♀Cécile Dugas

Cécile Dugas was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal, a daughter of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois, who married Claude Brun there on 27 November 1709, on the same day that her sister Marie married Claude’s double first cousin, Abraham Bourg. She and Claude had twelve children in the parish through the first decades of British rule. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Joseph Brun (born 1719).

Early life

Cécile was probably born about 1690, one of the youngest children of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois. Her mother died at Port-Royal between 1693 and 1698, and by the census of 1698 her father had married again, to Marguerite Bourg, a daughter of Bernard Bourg and Françoise Brun.

Marriage and family

Claude Brun and Cécile Dugas married at Port-Royal on 27 November 1709. The register names the groom’s parents as Sébastien Brun and Huguette Bourg and the bride’s as Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois. The same day, Cécile’s sister Marie Dugas married Abraham Bourg, Claude’s double first cousin: Claude’s aunt Françoise Brun had married Abraham’s father, Bernard Bourg, a brother of Claude’s mother. Abraham was also a brother of Cécile’s stepmother, Marguerite Bourg.

Their first child, Marie, was born on 17 December 1710, two months after a British and New England force captured Port-Royal^W, which became Annapolis Royal. The family stayed in the parish under British rule, and the census of 1714 counted the couple there with Marie, four, and a son, Vincent, two. Ten more children followed, the last of them, Pierre Paul, born on 25 April 1736, more than twenty-five years after the first. Two of the sons died young: Simon in May 1721, at about three and a half months, and Michel in December 1727, at eleven. A son born in 1730 was given the name Michel again.

Marie married Jean-Baptiste Martin in 1732, and Anne married Paul Doucet in 1738. Their son Joseph, born on 20 March 1719, married Marguerite Pellerin at Annapolis Royal on 29 July 1743, and the register named his parents as Claude Brun and Cécile Dugas. The date and place of Cécile’s death are not known.

Lines of descent

Cécile reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent. Both run through her son Joseph Brun (born 1719) and reach Floyd on his mother’s side, through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). The two lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents, Melia Thibodeaux (born 1850) and Jean Baptiste Daigle (born 1847), both descend from Cécile.

Notes

Her birth

No record of her birth or baptism survives; the register of Port-Royal begins in 1702. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 2, p. 526) gives her birth as 1690, and Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (tome I, p. 199) gives 1691, at Port-Royal. Both make her a daughter of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois, as the register does at her marriage.

The marriages of 1709

Both marriages of 27 November 1709 are entered on the same page of the Port-Royal register, as transcribed in the Nova Scotia Archives’ An Acadian Parish Remembered; Cécile’s was blessed by the priest Jean Loyard. Arsenault gives the same date for both. Lanctôt gives the date too, but names Claude Brun’s parents as Claude Brun and Françoise Bourgeois; the register gives Sébastien Brun and Huguette Bourg.

The census of 1714

Lanctôt prints the Port-Royal entry as “Claude Brun et femme (Cécile Dugas), m.1, f.1”, one boy and one girl. Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres (p. 80) prints the same household with the children’s names and ages: “Claude Brun, 35 ans, fils de Sébastien, marié a Cécile Dugast. Enfants: Vincent, 2 ans; et une fille: Marie, 4 ans.” The ages fit the baptisms of Marie in 1710 and Vincent in 1712.

Her name and the last record

The register writes her name Cecile Dugast at Joseph’s baptism in 1719 and at his marriage in 1743. The act of that marriage names Joseph as “fils de claude brun et de cecile dugast ses peres et meres”, without calling either parent deceased; it is the latest record of her known.