♂Antoine Hébert

Antoine Hébert (born about 1621) was a cooper^W at Port-Royal in Acadia, where he and his wife Geneviève Lefranc appear in the censuses of 1671 and 1686. He was probably the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by four separate lines of descent, three through his daughter Catherine Hébert (born about 1656) and one through his son Jean Hébert (born about 1653).

Life

Antoine is said to have come from La Haye, now Descartes, in Touraine^W, France, and to have married Geneviève Lefranc in France about 1639. He is said to have reached Acadia about 1640, when Port-Royal was held by Charles de Menou d’Aulnay^W.

The census of 1671 lists Antoine at Port-Royal as a cooper aged fifty, with Geneviève, fifty-eight, and three children at home, the youngest a daughter, Catherine, aged fifteen. The household kept eighteen cattle and seven sheep and worked six arpents^W of cultivated land in two places. This Catherine was most likely the ancestor through whom the family descends, though no record names her parents.

By 1686 Antoine and Geneviève were living alone at Port-Royal, with no children in the household; the census of that year gives his age as seventy-two and hers as eighty. The dates and places of their deaths are not known; the parish registers of Port-Royal survive only from 1702.

Lines of descent

Antoine is an ancestor of Floyd Amatus Delahorne by four separate lines of descent, all on Floyd’s mother’s side. Three run through his daughter Catherine Hébert (born about 1656) and one through his son Jean Hébert (born about 1653); both children’s places in the family are probable rather than proved. The nearest is nine generations up; the others are eleven generations up. The lines meet again in Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette, whose parents Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle both descend from Antoine; in Amelia Pennison Daigle, whose parents Melia Thibodeaux and Jean Baptiste Daigle both descend from him; and in Madeleine Ordalie Cormier, whose parents Michel Cormier and Céleste Dupuis both descend from him.

Notes

Origin in France

The French origin rests on compiled genealogies. Belliveau’s dictionary of Acadian families and Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens both give Antoine as born in 1621, a cooper, from La Haye in Touraine (“La-Haye-Descartes, paroisse Balesne en Touraine”, in Belliveau’s words), married in France about 1639 to Geneviève Lefranc, and arrived in Acadia in 1640. Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres puts his arrival about 1640. No record of the marriage or of the crossing survives.

Ages in the censuses

In 1671 Antoine was fifty and Geneviève fifty-eight, which puts their births about 1621 and 1613; in 1686 they were seventy-two and eighty, which would put them about 1614 and 1606. The dates used here follow 1671. Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres prints the 1686 ages as sixty-five and seventy-three, and Geneviève’s 1671 age as ninety-eight, plainly a misprint for fifty-eight.

Catherine Hébert

No record names Catherine Hébert’s parents, so her place in this family is probable, not proved. Cormier’s compiled Acadian genealogy, Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens and Belliveau’s dictionary all make her the daughter of Antoine Hébert and Geneviève Lefranc, married at Port-Royal about 1673. The Catherine aged fifteen in the 1671 household fits her eldest children, who in 1686 were twelve and eleven. In the roll of 1678 the names of Jacques LeBlanc and Catherine Hébert are written straight after Antoine’s and Geneviève’s, and in 1686 Antoine and Geneviève are listed two households after them; adjacency in the rolls proves nothing on its own.

Against the identification stand Geneviève’s age, which by the 1671 census would make her about forty-three when Catherine was born; Catherine’s own ages in the rolls, twenty-three in 1686 and thirty-two in 1693, which would put her birth about 1661 to 1663; and Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres, which calls her “fille d’Etienne Hébert”, contradicting his own Histoire et généalogie.

Jean Hébert

The census of 1671 lists Antoine Hébert’s household at Port-Royal as “Jehan 22, Jehan 18, Catherine 15”. No record names Jean’s parents. The compiled genealogies make the younger Jehan the Jean who married Anne Doucet, and so Antoine’s son; the link is probable, not proved.