♂Bonaventure Thériot

Bonaventure Thériot (about 1641 – 3 May 1731) was an Acadian farmer of Port-Royal who spent his last years at Les Mines^W, where in 1718, at about seventy-seven, he stood witness at the wedding of his granddaughter Marie Landry. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by four separate lines of descent, through his daughters Anne Thériot (born about 1673), Marie Terriot (about 1667–1734) and Marguerite Thériot (about 1678–1740).

Port-Royal

No record of his birth survives; the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. He was a son of Jehan Thériot and Perrine Rau: the census taken at Port-Royal in 1671 lists him, aged thirty, among their six married children, which places his birth about 1641. By then he had married Jeanne Boudrot, a daughter of Michel Boudrot and Michelle Aucoin, and the same roll counts her, at twenty-five, among her parents’ married daughters. No record of the marriage survives either; a compiled genealogy places it about 1666.

Léopold Lanctôt’s compiled history of the Acadian families transcribes the couple’s own entries in the censuses of 1671, 1686 and 1700. In 1671 Bonaventure was a farmer with one child, Marie, aged four, and kept six cattle and six sheep on two arpents^W of plowed land; Lanctôt places the household next door to Jeanne’s father. Seven years later, in 1678, the roll counts three girls in the household. Fifteen years after the first count they were still at Port-Royal, with five cattle and six sheep and their two younger daughters at home, Anne, twelve, and Marguerite, eight.

In 1693 Bonaventure was forty-nine and Jeanne forty-eight, with their daughter Marguerite, fourteen, and a servant, Joseph, sixteen; the household kept eighteen cattle, twelve sheep, ten hogs and one gun on fourteen arpents. By 1698 he was fifty-seven and she fifty, with six cattle, ten sheep and five hogs, and the farm had twenty fruit trees. In 1700 the couple were living at Port-Royal still, Bonaventure aged fifty-six and Jeanne fifty-five.

Les Mines

Jeanne Boudrot died at Port-Royal on 8 May 1710 and was buried there the next day as his wife. Bonaventure spent his last years at Les Mines, where his daughter Anne and her husband, René Landry, were raising a large family. On 15 November 1718, in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré, he stood witness when Anne’s daughter Marie Landry married Pierre LeBlanc, and the register calls him the bride’s grandfather.

The register of the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré records that he died on 3 May 1731 and was buried in the parish cemetery the next day, aged about ninety-five, before five witnesses. His descendants in exile remembered him. In 1767 Acadian exiles on Belle-Île-en-Mer, off the coast of Brittany, set down their family histories before witnesses, and two of his great-grandchildren named him: Marie Magdeleine Leblanc, the daughter of Marie Landry, on 15 February, and Simon-Pierre Daigre, a grandson of Bonaventure’s daughter Marguerite Thériot. Both declarations say that he died in the parish of Saint-Charles, at Les Mines.

Lines of descent

Bonaventure reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by four separate lines, through his daughters Anne, Marie and Marguerite Thériot. All four run on Floyd’s mother’s side, through Ida Serrette (1903–1990), and the nearest is nine generations up. Two lines pass through Marie, whom compiled genealogies make Claude Gautrot’s wife. One line runs through Anne, her son Antoine Landry and his daughter Judith Landry (born 1728), whose identification as Joseph Leblanc’s mother is probable rather than proved. The lines meet again in the parents of Pierre Anatole Serrett, Firmin Serrette and Euphemie Dupuis; in Floyd’s maternal grandparents, Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle; and in Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc’s parents.

Notes

Anne’s mother

The two declarations of 1767 disagree on the mother of his daughter Anne. Marie Magdeleine Leblanc’s names Anne as “fille de Bonaventure Theriot et de Marie Gautrot du Port Royal”; Simon-Pierre Daigre’s names Jeanne Boudrot, who died at Port-Royal, as the mother of Marguerite. Marie Gautrot was the name of the wife of Bonaventure’s brother Claude Thériot, and the declaration does not explain why she is named. Against a second marriage, the census entries Lanctôt transcribes show Jeanne Boudrot as Bonaventure’s wife both before Anne’s birth, in 1671, and after it: in 1686 Anne, twelve, and her younger sister Marguerite, eight, were living with Bonaventure and Jeanne.

His age

His age drifts from record to record. The 1671 census gives him thirty on his parents’ line and, in Lanctôt’s transcription, twenty-seven at the head of his own household; the transcriptions of 1686 give forty-two (Lanctôt) or forty-five (Arsenault), and Lanctôt’s of 1700 fifty-six; the rolls of 1693 and 1698 give forty-nine and fifty-seven. Arsenault gives a birth year of 1641, the year his parents’ line implies; Régis Brun’s study of the Acadians before 1755 gives 1644, which Lanctôt’s ages of 1686 and 1700 also point to.

The 1693 and 1698 rolls

The 1693 roll writes his surname Herot, with Terriot added in the margin; the 1698 roll writes Teriot.

Death and burial

The burial entry in the Saint-Charles-des-Mines register (Drouin Institute reference 6147494) gives the words: “L’an 1731 et le 4 de may a ete enterre le corps de Bonaventure Terriot decede le 3, age d’environ 95 ans.” The witnesses were Claude Gautrot, René Granger, René Babin, René Landry and Jacques Terriot. Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians gives the same burial date, 4 May 1731, with an age of about ninety.

The compiled genealogies

Arsenault names his mother Perrine Bourg and Lanctôt Perrine Breau; the census gives Perrine Rau. Lanctôt marries Bonaventure’s daughter Anne to Vincent Babin. Arsenault gives that marriage to another Anne, a daughter of Claude Thériot, and marries Bonaventure’s Anne to René Landry, as the 1718 register and the Leblanc declaration show.

Marie

The 1671 census entry for Bonaventure’s household lists the couple’s children as one daughter, Marie, aged four. The identification of that child with the Marie who married Claude Gautrot is the genealogists’ own: Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy (Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens, volume 2, page 806), J.-Hervé Béliveau’s genealogical dictionary of the Belliveau families and a Cormier compilation on the Gautreaux family all make it.