René LeBlanc Jr. (c. 1682-1758)

René LeBlanc Senior was born in 1657 in Port-Royal, where he married Anne Bourgeois around 1678. The couple had six children. Their son René was the most well-known and was immortalised in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Évangéline. A famous notary in Grand-Pré, René Junior married Élisabeth Melanson in 1709. They had five children. In 1720, he married his second wife, Marguerite Thébeau, with whom he had seventeen children. The name of René Junior's third wife is unknown, but they had three children. Around 1749, René Junior was captured by Mi'kmaq warriors who had been encouraged to rise in rebellion by Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre. He was held in Petcoudiac, the home of one the most well-known members of Acadian resistance, Beausoleil Broussard. René LeBlanc Junior did not escape the Deportation and, like many other Acadians, he was deported to Philadelphia, where he died some time after February 6, 1758.

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