User:Keegan/John Frederic Herbin

John Frederic Herbin (8 February 1860 – 29 December 1923) was a Canadian author, Acadian historian, and jeweler. He wrote The History of Grand-Pré, The Home of Longfellow's "Evangeline" in 1900. It has been reprinted as late as 1997.

Early life
Born February 8, 1860 in Windsor, Nova Scotia, John Frederic Herbin was the son of John Herbin, a Huguenot who immigrated from Cambrai, France and Marie Marguerite Robichaud. Herbin entered the family business of watchmaking and as a jeweler, making wedding bands before the age of ten. His mother was a Nova Scotia Acadian and the inspiration for his lifelong fascination with the history of the expulsion of the Acadian people in 1755.

Career
Although accomplished in many areas of his life as a politician, optometrist and jeweler (Herbin Jewelers still exists today in Wolfville, N.S.) as well as an author and researcher of Acadian history, John Frederic Herbin is best known for his contribution to preserving the memory of the Acadian story. In 1907 he purchased the land where the deported Grand-Pré community once was and had ambitious plans to recreate the Acadian church where the deportees were collected; to erect memorials to the Acadians and a statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Evangeline, the eponymous heroine of an epic poem by Longfellow.

Failing to inspire support from the local Acadian people he sold the land which was then leased to the Canadian Pacific Railway, with a condition that the site of the Saint-Charles-Des-Mines church be preserved for the erection of a memorial to the Acadians, a promise that was honored and is today the Grand-Pré National Historic Park in Nova Scotia.