Page:1898 NB Magazine.djvu/56

Commeaux is another widely diffused Acadian name, there being more than five hundred families of the name in the Maritime Provinces, the most of them in Digby county, which contains 320 families. There are 120 families named Commeaux in Gloucester, 20 in Kent and 25 in Westmorland. Pierre Commeaux, whose name appears in the census of 1671, was the common ancestor of all these people. He was by trade a cooper and was 75 years old. His wife was Rose Baiols and he had nine children, six sons and three daughters, the oldest son, Stephen Commeaux, aged 21, being married to Marie Lefebvre, and having one child, a girl. The census of 1686 found the Commeux family still at Port Royal, but in 1714 some of them had removed to Mines. In 1730 five persons by the name, residents of Annapolis River, signed the oath of allegiance, some spelling the name Como and some giving it as Commeau. None of these people could write; they all used a mark to express their signatures. There were 12 families name Commeau deported from Mines by Winslow in 1755. Among the refugees at Beausejour in 1752 were nine families named Commeau from Shepody, and these, or some of them, were doubtless the ancestors or the families of that name now living in Gloucester, Kent and Westmorland. Those now residing in Digby are doubtless the descendants of those who escaped from the Annapolis River in 1755. Jean Como, who was a child of six years when the census of 1671 was taken, was imprisoned at Annapolis in 1711 for being concerned in seditious movements against the English authority. That is about the only distinction the family achieved after the conquest of Acadia. The first Commeaux in Acadia, Pierre, was probably one of the original settlers of La Have in 1632.

The name of Corperon is now very rare in the