♀Antoinette de Courcelles

Antoinette de Courcelles (about 1552 – 1600) was a gentlewoman of Baigneux, near Saint-Just in Champagne, and the grandmother of Charles Saint-Étienne de La Tour^W, who became governor of Acadia. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marie de Salazar (about 1571 – 1609).

Life at Baigneux

She was probably a daughter of Pierre de Courcelles, who held land at Baigneux. Hector Salazar married Antoinette de Courcelles, and the couple lived at Baigneux, where the parish priest styled him “Noble Seigneur”. Their daughter Marie de Salazar was born about 1571. On 15 January 1581, still a child, she stood godmother at Baigneux to Hector, the son of Jacquet Bertrand, and on 18 January 1585 her mother stood godmother there in turn, to a daughter of Jehan Trutat, entered in the register as “Demoiselle Anthoinette, femme de Honorable homme Hector de Salazar”.

Marie married twice, the second time about 1592 to Claude Saint-Étienne de La Tour, who followed her kinsman Poutrincourt^W to Acadia.

Her estate

She is said to have died in 1600, and she was certainly dead by 1626. In that year and the next her granddaughters Louise and Angélique claimed from their father, Claude Saint-Étienne de La Tour, their shares as heirs of “deffunctes demoiselles Marye de Salazart et Anthoynette de Courcelles”, their late mother and grandmother. Her grandson Charles later bore the title of sieur de Saint-Deniscourt, which seems to have come to him through her family.

Notes

Sources

The couple’s life at Baigneux rests on Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes, tome II (1994), pp. 54 and 66-67, a compiled history that quotes the parish register of Baigneux and the Paris notarial deeds of 1626 and 1627. Her name, Anthoynette de Courcelles, is known from a declaration of her granddaughter Louise Turgis. A compiled genealogy by Stephen White names Marie de Salazar as the daughter of Hector and Antoinette de Courcelles.

Her dates

Her birth about 1552 and death in 1600 come from a WikiTree profile. Lanctôt puts her birth about 1540 and her marriage about 1560; the tree’s birth year is kept here.

Her family

Lanctôt notes that in 1520 a Pierre de Courcelles, holding land at Baigneux, represented Hector de Salazar, baron of Saint-Just, at the installation of the bishop of Troyes, and suggests that Antoinette was his daughter or granddaughter. He also notes that in 1550 a François de Courcelles was seigneur of Saint-Deniscourt, in the Beauvaisis, and takes Charles de La Tour’s later title to have come to him through that family.