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a mark, being unable to write, but this was the rule and not the exception among the Acadians of that time. Besides these members of the Girouard family there were two others who signed the oath whose names were sufficiently like Girouard to suggest a common origin. These were Daniel and Joseph Garieu, a name not previously found in any Acadian document. This variation in the spelling may, however, have been the result of an error on the part of the English official who took down the names, for neither Daniel Garieu nor Joseph Garieu could write.

There were no persons of the name of Girouard deported from Mines by Winslow in 1755, so it would seem that Port Royal and Chignecto were always the principal homes of the family. Among the refugees at Beausejour in 1752 were no less than fifteen families named Girouard, three from Port Royal, four from Tantramar, three from Memramcook and the others from the vicinity of the fort.

The name Girouard is not very widely diffused in modern Acadia, there being only about fifty families, of whom forty reside in the county of Kent and the remainder in Westmorland. The family continues to retain its respectable and influential position, and has given us members of the legislature and of parliament, as well as judges and British military officers, for the Girouards of the province of Quebec are undoubtedly of Acadian origin, descendants of the original François Girouard of 1671 and his wife Jeanne Aucoin, and the offspring of the refugees who were gathered under the guns of Fort Beausejour in 1752.

Jean Gaudet, unless the census taker made a very serious blunder, was by far the oldest man in Acadia in 1671. His age is put down as 96, so that he had almost reached the extreme limit of human life. He was married to Nicolle Colleson, a woman much younger than