♂Alexandre Richard

Alexandre Richard (about 1668 – 4 October 1709) was an Acadian farmer of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal), in Nova Scotia, whose daughter Jeanne married the son of his elder brother René’s widow, Magdelaine Landry, by her second husband. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Jeanne Richard.

Early life

No record of Alexandre’s baptism survives; the Port-Royal registers of those years are lost. The census of 1671 lists “Alexandre”, aged 3, in the household of Michel Richard, a farmer of 41, and his wife Madeleine Blanchard, aged 28, with six brothers and sisters: René, 14, Pierre, 10, Martin, 6, Catherine, 8, and the twins Anne and Madeleine, five weeks old. The age places his birth about 1668. His parents are known from that census household, not from a record naming them as his. His mother had died by the mid-1680s, and in the census of 1686 Alexandre, aged 17, was still at home in his father’s second household, with Michel Richard, then 56, his new wife Jeanne Babin, aged 18, and their two-year-old son.

Marriage and family

By the census of 1693 Alexandre, aged 25, headed his own household at Port-Royal with his wife, Isabel Petitpas, farming eighteen arpents^W with eight cattle, ten sheep and eight hogs. No record of the marriage has been found. The censuses of 1698, 1700, 1701, 1703 and 1707 list the family again, the wife entered sometimes as Isabel and sometimes as Elisabeth Petitpas; the roll of 1707 enters the household only as “Alexandre Richard et sa femme”, with four boys under fourteen, two girls over twelve and two under twelve, six arpents of land, ten cattle, fourteen sheep, ten pigs and two guns. In 1698 the household included a daughter Jeanne, aged four. In 1701 it held only the two youngest sons, Pierre, 5, and Jean-Baptiste, 1, with a servant, Anne Petitpas, aged 13; the daughters were not listed in it that year.

About 1695 a compiled genealogy places him among the heads of household of Port-Royal who signed the oath of allegiance to King William III.

The children came over the next eighteen years. Marie Josèphe was born about 1691, Marie about 1692, Marguerite about 1693, Jeanne about 1694, Pierre about 1697, Angélique about 1698 and Jean Baptiste about 1699. After a gap came Germain, born 22 May 1703, Michel, born 18 September 1706 and baptized 17 October, and the youngest, Anne Marie, born 20 May 1709.

Six of the children married. Marie married François Savoye at Port-Royal on 23 November 1707. Marguerite married Jean Dupuis in 1713 and Jeanne married Pierre Dupuis in 1720, as set out below. Angélique married Jean Bastarache on 25 November 1721, Germain married Marguerite Daigre on 3 February 1728, and Jean Baptiste married Marguerite Robichaux on 13 February 1730.

Death

He was still living in May 1709, when his youngest child was baptized at Port-Royal with him named as father. He died on 4 October 1709, and the register of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Port-Royal buried him there two days later, on 6 October, the priest being Justinien Durand. On 1 August 1713 at Port-Royal his daughter Marguerite married Jean Dupuis, son of Martin Dupuis and Marie Landry of Les Mines, and the register calls her “fille de feu Alexandre Richard et de Isabelle Petitpas”, naming her mother as Isabelle Petitpas. Alexandre was therefore dead by that day.

When his daughter Jeanne married Pierre Dupuis at Port-Royal on 6 January 1720, the parish register of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal) named her as the daughter of “the late Alexandre Richard” and Elizabeth Petitpas. The groom’s mother was Magdelaine Landry, who had first been the wife of René Richard, the “René, 14” of the 1671 household and so Alexandre’s elder brother; after René’s death she had married Pierre Dupuis the elder, and it was her son by that second marriage whom Jeanne married. There was no blood tie through the Richards. Five years later, at the baptism of Jeanne’s son Justinien on 20 May 1725, the godparents were Germain and Angélique Richard, entered as “children of Alexandre Richard” - most likely Jeanne’s own brother and sister; an Angélique, aged two, is listed in the family’s household in the census of 1700.

Notes

The census ages are approximate and mostly agree on a birth about 1668, but the census of 1701 gives him 38, well out of line with the others. The census of 1686 lists an Isabelle Petitpas, aged 17, as the wife of Olivier Boudrot, and no other woman of that name and age appears, so Alexandre’s wife had most likely been married before; the census of 1693 already counts two children in the household, aged six and two. A compiled genealogy (Arsenault) holds the elder, Jean Baptiste, to be Elizabeth’s son by her first husband Olivier Boudrot, born about 1687. This is an open question that the records do not settle, and the Jean Baptiste of the family above, the younger son, was born about 1699.

Death and burial

The register of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Port-Royal (Nova Scotia Archives, An Acadian Parish Remembered) gives the burial on 6 October 1709, with the death entry “died 4 October 1709”. Lanctot, Familles acadiennes II, p. 234, gives the same day of death. A compiled genealogy (Belliveau) gives 4 October 1710; that is a slip, since the register and Lanctot agree on 1709.

The 1695 oath

The oath of allegiance to King William III sworn by the heads of household of Port-Royal is known from Lanctot (Familles acadiennes II, pp. 124 and 179), which spells his name “Alexandre Richar”, and from Roberta Estes’s 1695 loyalty-oath signature list, which reads “Allexandre Rischard”. The signature is in his own hand; the date rests on the compiled sources, so it is given as about 1695.