♀Andrée Martin

Andrée Martin (born about 1649) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal and Beaubassin^W whose first husband died after a sudden fever, and who in 1685 gave evidence at the sorcery trial of Jean Campagna, the farmer accused of bewitching him. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Anne Pellerin (born about 1671).

Early life and first marriage

Andrée Martin was born at Port-Royal about 1649, the daughter of Pierre Martin and Catherine Vigneau. She probably married François Pellerin at Port-Royal about 1665.

When the census was taken in 1671, François was a farmer of thirty-five at Port-Royal and Andrée was thirty, and they had three daughters: Huguette, five, Marie, two, and a baby girl two days old who had not yet been named. She was Anne, through whom the family line descends. The household owned a single sheep and one arpent of plowed land.

François is said to have gone soon afterward with Jacob Bourgeois to help found the new settlement at Beaubassin, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, and by 1678 the family was living there.

Widowhood

Andrée had already crossed Jean Campagna, a farmer of Beaubassin. In 1675 at Port-Royal, by her own later account, he had tried to strike her, and she had hit him with a stick for the liberties he was trying to take with a girl; he told her she would be sorry.

In 1678 Campagna was working on the marsh of Michel Leneuf de la Vallière^W, the seigneur of Beaubassin. As Andrée later told it, she blew into François’s eye, and then François asked Campagna to do the same; at that moment he felt a pain rising into his head, and that evening he was seized by a violent fever. He died not long afterward, while Pierre Mercier, who would marry his widow, was away at Port-Royal on La Vallière’s business. Her son Pierre is said to have been born a few months after his father’s death.

Second marriage

On 24 April 1679, at Beaubassin, Andrée married Pierre Mercier dit Caudebec, who is said to have come from Barneville in Normandy. When the census was taken at Beaubassin in 1686, Pierre was forty and Andrée thirty-seven, and their house held ten children: the six of Andrée and the late François Pellerin, Marie, Anne, Isabelle, Jeanne, Catherine and Pierre, aged sixteen down to six, and four young Merciers, Joseph, Magdelaine, Alexandre and Marie Joseph, the last six months old.

The sorcery trial

François’s death was laid to Campagna’s spells. Campagna was arrested on La Vallière’s orders, accused of killing men and cattle at Beaubassin by sorcery, and at his trial in 1685 Andrée, then about forty, told the story of the stick and the fever. Her sister Marie Martin and Pierre Mercier, her second husband, testified to the same effect, and the neighbors Thomas Cormier and Madeleine Girouard also gave evidence. Campagna is said to have been acquitted on 28 June 1685.

Later life

Andrée and Pierre Mercier are said to have left Acadie with their children in 1704 for Saint-Thomas, in the seigneury of Rivière-du-Sud below Quebec. She is said to have died there.

The family

François and Andrée had seven children, six daughters and a son: Huguette, Marie, Anne, Isabelle, Jeanne, Catherine and Pierre. Two of them followed their mother to Canada. According to the Acadian genealogies, Catherine married Pierre Godin and settled at Saint-Thomas, on the Rivière du Sud below Quebec, and died in 1758 at Saint-François-du-Sud, aged about eighty-two. Pierre, the only son, married Marie-Anne Quessy at Beaubassin in 1709; after her death he joined his mother at Saint-Thomas, and on 1 June 1722 he married Marie-Anne Bélanger at Quebec.

Notes

Her age

The records disagree on her age. The census of 1671 gives her as thirty, her deposition at the trial of 1684–1685 as forty, and the 1686 roll of Beaubassin as thirty-seven, which is the source of the birth year about 1649; the first two would place her birth nearer 1641 or 1645. Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (vol. 2, p. 182) gives 1641 at Port-Royal. The 1671 census of her father’s household counts among Pierre Martin’s married children an “Andre 30”.

Parents

A published collection of Nova Scotia marriage records gives her parents, at her marriage of 24 April 1679, as Pierre Martin and Catherine Vignaux. Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 182) and Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 2, p. 710) name them as Pierre Martin and Catherine Vigneau.

The first marriage and the 1671 census

Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 182) puts the marriage at Port-Royal in 1665, when by his reckoning she was twenty-four; Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 710) has “vers 1665”, about 1665. Lanctôt prints the 1671 entry: “Laboureur — François Pellerin aagé de 35 ans, sa femme Andrée Martin aagée de trente ans, Leurs enfans 3, Huguette aagée de 5 ans, Marie aagée de 2 ans et une petite fille aagée de deux jours non nommée. Leurs bestiaux une brebis, terre labourable un arpan.” He identifies the unnamed baby as Anne (vol. 2, p. 185). The move with Jacob Bourgeois comes from Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 182).

The second marriage and the 1686 census

The marriage collection names the groom “Pierre Mercier or Candebec”, with his parents Nicolas Mercier and Jacqueline Picard. Arsenault (vol. 3, p. 1014) gives Pierre Mercier dit Caudebec as born in 1646, the son of Nicolas and Jacqueline Picard, “de Barneville, Normandie”, married at Beaubassin on 24 April 1679; Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 184) names his mother Jacqueline Thienneau and the place Barneville-sur-Seine. The 1686 roll of Beaubassin lists Pierre Mercier, 40, and Andrée Martin, 37, then the “Enfans d’Andrée Martin et de feu françois Pellerin”: Marie 16, Anne 14, Isabelle 12, Jeanne 10, Catherine 8 and Pierre 6, followed by Joseph Mercier 5, Magdelaine 3, Alexandre 2 and Marie Joseph, six months. Lanctôt’s printing of the same roll (vol. 2, p. 184) gives several of these ages differently.

François’s death and the trial

The account of the quarrel and the fever comes from her deposition, printed in extract by Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 183): “Déposition d’Andrée Martin, âgée de quarante ans, veuve de François Pellerin”, telling of “les insolences qu’il vouloit faire à une fille”, the improper advances he meant to make to a girl, and of how “ledit François Pellerin auroit senti le mal qui lui montoit à la tête, et fut le soir attaqué d’une grosse fièvre chaude”. That François died before Pierre Mercier came back from Port-Royal, where La Vallière had sent him, comes from Thomas Cormier’s deposition in the trial file, held by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. Lanctôt (vol. 2, pp. 183–184) gives the year of the death as 1678, the arrest, the charge, the testimony of Marie Martin and Pierre Mercier, the birth of Pierre after his father’s death, and the acquittal on 28 June 1685.

Quebec and her death

Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 184) dates the move to Saint-Thomas to 1704; Arsenault (vol. 3, p. 1014) places Pierre Mercier at Saint-Thomas-de-Montmagny about 1701. Neither gives her death. Online family trees disagree on it: one gives 1716, at Rivière-du-Sud, and another 1741.

The children

The count of seven rests on the censuses of 1671 and 1686. Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 185) gives Catherine’s husband as Pierre Gaudin, son of Laurent Gaudin dit Châtillon, her move to Saint-Thomas, and her death at Saint-François-du-Sud in 1758 at eighty-two; Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 711) spells him Godin. Lanctôt (vol. 2, pp. 185 and 230) gives Pierre’s first marriage to Marie-Anne Quessy at Beaubassin in 1709 and says he went on to his mother at Saint-Thomas; Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 711) gives his marriage to Marie-Anne Bélanger at Quebec on 1 June 1722.