On a mid-summer day in 1755, Jean-Baptiste Guillot, my 7th great-grandfather, looked around him, at the land he farmed and the home he built. He was a proud and content Acadian, living in Ile Saint-Jean, a small Canadian maritime community.
This was the only life he had ever known, since he had been born in Cobequid on nearby Acadia, a French colony first settled in the early 1600s by people eager to escape the religious wars of Europe and the hardships of feudal life and the poverty they brought. Jean-Baptiste still had a difficult time calling it Nova Scotia, the name the English gave to it when they gained control in 1713, as part of the Treaty of Utrecht.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Man 