The Order to Disperse

OnJuly 28, 1755, Lawrence got the full approval of the Council of Nova Scotia to start dispersing the Acadians among the American Colonies, and sent Colonel Robert Monckton to Chignecto and Chepody, Lieutenant Colonel John Winslow to Minas, Pisiquid, and Cobequid, and Major John Handfield to Annapolis Royal to carry out the orders.

At Chignecto, Monckton made Fort Cumberland (formerly Fort Beauséjour) his base of operations. On August 11, 1755, he arrested 400 adult male Acadians, and ordered his trooops to destroy Acadian property and crops at Chepody, Memramcook, Petitcodiac and Baie Verte. The embarkation began in early September and on October 13, 1755, approximately 1100 Acadians departed aboard transports for South Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Massachusetts Militia Colonel John Winslow arrived at Grand-Pré on August 19, 1755, and set up his headquarters in the church. He ordered all males aged 10 years and up in the area to gather in the Grand-Pré Church on September 5, 1755 for an important message from His Excellency, Charles Lawrence. In answer to his summons, over 400 Acadian men and boys appeared before him. They were immediately put under arrest. He informed them that their property and possessions, their land and farms were to be forfeited to the Crown, and that they were to be expelled from the province.

Uneasy because the Acadian prisoners greatly outnumbered his troops, Winslow rounded up 230 men and placed them on five transports anchored in Minas Basin. The embarkation began on October 8, 1755, and by November 1, 1755 over 1500 Acadians had been shipped to Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. A second group of 600 left Grande-Pré on December 13, 1755, while at Pisiquid, over 1000 were expelled in late October.
After the Acadians had boarded the ships, Windslow gave his troops orders to destroy homes and to round up livestock. In this way Acadians who had escaped, or were planning to, would not have their former homes to run to nor would they have their cattle and sheep to rely on for food.

Lawrence soon published a proclamation in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia stating that there was now a favourable Opportunity for the peopling and cultivating of the Lands vacated by the French." Over the next decade 10,000 Yankee farmers took up the vacated" lands.