♂Charles Thibodeau

Charles Thibodeau (about 1689 – August 1756) was an Acadian born at Port-Royal, the youngest son in the household of Pierre Thibodeau and Jeanne Thériot that the censuses of the settlement list from 1693 to 1701. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Olivier Thibodeau (1732–1803).

Family

The censuses of Port-Royal list a son Charles in the household of Pierre Thibodeau and Jeanne Thériot, aged 4 in 1693, 7 in 1698, 11 in 1700 and 13 in 1701 in the surviving copy of the rolls, which places his birth about 1689. He was the youngest of the sons at home in 1693, after Anthoine, Pierre, Michel and Claude. No other Thibodeau household in those censuses has a son named Charles.

Marriage and Chepoudy

The Port-Royal parish register records the marriage of Charles Thibodeau and Marie-Francoise Comeau (written Françoise Comeau in the act) on 19 December 1715; a compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana gives December 1715, probably at Chepoudy. Chepoudy lay on the northern shore of Chignecto Bay, an arm of the Bay of Fundy, and compiled genealogies credit his father with founding the settlement there in 1698. A Thibodeaux genealogy published in the Attakapas Gazette in 1985 calls Charles a resident of Port Royal and gives his wife’s birth as 1693. The register names the groom as a son of the late Pierre Thibodeau and Jeanne Thériot (written Tibaudeau and Terriot), which ties him to the household of the censuses. The compiled history names two of their sons, Olivier and Amand, both born at Chepoudy.

The baptism of their son Amand at Beaubassin on 14 May 1734 gives the parents as inhabitants of Chepoudy. The general roll of January 1752 lists Charles there with his wife, two sons and five daughters, nine persons in all.

Death

Charles was buried at Port-La-Joye^W, on Isle Saint-Jean^W, on 26 August 1756, aged 66. The register places the grave in the cemetery “au nord de la croix” (north of the cross), and the entry adds that the burial came after the sacraments. A compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians gives the same month of death and calls him a widower. The island was then still a French colony.

His sons in Louisiana

The same history, drawing on the list of Acadians who reached New Orleans in February 1765, records Olivier Thibodeau of Chepoudy, aged 32, and his brother Amand, aged 31, among the party that came from Halifax by way of Saint-Domingue^W under Joseph Broussard^W dit Beausoleil, a cousin of the family. Amand came with his fiancée, Gertrude Bourg of Isle Saint-Jean, and the history states that their wedding at New Orleans that February was the first recorded Acadian marriage in Louisiana. Both brothers followed the Broussards to the Attakapas District and settled on Bayou Teche.

Lines of descent

Charles Thibodeau and Marie-Francoise Comeau reach Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through their son Olivier Thibodeau (1732–1803). The two lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents Melia Thibodeaux (born about 1850) and Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847) both descend from this couple. The line through Jean Baptiste Daigle is probable rather than proved: it rests on the parentage of his grandmother, Anne Doralie Thibodeau.

Notes

The compiled history gives Amand’s wedding as 17 February 1765 in one passage and 27 February 1765 in another; the 1985 genealogy also gives 27 February. It gives the sons’ births as about 1733 and about 1734 in one passage, and Olivier’s as about 1732 in another, while the 1985 genealogy gives Amand’s as 1731; Olivier’s age at his burial in 1803 places his birth about 1728, but his baptism in the Beaubassin register gives 4 January 1732. The same 1985 article, in another section, places an Olivier born in 1745 in the family of Paul Thibodeau and Marguerite Trahan and calls Amand his cousin, but the 1765 list’s ages, and its description of Amand as Olivier’s brother, fit the family of Charles. A sketch of Olivier published in the Attakapas Gazette in 1974 also names his parents as Charles Thibaudeau and Françoise Comeau.