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The Dambeau Family History

The Dambeau family history begins in the newly inhabited Nova Scotia in the 1580's. There were wars going on in France which caused families to migrate overseas to escape the economic downfall happening at the time. The Dambeaux's were among the families that settled in the early 1600's after France's King Henri IV sent expeditions to set up permanent fishing and trading posts in Nova Scotia. The people who lived there were called "Acadians" and eventually relocated to a place called Port Royal, Nova Scotia (now called Ainnapolis Royal). When Port Royal was destroyed in 1613 by Samuel Argall, a Virginia pirate, most Acadians fled the land. They returned to their home years later when the land was given to King Charles I of England.

In the early 1700's, the Dambeaux's joined the many Acadians traveling south to Louisiana to escape the persecution of their Catholic faith by the British. Along the way, the met and lived with the Quapaw indians[1] along the Mississippi River in Arkansas, who taught them their hunting and fishing skills. The Dambeaux family was able to add this knowledge to the skills that they had already learned in Port Royal.

Until the 1750's, the Acadians stayed in the Louisiana territory. They were hated by the British and began to be called "cajuns" by them. When the Seven Years War[2] began, the English were forced by their government to get rid of as many cajuns in the Louisiana territory as they could. They took the Canadian refugees to Georgia, Maryland, and the Carolinas. The Dambeaux family managed to stay together up to this point, but were scattered around the south during this time. Some were left in the woods of Georgia, near Savannah, and other were dropped off near what we know today as Manning, South Carolina. *Quapaw image - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/1388/

The British didn't like the idea of the cajuns speaking their own cajun french language, so they began to outlaw it in order for Cajun families to work and go to school. The "x" in their last name was also dropped to "Americanize" them. The Dambeau's adjusted to this Southern life and became accustomed to it. They converted to Protestantism on their own and began to marry into other protestant families.

Francis Marion When the Revolutionary War[3] began, the Dambeau family harbored French soldiers who were helping Americans fight against the British. To keep the soldiers' uniforms in the best condition, Mrs. Georgette J. Dambeau used her talents as a seamstress to repair holes and tears. She learned from the same quaker public school that Betsy Ross[4] attended in Philidelphia before returning to her family's home in central South Carolina. The men of the Dambeau family regularly helped the soldiers fight against the British close to their home with the hunting skills passed down from years earlier, when the family stayed with the Quapaw indians. Betsy Ross The Dambeau's faught under the leadership of their distant cousin, General Francis Marion[5], who lived near them at Ox Swamp (the area where Francis Marion received his nickname "Swamp Fox").

*"Marion, Francis." Online Photograph. Britannica Student Encyclopædia. 19 Feb. 2008 http://student.britannica.com/eb/art-52856 .
**Betsy Ross images - http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2005_winter_spring/betsy_ross.htm

Hearing of upcoming attacks by the Union, and hoping to defend their property rights, the Dambeau men traveled to Fort Sumter in South Carolina to aid the Confederates. They fought under General Robert E. Lee when he came down to help set up a defense for the Carolina/Georgia coastal seaboard. Always opposed to slavery, the Dambeau family assisted their slaves and others' slaves across the borders many times. The states' rights issues loomed heavy on the Dambeau's family business though, so they were forced to fight for the south.

Unfortunately, all of the Dambeau family written history between the end of the Civil War and the end of the 2nd World War was destroyed in a house fire in 1952. The only history for that time period has been passed down orally from the family through the years. There was a knowledge of a family tailoring business during that time, which closed for a while during the depression.