It is believed that Daniel LeBlanc was born in France in 1626 and came to Port Royal from Martaizé in Poitou, in 1648 aboard the French ship La Verve, a ship chartered by Emmanuel Le Borgne to bring recruits and supplies to the colony. LeBlanc settled on the north bank of the Annapolis River, up the river from the fort at Port-Royal. He lived here until his death in 1693.
LeBlanc married Francoise Gaudet around 1650. By 1755, the descendants of Daniel and Francoise LeBlanc had created the largest family in Acadia. Le Grand Dérangement (The Great Expulsion) of the 1750s scattered this huge family to the winds. Since most of the LeBlancs lived in the Minas area, dozens of them fell into the hands of the British in the fall of 1755 and ended up on ships bound for Maryland, Virginia, and other English colonies down the Atlantic seaboard. Some were sent to Louisiana. LeBlancs were among the first families of Acadia to find refuge in Louisiana.It is now estimated that there are somewhere between 300,000 & 500,000 descendants scattered all over the globe, the biggest concentration being in Canada (in the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Québec) and the United States (in Louisiana & New England). Despite the LeBlanc family being deported from Nova Scotia's shores, the LeBlanc family name remains the most common in the province to this day.
