| Notes |
- Coastal pilot (pilote cotier).
With Jacques Bourgeois, in 1671-72 he founded the colony Bourgeois on the isthmus of Chignecto, the second Acadian village after Port Royal. It was later renamed Beaubassin. The area is now known as the Tantramar Marshes.
During their lives in Beaubassin, Pierre Arsenault and his second wife Marie Guérin would have witnessed two English raids, both led by Benjamin Church, on their small town. According to an unattributed writer at Wikitree, citing From Migrant to Acadian: A North-American Border People, 1604-1755 by Naomi E. S. Griffiths (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), "In 1696, Church's raid lasted 9 days. Once the English ships were seen, the inhabitants fled, carrying their more valuable possessions. Church recorded that the settlers' 'cattle sheep, hogs, and dogs' were left 'lying dead about their houses, chopped and hacked with hatches'. The church and some of the houses were also burnt." Of the second raid, in 1702, Griffiths writes: "The Acadians were in arms and an indecisive skirmish ensued. After the Acadians retreated into the woods, Church and his men found that the inhabitants had removed as much of their household and farm goods as possible. Church set the buildings on fire...and killed about 100 cattle before leaving to return to Boston."
Wikipedia's article about the first of those two raids is here.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
1650 - Bef 1715 (~ 68 years)
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