♂Abraham Dugast

Abraham Dugast (born about 1661) was an Acadian settler of Grand-Pré, on the Minas Basin, and the son of a gunsmith of Port-Royal. All four of his children were married at Grand-Pré in little more than three years, between 1710 and 1714. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Dugas (born 1688).

Early life

Abraham was born about 1661 at Port-Royal, the son of the gunsmith Abraham Dugast and Marie Judith Doucet. When the census of Port-Royal was taken in 1671 he was entered as “Habraham”, aged ten. He was one of six unmarried children still at home, between his sisters Margueritte, fourteen, and Magdeleine, seven. His two eldest sisters, Marie and Anne, were already married.

Marriage

He married Jeanne Guilbeau, a daughter of Pierre Guilbeau and Catherine Thériot, probably about 1686. That year’s census most likely counts them as the young couple, still without children, in the seigneury of Pobomcoup at Cape Sable, on the southern tip of the peninsula. Their four known children, Marie, Joseph, Jeanne and Marguerite, were probably born between about 1688 and 1692.

Grand-Pré

By 1710 the family was living at Grand-Pré, and there, between the autumn of 1710 and January 1714, all four children married. Marguerite married Antoine Breaux, whose parents lived at Pisiguit, in September or November 1710. Joseph married Marguerite Richard on 12 January 1711. Marie married René Landry on 16 November 1711, in a double wedding with his brother Jean-Baptiste Landry. Jeanne married Jean Richart, most likely a brother of Joseph’s wife, on 15 January 1714.

At each of these weddings an Abraham Dugas, most likely the father himself, stood among the witnesses and made his mark rather than sign; his son Joseph signed his own name. In December 1711 an Abraham Dugas, probably the grandfather, was godfather to Joseph’s son Charles. The register of Jeanne’s marriage calls her parents “habitans de la Grand Prée”, and Abraham probably appears there in the census of 1714. Nothing is heard of him after that year, and the date and place of his death are unknown.

Lines of descent

Floyd Amatus Delahorne descends from Abraham through his own father, Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929), by way of Abraham’s daughter Marie Dugas. Abraham’s brother Claude Dugas and his sisters Anne Dugast and Marguerite Dugas are ancestors of Floyd through his mother, Ida Serrette (1903–1990), so Floyd descends from Abraham’s parents on both his father’s and his mother’s side.

Notes

Sources

The marriages of the four children are known from the published abstracts of the Grand-Pré register (Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1a). Each entry names the parents as Abraham Dugas and Jeanne Guillebaud, and each lists an Abraham Dugas among the witnesses, making a mark rather than signing. The abstract of Marguerite’s marriage gives the month as September or November, the date being unclear. The 1711 baptism of Charles, son of Joseph Dugas and Marguerite Richard, names Abraham Dugas and Angelique Richard as godparents. Jean Richart’s parents are given as Pierre Richart and Marguerite Landry, the same names as the parents of Joseph’s wife. The 1714 list of Grand-Pré families, which names an Abraham Dugas and a Joseph Dugas, is from Bona Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres (1955), drawn from that year’s census.

Identification

The Abraham Dugas who married Jeanne Guilbeau and raised his family at Grand-Pré is taken to be the ten-year-old “Habraham” of the 1671 roll. Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians names him a son of Abraham Dugas and Marguerite Doucet, married about 1686 to Jeanne Guilbault, daughter of Pierre and Catherine Terriot, with children Marie (about 1688), Joseph (1690), Jeanne (about 1691) and Marguerite (about 1692); the marriage date and the children’s birth years rest on that work. Arsenault calls Abraham’s mother Marguerite Doucet, where the 1671 roll names her Marie Judith Doucet.

A grandson gives the same descent. Alain LeBlanc, born at Mines in 1731 to Claude LeBlanc and Jeanne Dugast, declared on Belle-Île-en-Mer on 7 March 1767 that “Jeanne Dugast was the daughter of Abraham Dugast, son of another Abraham Dugast who had come from France with his wife to settle at Port Royal”. The Grand-Pré register has Jeanne Dugas, widow of Jean Richard, marrying Claude LeBlanc on 4 May 1718 (the published abstract writes her forename as Anne), and names Jeanne Dugas as the wife of Claude Leblanc in 1730.

His birth year

His birth year comes from his age, ten, on the 1671 roll. Arsenault’s abstract of the same roll in L’Acadie des ancêtres gives him as eight.

The census of 1686

The 1686 household is known from Arsenault’s transcript in L’Acadie des ancêtres, which lists “Abraham Dugas, 23 ans, marié a Jeanne Guilbault” in the seigneury of Pobomcoup, “comprenant le Cap de Sable”. The age points to a birth about 1663 rather than 1661, and the census gives nothing more to tie the couple to the later Grand-Pré family. The same book’s 1686 entry for the household of Pierre Guillebaut and Catherine Terriau still lists a daughter Jeanne, aged sixteen.

Abraham Dugast and Madeleine Landry

L’Acadie des ancêtres also has an Abraham Dugast, son of Abraham, remarried by 1703 to Madeleine Landry and back at Port-Royal by 1714. Arsenault’s later genealogy gives that marriage to another Abraham Dugas, born in 1677, the son of Martin Dugas and Marguerite Petitpas; Martin is the brother aged fifteen on the 1671 roll. The Grand-Pré entries of 1711 and 1714 still name the mother of Abraham’s children as Jeanne Guillebaud.