♂Anselme Blanchard

Anselme Blanchard (18 May 1741 – 25 November 1799) was an Acadian exile who became a militia captain, settlement commissioner and district commandant in Spanish Louisiana. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Ozite Barbe Blanchard (1763–1799).

Early life and exile

He was born and baptized at Grand-Pré, in the Minas district of Acadia, on 18 May 1741. His godparents were Antoine and Claire Leblanc, and the register names his parents as René Blanchard and Marguerite Thériot.

The deportation of the Acadians carried the family to Maryland. A return of the Acadians held there, made in July 1763, lists him at Baltimore as a household of two with his wife Esther Leblanc, and his parents just above.

Louisiana

The couple settled at St. Gabriel, on the Mississippi, with the Maryland exiles. On Governor Ulloa^W’s roll of July 1767 he is head of a household, aged 26, with Esther, two small children and an orphan girl of ten. His parents are on the same roll. A tract of thirteen arpents^W fronting the Mississippi in what became Iberville Parish was later recorded as originally granted to him by the Spanish government. An infant son, Louis, was buried at Ascension in 1779.

He is said to have received the contract to build the houses and clear the first lands for the Canary Islanders^W at Valenzuela, on Bayou Lafourche, in 1779. From August 1781 he commanded that post as militia captain, and the registers call him its commandant in 1784.

In 1785 the intendant Martín Navarro reportedly chose him to oversee the settlement of the Acadians coming from France, on a pension of 500 pesos. He is thought to have been the first Spanish official aboard the first of the Seven Ships to reach Balize in late July 1785, the vessels that brought the exiles from France. There he welcomed his fellow Acadians and recorded their names.

On 12 September 1785, at Fort Bute de Manchac, he sold a man named Jupiter, about twenty-two years old, to Dr. Miguel Mahier for seven hundred dollars.

By 1792 he was captain of the Third Company of the New Feliciana militia. The New Feliciana census of 1793 counted twenty-nine enslaved people in his household, sixteen men and boys and thirteen women and girls, without names.

Death and estate

He died at New Orleans on 25 November 1799. His cemetery card names him Don Anselmo Blanchard, husband of Esther Leblanc and son of René Blanchard and Marguerite Thériot, and gives his age as 64 (see Notes). Because the card names the same parents as the Grand-Pré baptism, that baptism is probably his. His burial record calls him “former commandant of LaFourche and New Feliciana districts.”

His estate was divided under the Spanish government. His son Jerome had died before the partition, and a curator for Jerome’s three young children took their share of the succession of the late Sieur Anselme Blanchard, their grandfather.

The couple had at least four children: Ozite Barbe, born at Baltimore; Jerome; Antoine; and the infant Louis.

Lines of descent

Both of his parents’ families are reckoned to descend from Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert, listed at Port-Royal in 1671. The paternal line runs through their son Martin and Martin’s son René, Anselme’s grandfather; the maternal line through their daughter Madeleine and her daughter Anne Richard, the mother of Marguerite Thériot.

Notes

Birth, baptism and parents

The Grand-Pré entry in the Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, Vol. 1A, reads: “Anselme Blanchard (Rene Blanchard and Marguerite Teriot) bn. 18 May 1741, bt. 18 May 1741 spo. Antoine Leblanc and Claire Leblanc.” It is the only man of that name in the volume. One volume does not cover all of Acadia, so the link to the Louisiana man is an identification, not a proof. Three records support it: the Louisiana age of 26 in July 1767 fits a birth in 1741; the New Orleans card names the same parents, as “Son of Don Renato Blanchard and Dona Margarita Theriot”; and Steven A. Cormier’s abstract of his New Orleans burial record names his parents and calls him “native of Mines.”

Ages and dates

The 1767 roll, as Richard E. Chandler prints it (p. 81), reads “Anselmo Blancher (Anselme Blanchard) 26” with “Ester (Esther) 23”, then Geronimo (Jérome), 1 year 6 months; Rosa (Rose), 4; and Margarita (Marguerite), an orphan, 10. Cormier’s compiled history reads the same couple as ages 27 and 22, with a “13-year-old orphan.” The roll is followed here.

The card’s age of 64 would put his birth about 1735. The baptism of 1741 is preferred. The Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, a compilation, gives him as born “in France” on 18 May 1741, with his parents’ names, and has him die on 1 April 1800, buried near Thompson’s Creek; it also dates his commandancy from 1794 to 1800. Its date of death is not followed, and the card is kept.

The 1763 return of the Acadians in Maryland, printed by J.-Edmond Roy in 1911, gives the couple’s line as “Enselme Blanchard et Esther le Blanc mon Epouse . . . . . . . . . . 2,” and the household above as “Rene Blanchard, marguerite thevreaux, mon Epouse francoise blanchard magdeliene Blanchard . . 4.” The copy is a transcription, and “thevreaux” is in all likelihood a copyist’s form of Thériot.

Ozite’s birth is given here as about 1763. Her cemetery card’s age of 35 in October 1799 allows October 1763 to October 1764, and the Baltimore return shows the couple childless in July 1763.

Offices and militia

Gilbert C. Din’s The Canary Islanders of Louisiana (p. 67) says Anselmo Blanchard “received the contract to build the houses and to clear the first lands for planting” at Valenzuela in 1779. On p. 71 it says “Militia captain Anselmo Blanchard took charge of Valenzuela in August and commanded for the next several years,” and the registers call him “Commandante of Valenzuela” in 1784.

Brasseaux’s The Founding of New Acadia lists Anselme Blanchard among the pioneer families of St. Gabriel (Appendix B, p. 209), and its pages 108–9 describe Navarro’s appointment of 1785 and the pension of 500 pesos. Cormier calls him “the first ‘Spanish’ official on board” the first of the Seven Ships to reach Balize, and says he was there “to welcome his fellow Acadians and to record their names.” That is a compiled account, and the claim is given here on that basis.

Church records give him the title “Captain of the Militia of Bayou DeEscours” in 1790 and “command. du Bayou des ecors” in 1788. A Louisiana militia list printed in the Attakapas Gazette in 1981 reads “NUEVA FELICIANA Third Company Captain Anselme Blanchard.” Other records disagree on the rank: Arsenault’s compilation (vol. 6, p. 2423) says he was a “lieutenant de milice” at Valenzuela, and the burial abstract calls him “army lieutenant in the service of His Catholic Majesty.” Captain is the rank in the church and militia records, and it is used here.

He stood godfather at many baptisms in the district, and in 1793 he was a witness at Bayou Sara weddings of Protestant settlers with Alexander Sterling. Co-sponsors named with him at baptisms, Marie Aucoin and Maria Juana Guiot, are read as local godparents; no marriage shows a second wife in the Diocese volumes.

Brasseaux (pp. 108–9 and note 28) adds that the passengers of Le Bon Papa, the first of the ships, were settled under his supervision at Lafourche (one family), Bayogoula (six) and Manchac (twenty-seven), that he stayed with them until they were moved onto their lands, and that the inspection tours of the sites were led by him or, in his absence, by Jean Cambeau.

The 1785 sale and the 1793 census

The sale is known from a typed copy of a translation of the act, from the USGenWeb Archives. The copy’s heading says 1775, but the act’s own closing date is 12 September 1785, which is used. The act reads: “Don Anselmo Blanchard, CAPTAIN of the Militia of the town Balensuela . . . has sold a negro named Jupiter of the Senagal nation, of the age of twenty-two years . . . for the sum of seven hundred dollars to Dr. Miguel Mahier, physician of the Acadian families . . . Fort Bute de Manchac, on the twelfth of September one thousand seven hundred and eighty five.” The quotation comes from the copy, not from the original act.

The 1793 figures are from Normandeau-Jones, Finding Your Acadian Ancestors (p. 257), which prints a census transcription: sixteen enslaved men and boys and thirteen enslaved women and girls, counted by age group and not named. The figures come from the transcription, not from the census original.

Land, burial and estate

The 13-arpent tract is in a claim printed in the American State Papers, Public Lands, vol. III, p. 581 (claim 28), which names “ANSELME BLANCHARD” as the original grantee under the Spanish government. The claim is quoted here from a transcription of that volume.

Two cemetery cards at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 call him “Husband of Dona Ester” Leblanc, and each names his parents. Two abstracts of the burial register, one by Cormier and one on WikiTree, call him her “widower,” so the records do not settle whether Esther outlived him.

The partition petition, filed in New Orleans under the Estate Files for 1804–1846 (file “Blanchard, Jerome, 1808”), records that a curator for Jerome’s three minor children received their share in “la succession de feu Sr Anselme Blanchard leur grand père.” The petition is the evidence for the partition. No inventory is known, and the petition names none of the enslaved people counted in 1793.

A namesake not shown to be this man

Acadians in Gray (the Landry volume) mentions an “Anselme” who remarried to Osite Landry, likely at St. Gabriel, in the early 1770s and was counted there in March 1777 at age 39. He is not shown to be this man, who is recorded with Esther Leblanc as wife. A 1777 St. Gabriel census quoted on WikiTree (Enselme Blanchard, 38) is not used here.

The descent

The 1671 Port-Royal census lists Jehan Blanchard, 60, with Radegonde Lambert, 42, and their married children Martin, 24, and Magdeleine, 28. The link from Martin to René, who married Anne Landry, is a reasoned identification: no act names the father of René, and the Belle-Île declarations of 1767 agree that Martin was René’s father. The link from Madeleine to Anne Richard rests on Belliveau’s compilation (p. 53) and the census. Neither line is proved.