabitants rebuilt, they buried the debris instead ofclearing it away. This act preserved the older structure’s remains by coating it with a layer of clay.
    The archaeological team was also able to uncover many important artifacts of daily life in the settlement such as pottery, scissors, coins, glass beads, etc. This discovery added much to the understanding of the Melanson Settlement and Acadian life in the 17th century.
    
    Location: Melanson Settlement 6.5 Kilometres from the town of Annapolis Royal
    
    See: Crépeau, Andrée, and Brenda Dunn. The Melanson Settlement: and Acadian farming community (ca. 1664-1755). Research Bulletin No. 250, September 1986. Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1986.  http://www.multiculturaltrails.ca/level_3/number119.html
    
    Charles dit La Ramée and his wife Marie would establish their family near the old Port Royal habitation in the Port Royal basin at what is today known as the Melanson Settlement (sometimes referred toas the "Melanson Village" in old records and maps). The settlement grew quite large over the years with a total of nine households being located on the land during its peak times.
    
    Charles and his wife Marie seem to have done reasonably well as the census' show their cleared land expanding and their livestock increasing. They also had a large section of dyked marshland along theRivière Daupin (the Annapolis River) adjacent to their property. It was from this dyke that archaeologists recently retrieved two intact aboiteax, one of which is the largest and oldest aboiteau found to date.
    
    Other archaeological digs at the Melanson Settlement discovered the foundations of many of the homes and buildings that once stood on the site, including the structure that housed Charles Melanson (son of Charles dit La Ramée) and his wife Anne Bourg. The digs within these stone foundations have produced numerous artifacts that include an earthen cooking pot, a sword hand guard, beads, musket shot, and a variety of utensils, all of which are on display at the Memorial Chapel at Grand Pré.
    
    Besides farming, in his elder years on the opposing side of his brother Pierre, Charles became a spy for the English.
    Pierre and Charles' descendants would remain on the lands of the Melansons Settlement and Grand Pré until the fateful year of 1755 that saw the Melansons and their families dispersed, along with an estimated 9,000 of their fellow Acadians, to various parts of England, France and the British colonies of New England during the Expulsions.
    
    http://www.gregor.ca/Acadia/Melanson/melansons-intro-gen1.htm#Pierre1