Page:1898 NB Magazine.djvu/345
this province, more than six hundred of them in the county of Westmorland. There are three hundred families named LeBlanc in Kent county. On looking over Friar Molin's census of Acadia taken in 1671 as printed by Rameau, we do not find any person named LeBlanc and therefore we might conclude that the LeBlancs were not among our first families. But this would be an error. Among the names in this census is that of Daniel LeBland which is a copyist's error for LeBlanc, due to Molin's bad handwriting. The proof of this lies in the fact that the name LeBland does not appear in the census of 1686 or any subsequent enumeration, while that of LeBlanc takes its place. Daniel LeBlanc was forty-five years old in 1671 and he signed the memorial of 1687 as one of the "ancient inhabitants." His wife was Françoise Gaudet, and they had seven children, six boys and one girl. The oldest son was James, aged twenty; the one daughter was Françoise, who was the wife of Martin Blanchard, a young man of twenty-four, and who had no children when the census was taken. Françoise we may assume was about eighteen at this time and newly married for Stephen, the second son of the LeBlanc family, was only fifteen, so that Françoise was doubtless the second child. The other sons were René, Andre, Antoine and Pierre. René who was fourteen years old when the census of 1671 was taken was one of the first settlers of Mines and the LeBlancs in time became more numerous there than in any other settlement in Acadia.
The LeBlancs fill a large space in the annals of Acadia. Daniel, the founder of the family, was rich, according to the Acadian standard of wealth, being the of 17 head of horned cattle and 26 sheep, and cultivating ten arpents of land. After the English took possession of the country, some of the LeBlancs were largely in the confidence of the government at