♀Catherine Bagard

Catherine Bagard (about 1638 – 1693) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal, the wife of a court clerk, and in widowhood she married Charles Chevalier dit La Tourasse^W, the sergeant whom the New England commander who captured Port-Royal had left in charge of the town. She died at sea in 1693, on a voyage to Boston undertaken for the French governor. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Elizabeth Petitpas (born about 1670).

Family

The standard dictionary of Acadian families writes her surname Bugaret and makes her the daughter of Bernard Bugaret dit Saint-Martin; her mother is not known. That paternity is compiled: no act naming her as his daughter has been found. Bernard himself is documented as a carpenter from Gascony who sailed to Acadia in 1636 and whose contracts at La Rochelle, with the ship’s captain Nicolas Denys^W in 1637 and 1638 and with Emmanuel Le Borgne in 1648, are quoted in a study of the notarial records by Guy Perron; on those contracts he crossed between Acadia and La Rochelle over some years.

She probably married Claude Petitpas about 1658. The census of 1671 found them at Port-Royal, he a farmer of 45 and she 33, with seven children between twelve years and one year old - Bernard, Marguerite, Claude, Jehan, Jacques, Marie and Elisabet. Their holding had thirty arpents^W under the plough, the largest cleared acreage reported anywhere in the colony that year, with twenty-six cattle and eleven sheep in Gaudet’s French edition of the roll (a transcription on the acadian-home site reads twelve). By 1686 Claude, now styled Sieur de la Fleur, was clerk of the court at Port-Royal; the census of that year lists the couple, aged 60 and 46, with nine children still at home.

Port-Royal under the English

In May 1690 Sir William Phips^W captured Port-Royal^W for Massachusetts, made the inhabitants swear allegiance to William and Mary, and before sailing away put a council of leading inhabitants in charge, with Charles La Tourasse, a sergeant of the French garrison, as its president and temporary English commandant. The French governor Villebon^W, returning in 1691, left the arrangement in place and instructed La Tourasse to favor France wherever he safely could.

A compiled genealogy, Stephen White’s dictionary of Acadian families as quoted on WikiTree, gives Claude Petitpas’s death as about 1691 and Catherine’s marriage to La Tourasse about 1692; La Tourasse appears in the census as Charles Chevalier. The census of 1693 lists him, aged 30, as the husband of Catherine, then 56, and names five of her Petitpas children in the household: Paul, 22, Charles, 18, Martin, 15, Pierre, 10, and Anne, 9. That year a settler named Abraham Boudrot offered to go to Boston, under cover of trade, to learn what the English were planning. La Tourasse proposed that his wife go with him. The English trusted her, and the voyage was meant to show Villebon that she was loyal to France. Villebon agreed, but Catherine died on the voyage to Boston. After her death La Tourasse gave up the post the English had given him. He was made an ensign in the French service and was killed in an ambush in October 1696 while scouting against Benjamin Church’s^W raid on the Saint John River.

Notes

The census spells her surname Bagard in 1671 and Bugaret in 1686 and 1693. The census ages give her birth between 1637 and 1640. The census of 1693 makes La Tourasse thirty, some twenty-six years younger than his wife; Wikipedia gives his birth in France between 1630 and 1638, which would make the pair much nearer in age; the Dictionary of Canadian Biography gives no year, and a WikiTree profile gives 1663. The records found so far do not settle which is right.

Marriage to Claude Petitpas

The date of about 1658 comes from two compiled genealogies: Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (volume 2, page 721) and Stephen White’s dictionary of Acadian families, as quoted on WikiTree. Both give the same year. The 1671 census lists their eldest child, Bernard, at twelve, which fits a marriage about 1658.