♂Bernard Bugaret

Bernard Bugaret (fl. 1636–1648), known by the dit name Saint-Martin, was a carpenter from Villefranche-du-Queyran in Gascony who came to Acadia in 1636 as one of nine carpenters recruited to build ships and boats, and later cut timber there for years under contract to the ship’s captain Nicolas Denys^W. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Catherine Bagard (born about 1638).

Origins

His notarial contracts call him a native of Villefranche, in Gascony (1637), and of Villefranche-du-Queyran (1638), a village of the Agenais^W in what is now the Lot-et-Garonne; a study of the notarial records by Guy Perron adds that in 1648 he gave his home as Le Mas, the nearby town of Le Mas-d’Agenais. His parents are not known. The parish registers of Villefranche begin only in 1745, and Perron reports that a search of those of Le Mas for the period was fruitless. The 1636 roll of the ship’s company calls him “aussi charpentier basque”, a Basque carpenter, though his own contracts place him in Gascony.

Acadia

In 1636 “Bernard Bugaret aussi charpentier basque” appears on the roll of everyone who sailed on the Saint-Jean, one of the nine carpenters listed there as going to build ships and boats in New France. According to Perron, the ship left La Rochelle with 78 passengers and 18 crew and reached La Hève^W, on the Atlantic coast of Acadia, at the end of May, the date Perron takes from the historian André-Carl Vachon. Perron’s post on the voyage, following the roll, has the ship sailing on 1 April; his post on Bugaret gives 12 April. Perron has Bugaret spending the year in Acadia and returning to France in the autumn of 1637.

On 15 September 1637, before the La Rochelle notary Pierre Teuleron, Bugaret contracted with Nicolas Denys, a captain in the king’s service who acted under a concession from the Company of New France^W. The act, quoted by Perron, has Bugaret cutting, and having cut by ten men he would take with him, the staves, planks, beams, joists and knees needed for “buildings both of sea and of land”, for five years from the day he began work. Denys was to carry the timber to La Rochelle at his own cost and sell it at the best price he could, with half the proceeds going to Bugaret, for himself and his men, and half to Denys. Denys also lent him a hundred livres to buy iron tools, to be repaid from the sales. Bugaret declared that he could not sign his name.

On 14 January 1638, before the same notary, Bugaret engaged a hunter from Bordeaux, Barthélemy Redon dit Laborderie, whom he undertook to carry to the fort at La Hève, feed for a year, clothe and arm for the hunt; Redon was to pay him three hundred livres within six months and keep the furs he took. Bugaret made his usual mark. Perron notes that this is the only document found about the ten woodcutters Bugaret was to recruit.

Perron has him working the concession until the autumn of 1647, when he returned to France. On 24 December 1647 Denys ceded him half of all the timber he and his men had cut, including what still lay in Acadia, and the two men released each other from all earlier dealings. On 24 March 1648 Bugaret agreed with Emmanuel Le Borgne^W to go back and recover that timber, at La Hève or Mirliguèche, a third of what was loaded for the return to France to be his and two thirds Le Borgne’s for freight and passage.

Family

Nothing is known of his wife. The one child recorded is Catherine, born about 1638, who married Claude Petitpas about 1658, by Perron’s dating. Vachon’s history of the colony’s settlement, as Perron cites it, counts Bernard Bugaret dit Saint-Martin and his wife among the 34 families who chose to stay in Acadia in 1654, when the French left after the English capture. An account of Île Royale^W written in 1716 describes a man named Petitpas as the grandson of “one named Bernard du Gueret, dit St-Martin, a native of Bordeaux”, which differs from the birthplace in Bugaret’s own contracts.

Notes

His paternity of Catherine rests on the standard dictionary of Acadian families and on that 1716 account; no act naming her as his daughter has been found. The voyage and contract details above come from Perron’s study, which abstracts the notarial minutes at the Charente-Maritime archives (Teuleron, 15 September 1637 and 14 January 1638); those minutes are known only through Perron’s abstract. Perron reports that a copying error in a microfilm transcription led some printed works and websites to date the release of 1647 to 24 December 1637.