Richard Genealogy

Presented by Stephen White

The following is a transcript of “The genealogy of the Richard” presented by the genealogist Stephen White on the program “Un brin de souvenance”, at the Première Chaîne of Radio-Canada. Reproduced with the permission of Radio-Canada.

You can also find a lot of genealogy information by consulting some of the documents mentioned in the LINKS page of this website.

There were two Richard families in Acadie before the deportation, but today’s show will be concerning the family of Michel Richard dit Sansoucy, the ancestor of the largest Richard family that existed in Acadia and the largest Richard family that still exists today. We can even mention that there exists today, and at least there existed in the 19th century several other Richard families who are not of the descent of Michel. In Nova Scotia, for example, in Yarmouth County, and in the Chezzetcook area near Halifax, there were some Richard who did not descend from his lineage. There was also a Richard family settled in Louisiana who was of a different lineage. Indeed Richard is a fairly common name. We also know that there was a large Richard family settled in Quebec before the deportation of the Acadians, so when the Acadians went to Quebec, there were already some Richard in Quebec, and then there were other Richard families in Quebec of Acadian descent.

Michel Richard dit Sansoucy was born in France around 1630 according to the ages attributed in the censuses. Some claim that he was from Saintonge, but this claim is based solely on the fact that there were some Richard in Quebec who came from Saintonge. Today, the Richard are a large family. Here in New Brunswick, after the LeBlanc and the Cormier, we find the Richard who rank third among the largest families in the province, and there are also many descendants of Michel Richard in the province of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and many of the small “Cadies” of Quebec, in the region of St-Jacques l’Achigan, the region of St-Ours, the county de Lobinière, in the Bécancour region, and of course, there are many Richard in Louisiana. We all know Zachary Richard and his father Eddy who are prominent and descend from Michel Richard.

A fact that I would like to emphasize in this program is that the Richard family seems to have retained more than any other family nicknames that attach not only to the father, the mother or their children, but to all large branches of the family. At the beginning of the colonization, at the beginning of the installation of the family, one had of course Michel Richard who bore the name of Sansoucy. However, this is one of the only nicknames that has not spread in the family because Michel Richard was the only one with that name. We believe that it was really a name of war because Michel Richard was a former soldier and once he was released from the French forces he moved to Port-Royal where he married Madeleine Blanchard and in a second marriage ,Jeanne Babin, with which he had a fairly large family. But his eldest son, Rene Richard, also had a nickname, that of Beaupré which was transmitted in the Beaupré branch for a number of generations.

In the southeastern region of New Brunswick, we find descendants of this branch of the family, particularly in the Memramcook area where little René Richard, son of René à René, settled after the deportation. There were also many Richard in Kent County where two branches of the family were represented: the family of Jani Richard, the Jani who descended from René Beaupré from another branch of Jean-Baptiste to Michel to Rene, but the branch that we find more and more is that of the Plates, that is to say the Richard dit Plate. We may have to open a parenthesis to explain this name of Plate, because otherwise, we will think that all the Richard are boring, but in this case, it comes from the Plate River which existed on the Ile St- Jean, today Prince Edward Island. At the time of the deportation, this family was that of Michel Richard, Martin’s son to Michel (the first). This family lived in the Beaubassin area, but Michel Richard, the head of the family, was arrested with others at Fort Beauséjour and then expelled to South Carolina without his family. His wife, Madeleine Doucet, fled and took refuge with his large family on Ile St-Jean, on the Plate River. So since that stay at Plate River during the deportation, this branch of the family has always been called Plate. There was also a branch named Lafond. One of the sons of the first ancestor’s second marriage was nicknamed Lafond, and this is another nickname that has been retained for a number of generations. There were also other nicknames that were derived from the first names in the family. This was the case, for example, in the family of Pierre à René to Michel Richard. Pierre died prematurely and left a widow (Madeleine Girouard by birth) with many children in her care. These children were known as “Madeleine’s children” so we find Jean-Baptiste Madeleine, François Madeleine. In the case of the family of Martin Richard, the son of Michel, who settled in Beaubassin, this first Martin had a boy named Martin like him. To distinguish them, one spoke of Martin, and his boy, called Martinet. The descendants of Martinet are known as Martinet in some documents.

Today, the Richard call themselves by their Association, the “Richard from everywhere” and it is a name that is quite appropriate for this family because the Richard, they are almost everywhere.