♀Cécile Thibodeau

Cécile Thibodeau (born 5 November 1712) was an Acadian born at Grand-Pré in the Minas settlements, who married there in 1730 and was living at Chignecto by 1741, where her son Michel was born. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Michel Cormier (1741–1790).

Life

She was born on 5 November 1712 and baptized the next day at Grand-Pré, the daughter of Jean Thibodeau and Marguerite Hébert; the register writes the names “Cécille Tibeaudo” and “Marguerite Hubert”. Her godparents were Jean Melanson and Cecille Melanson, whose forename she shared. A Cecille Tibeaudot who stood godmother at Grand-Pré on 22 August 1728 was most likely she. On 17 July 1730 she married Pierre Cormier at Grand-Pré, the son of the late Pierre Cormier and Catherine Leblanc; her mother had died by then. The day of the month is illegible in the surviving register and is supplied from a transcription made in 1895. The bride and groom each made a mark rather than signing, while her father signed his name. No baptism of a child of the couple appears in the Grand-Pré register after the marriage. By 1741 they were at Chignecto: their son Michel was born on 19 January 1741 and baptized at Beaubassin^W on 12 March. A second son, Joseph, remarried in Louisiana on 25 April 1771 as the widower of Marguerite Saunier, in an entry of the Pointe Coupée register that names his parents as Pierre and Cécile Tibaudot, Acadians. A compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians calls her Cécile Thibodeau of Chignecto and makes Joseph the elder of the two brothers.

In 1750 the household was probably at Ouescoque, in Beaubassin, among the refugees who had moved to the French side of the Chignecto isthmus. Before 31 January 1752 Pierre had apparently died, for on that date Cécile Thibodeau was listed as a widow at Aulac, a refugee from Ouescoque. She is thought to have died between 1786 and 1787, during the family’s move from Sainte-Anne on the Saint John River to the west side of the Memramcook.

Notes

The refugee lists of 1750 and 1752

The list for autumn 1750 to winter 1751 (Stephen A. White, Les Cahiers de la Société historique acadienne, vol. 50, 2019, p. 102, row 1750-7) gives “Cormier Pierre dit Palette” and Cécile Thibodeau at Ouescoque. The list of 31 January 1752 (White, vol. 50, p. 156, row 1752r-98; the original is in the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Colonies G1 vol. 466 no. 32) gives a widow at Aulac, a refugee from Ouescoque, in a household of nine. The printed online transcription gives only “widow CORMIER” and a smaller family, so the identification as Cécile rests on White’s table.

The death

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on her son Pierre Cormier (1734–1818) places the family’s removal from Sainte-Anne to the west side of the Memramcook between autumn 1786 and summer 1787, and says that “his aged mother died during the trip”. Other online family trees give 1787 or 1788 without a source.