By ANDRÉ VENIOT - Telegraph Journal

MONCTON - Acadian genealogist Stephen White has spent 23 years searching the past and now has two volumes and 1,700 pages as a monument to his life
work.

Le dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes/ Première partie 1636 à 1714 has just been published by the Centre d'Études acadiennes at the Université de Moncton.

"It's everything that a genealogist would want: a reconstitution of all the families that lived in Acadia or had anything significant to do with Acadia," said Mr. White. That includes all the families who lived in what
is now the four Atlantic provinces, parts of Maine and the Gaspé Peninsula, he said.

The first volume begins with "the ship that came and carried the first two families to settle in Acadie, the Trahans and Pierre Martin, father of Mathieu Martin, ostensibly the first person of European heritage born in
Acadia and ostensibly the first student in Acadia. He was later given a seigneurie [land grant] because of that," said Mr. White.

The largest French high school in the province, L'École Polyvalente Mathieu Martin in Dieppe, is named after him.

Although Samuel de Champlain is credited with discovering Acadia in 1604 and later settling in Port Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.) in 1608, the Trahans and Martins "were the first real settlers who qualified as
habitants. Before that, they were traders and hommes d'Élites and assorted other individuals who came to exploit the natural resources," said Mr. White.

"What's important is all the information of all the families is gathered together and cites everything as to sources. If there was something deficient, the gaps were filled in by deduction and analysis. We
searched and searched and found something that permitted us to make the connections.

There are still things which remain unanswered, but it's the most complete representation of the Acadian population ever put together," he said.

For years, many of the family branches were difficult to reattach, he said, but in studying documents from Quebec, Louisiana, France and England and in playing detective,"you might...find someone who is cousin to somebody else at a wedding. In checking how he is a cousin, you'd find the father is a brother to this fellow. It isn't something shown by the records because we wouldn't have the register of the parish where the two brothers were."

Unlike Quebec, which has a complete database of families because of better records and a stable population - Acadians were deported in 1755 and scattered and travelled all over - Mr. White had to proceed differently.

"The idea is to do the genealogy right through the expulsion to the resettlement. Genealogy is done from the son to the father, from the known to the unknown, so we had to back up [from modern day] and make sure we
had everybody," he said. Now that the first part is done, Mr. White has 13,000 pages from the resettlement to today to transcribe into a word processor to finish.

"I want to get the rest of it. I have quite a few years to do to complete all that information. Once that's done, it will be the complete reconstruction of the Acadian population all through the history of Acadia.  With that information, we can, in many instances, reconstruct on a person-by-person basis, groups of people involved in certain specific events."

The Centre d'Études acadiennes has printed 2,000 copies (which sell for $140 apiece) and Mr. White expects it'll sell out. "We've already been able to pay half the printing costs and with any luck, by the time the Congrès
Mondiale [in Louisiana next month] is over, the thing will be all paid.  I'd be surprised if there are any of the 2,000 left by the end of the year."