♀Barbe Bajolet

Barbe Bajolet (born about 1608) was a widow counted at Port-Royal in the census of 1671, the mother of eight children of whom only two, both married daughters, were in the colony; the other six were in France or elsewhere. Her daughter Marie Lefebvre (born 10 October 1649) married Étienne Comeau. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through her daughters Marie Lefebvre and Marie Pesselet.

Early life

On Sunday 22 June 1608 she was baptized at Piney; the register calls her “fille de Anthoine Baiolet & de Jeanne sa femme”, and her godfather was Anthoine Contant.

The census of 1671

The 1671 roll lists her, written Barbe Baiolet, as the widow of the late Savinien de Courpon, aged sixty-three. It names her two daughters in the colony as Marie Peselet, aged 26, and “Mariane Le Febvre”, aged 21. On the next page of the roll Mariane appears as Marie Anne Le Febvre, the wife of Étienne Comeau, a farm laborer of 21, with a daughter three weeks old named Catherine. In the transcription of the roll that Placide Gaudet published in 1905, Barbe’s own holding was a cow and a few sheep, and no land. The historian Naomi Griffiths, writing about this entry, suggests that she may well have lived with one of her daughters.

Marriages

The parish register of Saint-Barthélemy at La Rochelle records her marriage to Martin Lefebvre on 10 January 1647, when she is called a widow. The parish of Saint-Jean-du-Pérot at La Rochelle records the baptisms of two daughters of that marriage, Louise on 29 October 1647 and Marie, baptized as Marie Anne on 18 April 1650 after her birth on 10 October 1649, and the burial of Martin Lefebvre on 15 November 1651, so she was widowed again by the end of 1651.

A compiled genealogy of 1955, Bona Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres, which spells her name Bayols, gives her three marriages: first to Isaac Pesseley, with whom she arrived in Acadia in 1636; second, to Martin Lefebvre, the father of Marie, which it dates to La Rochelle in 1646; and third, in 1654, to Savinien de Courpon. Arsenault writes that her sons returned to France after the English took Port-Royal in 1654. The records do not explain how a woman who had come to Acadia in 1636 came to be married at La Rochelle more than ten years later. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Comeau family also names Marie’s parents as Martin Lefebvre and Barbe Bajolet “of La Rochelle, France”. The records do not give the date or place of her death.

Lines of descent

Barbe Bajolet reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne by two separate lines of descent. The first runs through her daughter Marie Lefebvre (born 10 October 1649). The second runs through her daughter Marie Pesselet (born about 1645). Each line runs eleven generations from Floyd up to her. Both lines reach Floyd through his mother, Ida Serrette (1903–1990).

The two lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents, Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847) and Melia Thibodeaux (born about 1850), both descend from Barbe Bajolet.