This is the census for Sinnamary, Cayenne in French Guiana for 1765. The secretary of State for France, M. Choiseul, decided to grow the French empire extending into the colonies. With this goal in mind, 12 ships transported 1,736 colonists to Cayenne in October of 1763. Acadians seeking a new and peaceful life once again, especially out of range of the British, went onto this venture. The colonization with the Acadians failed. The climate and environment was not favorable to them and many died. Some moved on to Louisiana.
Of the large census taken, one hundred and thirty-eight were Acadians. Sixty-two had been exiled from Acadie in 1755, fifty had been in Louisbourg and twenty-six had been deported from Ile St-Jean. It is those 138 that are posted here. Many had married while exiled to France.
It also seems that between November 1764 and January of 1765, some Acadians and Germans arrived at Cap Français, taking colonial officials completely by surprise apparently. They had arrived in Cayenne before the correspondence from France.
A majority of the new arrivals, especially the Acadians, were sent on to Môle St-Nicolas. The Môle, located on the far point of the under populated northern peninsula of Santo-Domingue, was then considered one of the strongest naval stations in the New World.
Approximately a thousand of the Germans were settled inland and to the south of Cap Français, in the parishes of Sainte-Rose and Dondon. Housed temporarily in empty barracks, by January of 1765, each family had its own house and 4 "carreaux" of land, which
included a small already planted garden. Unfortunately by December of that year, three-quarters of them had died from disease and the rigors of an extreme climate unlike they had ever known. The survivors were relocated to Môle St-Nicolas, to be integrated with those who had been sent there a year earlier.
Unfortunately, the Germans and the Acadians did not get along, and Fuzée Aublet, director general of the Môle, separated them. Some 300 of the Acadians moved on to Louisiana.
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