♂Bernardin Le Gentilhomme

Bernardin Le Gentilhomme was a laboureur at Tourlaville, a parish just east of Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy, in the later 1600s. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Jean Le Gentilhomme (born 1671).

In the France of the time a laboureur was a farmer who worked the land with his own plow and team, as distinct from a day laborer. Bernardin and his wife, Marguerite Picot, appear in the Tourlaville register as the parents of a son. Their son Jean Le Gentilhomme was born at Tourlaville on 2 March 1671 and baptized the next day. Jean married Anne Le Rivager at Tourlaville on 7 July 1695, after the publication of the banns without opposition or impediment. The parish knew the groom by his father’s name, writing “Jean le Gentilhomme fils de Bernardin”, and it still called him “Jean fils Bernardin” in 1700, at the baptism of Jean’s daughter Scholastique. The records do not give Bernardin’s birth, his death or his parents.

Notes

His trade

The baptism act names Jean “fils de Bernardin et de Marguerite picot, laboureur”; the word laboureur describes the father’s trade.

The year of his son’s marriage

The last digit of the year in Jean’s marriage act could be a 5 or an 8. A table of the register’s folios by year places the page in 1695, and the facing page agrees. A WikiTree profile for Jean and Anne gives 7 July 1698.