ROBICHAUD, OTHO (1742-1824)

ROBICHAUD, OTHO, trader and JP; b. Annapolis Royal, N.S., 29 Apr 1742, s/o Louis Robichaud and Jeanne Bourgeois; m. 1789, Marie-Louise Thibodeau, d/o Alexis Thibodeau and Marguerite Dupuis, of Bay du Vin; d. Neguac, 19 Dec 1824.

Otho Robichaud's family was among the many deported from Acadia in 1755. Having a choice of destination, his parents elected to be sent to Massachusetts. Consequently, their children grew up in Boston and Cambridge, attended English-language schools, and made friends with some of those who later came to New Brunswick as Loyalists. Members of the Robichaud family had Loyalist leanings too, and when the American Revolution broke out they left New England for Quebec.

In 1781 Otho Robichaud bought a property at Neguac on which he subsequently settled as a farmer and trader. He had business relationships with all the leading Miramichi merchants, and in the 1780s he became the principal channel of communication between the Acadian residents of the Northumberland County coast and the local and central governing bodies of the new province of New Brunswick.

Robichaud was appointed a justice of the peace in 1796. He attended few of the county sessions but may have been more diligent in the discharge of his magisterial duties at the local level. He occupied a number of lesser parish offices as well, including those of overseer of the poor and school trustee. He was made a captain in the 1st Battalion of militia in 1799.

Robichaud was a committed Catholic but was often in dispute with the clergy, who were rivals for the power and privilege which he enjoyed in the Acadian community. He was forty-seven at the time of his marriage, and his wife, Marie-Louise Thibodeau, was fifteen. They had eight daughters and four sons. The home in which the family resided at the time of his death still stands at Neguac and was extended official historical recognition in 1996.