♀Barbe Minguet

Barbe Minguet was a Frenchwoman of the Atlantic coast of Poitou and Aunis^W in the early seventeenth century, the wife of Martin Aucoin and the mother of two daughters who became wives and mothers at Port-Royal in Acadia. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by 15 separate lines of descent: twelve through her daughter Michelle Aucoin (died 1706) and three through her daughter Jeanne Aucoin.

In France

Barbe Minguet and her husband, Martin Aucoin, are known from the baptisms of their two daughters. On 29 January 1620 a priest at Les Sables-d’Olonne, on the coast of Poitou, baptized “michelle fille de martin Aucoin et de barbe minget” (Michelle, daughter of Martin Aucoin and Barbe Minget), with Jehan Breau as her godfather. Ten years later, on 26 November 1630, the couple’s daughter Jeanne was baptized in the church of Sainte-Marguerite at La Rochelle, farther south along the same coast, with Arnaud Gyon and Jeanne Riou as her godparents.

Nothing else is known of Martin and Barbe. Their own births, marriage and deaths are not known, and the records do not show whether either of them ever left France. Their daughters did. By the census of 1671 both were living at Port-Royal in Acadia, Michelle as the wife of the farmer Michel Boudrot and Jeanne as the wife of the farmer Francois Girouard, each with children of her own. Older genealogies named the sisters’ parents as Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé; both baptisms name the mother as Barbe Minguet.

Lines of descent

Through Ida Serrette (1903–1990), she reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by 15 separate lines of descent, all on Floyd’s mother’s side, and the nearest of them is ten generations up. Twelve run through her daughter Michelle Aucoin: on one she is Floyd’s eighth great-grandmother, on three his ninth, on four his tenth and on four his eleventh. The other three run through her daughter Jeanne Aucoin, and on all three she is Floyd’s tenth great-grandmother. Some links down the lines through Michelle, among them the one through Judith Landry (born 1728), are probable rather than proved. The lines meet again in Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette, whose parents Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) both descend from her.

Notes

Her surname

The 1620 register writes her surname Minget, and the 1630 register Minguet, perhaps Minguette.

The two baptisms

Michelle’s baptism is in the register of Notre-Dame of Les Sables-d’Olonne; the FamilySearch index places it at La Chaume, the harbor parish of Les Sables-d’Olonne. Jeanne’s is in the register of Sainte-Marguerite of La Rochelle, and Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes gives the same baptism. The 1630 register writes the godfather’s name Arnauld Gion.

The daughters in Acadia

That the Michelle baptized in 1620 is Michelle Aucoin of Port-Royal rests on her name and her age: the census of 1671 gives her age as fifty-three, which places her birth about 1618. Jeanne’s age of forty in the same census fits her baptism of 1630. Léopold Lanctôt and Steven A. Cormier had already made the two women sisters, and Bona Arsenault implies the same; the two baptisms, naming the same father and mother, bear them out.

Marie Sallé

Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes and John Mack Faragher’s A Great and Noble Scheme make Michelle the daughter of Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé, and Faragher counts Martin, Marie Sallé and their children among the early settlers of Port-Royal. Arsenault gives the family’s home as Cougnes, in the region of La Rochelle. Neither baptism names a Marie Sallé.