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Beaubassin was perhaps the Acadian area most wreaked by havoc many years before the deportation. It was situated exactly where is now the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia border, and it stretched over a vast territory. The surrounding Acadian establishments were the Point-à-Beauséjour, Aulac, Point-à-Buot, Jolicoeur, on the Missagouache river, the baie verte (Green Bay), Pré-des-Bourg, Pré-des-Richard, and Tintamarre (Upper Sackville) on the Tintamarre river (later renamed Tantramar).
Beaubassin was founded by two separate parties, Jacques Bourgeois, of Port-Royal, and the Lord La Vallière. The first to arrive, in 1672, was Jacques Bourgeois, Aulnay's former surgeon, originally from Port-Royal. His mission was to establish better fur trading activity with the natives, and to set up farming in the Chignectou area, at the bottom of the French bay (Bay of Fundy). At this time, he was fifty years old, and was well established, with ten children, and possessed thirty-three cattle, a flock of sheep and wheat land. With the help of his sons, Charles and Germain, along with Pierre Arsenault, Jacques Bourgeois recruited Acadian colonists from Port-Royal.
A few years later, in 1676, Michel LeNeuf de la Vallière, a Canadian gentleman, born in Trois-Rivières in 1640, was granted about one thousand square miles of land. He arrived at Beaubassin by the Baie Verte, the Chignectou isthmus, and renamed Chignectou Beaubassin. The name stems from the beauty in this basin, especially in the summer months, which led the French to call it beau bassin, meaning beautiful basin. La Vallière got on well with the people in the area, but his son-in-law, de Villieu, made himself unpopular by getting orders of eviction for squatters who had settled on his land. This discouraged new Acadians from settling in Beaubassin, so population only increased as already established families expanded naturally. During La Vallière's regime, from 1678 to 1684, Beaubassin was the capital of Acadia, and the only village which had contact with the government. La Vallière and administrative officers in France encouraged only business with France, and disapproved of New-England connections.