I found the following information on someone's personal web site. There are no sources cited, but it was interesting and may explain a few things. Such as when the Arsenault's arrived in Malpèque and why some maps show it on the western shore of the bay and others show it on the eastern shore.

I found the information at the following page, but copied it here because things are always disappearing and moving on the Internet.
http://www.myacadianhistory.ca/more_arsenault_history.htm

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A Little More History on
The Arsenaults

The Evangeline Region of Prince Edward Island could be called the Arsenault capital of the world. More than half of its population carries the Arsenault family name and most of the other residents possess a good dose of Arsenault blood. It is not uncommon to find an Arsenault married to an Arsenault while some individuals can boast that their four grandparents carry the name!

On the provincial level, the Arsenaults yield only to the MacDonalds and the Gallants in numbers. About half of the Island’s Arsenaults live in the eastern part of Prince County in the area extending from Summerside to the Evangeline Region. In fact, the Arsenaults have been associated with that part of the Island from the early part of the 18th century. They were the founders of the first European settlement in Prince County when, in 1728, Pierre Arsenault Jr. and his married son Charles settled on the western shore of Malpeque Bay in the vicinity of today’s Port Hill. They called their community Malpeque. A Lambert family also came to Malpeque that year but stayed but briefly. By the 1734 census, the nascent community was made up of four families, that of Pierre Jr. and of his three married children.

These Arsenaults had not been born in France but in Acadie, today’s Nova Scotia. It was Pierre’s father, who was also named Pierre, who came to Acadie from France as a young man in the early 1670s. He settled in Port-Royal (now Annapolis Royal) where he married Marguerite Dugas and had two sons. After his wife’s premature death, Pierre married Marie Guérin and they had six sons and one daughter.

In 1686, Pierre Arsenault Sr. moved with his family from Port Royal to Beaubassin (near Amherst, N.S.). It is from there that his son, Pierre Jr., came to Malpeque with his family. Later three of Pierre Jr.’s brothers also moved to the Island : Claude (also known as Ambroise), Abraham (called "le Petit") and Jacques. By 1752, the settlement of Malpeque had grown to 32 families and 40% of these carried the Arsenault name. The Arsenault "clan" evidently dominated the community as many of the other Malpeque families were intermarried with them.

Fortunately, the Malpeque settlers, including the Arsenaults, escaped deportation from the Island after its conquest by the British in 1758. Most managed to flee to the mainland before the British ships arrived to deport them. But many of the Arsenaults came back to the Island in the early 1760s, recruited as fishermen by British merchants. However they didn’t return to the Port Hill area. They first settled on the eastern shore of Malpeque Bay in the vicinity of today’s Malpeque village. Later they were to relocate to the head of the bay as tenants, settling between Rosehill in Lot 16 and Lower New Annan in Lot 19. By 1798, there were 51 families enumerated in that Acadian community, 30% of which carried the name Arsenault.

Shortly after the 1798 census, the Acadian tenants began leaving their Malpeque Bay settlement for other areas in Prince County because of problems they encountered with their British landlords. Thus the Arsenault’s started migrating to Tignish in 1799, to Cascumpec in 1801 and to Egmont Bay and Mont-Carmel in 1812. Among the 61 Egmont Bay and Mont-Carmel settlers to receive land grants in Lot 15 in 1828, 32 of them were Arsenaults! It is not surprising, therefore, that four communities of that area, called the Evangeline Region, are named after Arsenaults : Abram-Village, Maximeville, Urbainville, and Saint-Hubert.

A number of prominent Island Acadians hail from this impressive family. The Island’s first Acadian senator was Joseph-Octave Arsenault from Abram-Village. In 1917, his son, Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, became the Premier of Prince Edward Island, the first Acadian to become Premier of a Canadian province. And one of Canada’s best-known Acadian artists is Angèle Arsenault, a native of Abram-Village, whose career as singer, songwriter, and performer has spanned more than 30 years.

Unravelling the Arsenault family tree can be a very challenging task. A visit to the Acadian Study Centre, located at the Acadian Museum in Miscouche, is highly recommended to anyone researching his or her Arsenault genealogy. You might even find, in this well-documented centre, situated in the heartland of Arsenault country, a picture of one of your ancestors.

© Rick Arsenault - My Acadian History
2004 - Present