♀Anne Gaudet

Anne Gaudet (born 1645) was an Acadian farm wife at Port-Royal in Acadia, the eldest daughter of Denis Gaudet and Martine Gauthier, who married the French-born farmer Pierre Vincent. In the census of 1671 she was counted twice: at twenty-seven in her husband’s household, and at twenty-five as the first of the two married children in her parents’ household. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), most likely through her youngest son, Clément Vincent (about 1676 – before 1752).

Life

Anne was born in 1645, most likely at Port-Royal. Pierre Vincent and Anne Gaudet were probably married at Port-Royal about 1662. In the census of 1671 Pierre was a farmer of forty and Anne was twenty-seven, with four children: Huguette, seven, Thomas, six, Michel, three, and Pierre, two. The household kept eighteen cattle and nine sheep and had sixteen arpents^W of plowed land. Two more children are said to have followed, Madeleine and Clément, the youngest, born about 1676.

Neither Pierre nor Anne appears in the census of 1686. Huguette was by then the wife of Jean Bastarache, Thomas and Michel, twenty and eighteen, were living together as two unmarried brothers, and the younger Pierre was listed on his own. No record of either death survives; the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. Michel and the younger Pierre later settled at Pisiguit^W.

In 1767, on Belle-Île-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany, Pierre Trahan, the husband of their granddaughter Magdelaine Vincent, declared that her father Michel was the son of “Pierre Vincent who came from France and married at Port Royal Anne Gaudet, both of them dying there”.

Notes

Birth and the census of 1671

Her birth in 1645 comes from Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 2, p. 555), which lists “ANNE GAUDET, 1645, fille de Denis et de Martine Gauthier, épousa Pierre Vincent”. Father Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (vol. 2, p. 311) calls her Anne-Marie and gives her birth at Port-Royal in 1647. Her two ages in the census of 1671 point to about 1644 and about 1646. Her parents’ household reads “Leurs enfans cinq, deux de marié. La premiere Anne Gaudet aagée de vingt cinq ans. La seconde Marie aagée de 21 ans”, and Lanctôt, who prints both entries, notes the difference: “Anne Gaudet déclare avoir 27 ans ; cependant ses parents ne lui attribuent que 25 ans”. The figures for her own household are given from Lanctôt’s printing of the census.

Marriage and children

Arsenault gives the marriage as “vers 1662”. Lanctôt gives 1662 at Port-Royal. Arsenault lists six children: Huguette, 1664, Thomas, 1665, Michel, 1667, Madeleine, 1668, Pierre, 1669, and Clément, 1676; Lanctôt gives Madeleine’s birth as 1671 and Clément’s as 1675. The entries of 1686 are given from Lanctôt’s printing of that census (vol. 2, p. 312), and he reads them as showing that both Pierre and Anne were dead by then. Pierre’s death about 1687 comes from a member tree and no record supports it. No source gives a date for Anne’s death.

Clément Vincent

No record names Clément’s parents, and he is not in the census of 1686. Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 819 and p. 665; vol. 4, p. 1454) and Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 312) both make him the youngest son of Pierre Vincent and Anne Gaudet.

The declaration of 1767

Pierre Trahan’s declaration, made at Bangor on Belle-Île, is given from the English translation printed in the Attakapas Gazette, volume 18 (1983). It names Magdelaine Vincent, born at Pisiguit in August 1714, as the daughter of Michel Vincent and Anne-Marie Douaron.