Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 123, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1919 — Bronze Statue of Evangeline [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Bronze Statue of Evangeline

Memorial Will Be Erected cm Historic Spot by Dominion Atlantic Railway

Near Evangeline’s Well. Grand Pre, Nova Scotia, the same well from which Longfellow’s heroine drew water nearly a century and a half ago, and almost under the shadows of the anient Acadian willows, w’ill stand soon a bronze statue of Evangeline, staff in hand, wandering in search of her lost lover Gabriel. This historic spot has been purchased by the Dominion Atlantic railway, which has also commissioned a descendant of the Acadians to complete and erect the statue. When Philijjfce Herbert, most noted of French-Canadian sculptors, died a year ago in Montreal he was at work upon a statue of Evangeline, but this unfinished laboF of love on his part was not in vain. The statue will be finished.by bis son, Henri Herbert, also a talented sculptor. The expulsion of the Acadians in 1775 by the British because they w’ould not take an unqualified oath of allegiance to their new king was one of the tragedies of the century. The men were rounded up In church and later « •

thousands of men and women were landed in various cities from Maine to ■Georgia. During the "deportation an XeafiTan girl" was Separated from her lover, and the story of the wanderings of the lovers, looking in vain for each other until at last she finds him dying in a Philadelphia hospital, made a strong appeal to Longfellow. The name of the girl was unknown. “I know .not what name to give to —not my new baby, but my new poem,” the poet wrote in his journal December 7, 1845: “Shall it be “Gabrielle,’ or ‘Celestine,’ or ‘Evangeline?’ ” He chose Evangeline, and the poem, which at once became a classic, ‘added one more charm to that part of Nova Scotia where Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their klrtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline’s story, While from its rock caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

Statue to Be Erected Near Evangeline’s Well.