Beaubassin Traditional Cache

Jacques Bourgeois, a farmer, shipbuilder, and merchant at Port Royal sold a part of his holdings there to settle in the Chignecto Basin, where he built a flour-mill and a saw-mill on the south side of the river.  Around the same time Michel Leneuf de la Vallière de Beaubassin set up a fur-trading post on the isthmus, while devoting part of his time to the fishing, farming, settlement, and soldiering.

Following success in the latter activity, in 1676 governor Frontenac granted him 100 square leagues land which became the Beaubassin seigneury (a feudal lordship). He established himself on an upland known as Île de la Vallière, later Tonge's Island. You can see a house on Tonge's island to the North-West and it is home to the Beaubassin Research Station.

The settlement prospered on the fertile Tantramar Marshes and surrounding high ground, suitable for farming. The isthmus was also the site of a portage between the Bay of Fundy and the Northumberland Strait and lay at the heart of a vast trading network encompassing Île Royale, Nova Scotia and New England.

In 1686, Beaubassin was made a parish when Abbot Claude Trouvé built a church By 1715, it is thought that Beaubassin was home to 50 families, 32 acres of apple orchards, 1,000 head of cattle, and 800 hogs. There was also a trading post which traded with Louisbourg (in present-day Cape Breton) via Baie Verte and the Northumberland Strait, and New England, via the Bay of Fundy. By 1750, the population was about 2,800 and Beaubassin had been on this site for 100 years.