♂Claude Bourgeois

Claude Bourgeois was an Acadian farmer of Beaubassin^W, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, and he and his elder brother Charles married two sisters, Anne and Marie Blanchard of Port-Royal. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Paul Bourgeois (born 1705).

Early life

Claude grew up at Beaubassin with his mother, Anne Dugas, and his brother and sister. The census of 1686 lists him there, aged twelve, with Charles, fourteen, and Anne, seven, under the heading “Enfans d’Elle et de Charles Bourgeois”, children of Anne Dugas and of Charles Bourgeois. The census itself names his parents.

He was still in that household at eighteen in 1693 and at twenty-two in 1698, ages that place his birth between about 1674 and 1676. A compiled genealogy of the Acadians gives him the same parents and a birth in 1674.

Marriage and family

The Beaubassin roll of 1703 lists Claude Bourgeois with his wife, and the roll of 1707 names her as Anne Blanchard. No record of their marriage has been found. Compiled genealogies date it about 1700 or 1701, so they most likely married in one of those years.

In 1707 the roll of Beaubassin counts one boy and one girl in the household, and four arpents of land. On 28 August 1714 the census of the parish lists the couple with five children at home: Marie, Paul, Claude, Joseph and Michel. A compiled genealogy gives the couple ten children in all, the last, Rosalie, born in 1732.

Their son’s marriage

On 17 November 1727 their son Paul, twenty-two and living at Beaubassin, married Marie Josèphe Brun, seventeen, the daughter of Jean Brun and Anne Gautrot, at Port-Royal, which the British had held as Annapolis Royal since 1710^W. The register names Paul’s parents as Claude Bourgeois, “habitant of Beaubassin”, and Anne Blanchard.

Later years

In January 1752 the refugee roll at Baie-Verte lists “Le Vieux Claude Bourgeois” with his wife. The entry is most likely him, at about seventy-eight years of age, and it is the last record of him. Nothing records his death, and when and where Anne died is not known.

Notes

The 1686 entry is read on the manuscript census of Acadia at Library and Archives Canada, and it names his parents as Anne Dugas and Charles Bourgeois. The entries for 1693, 1698 and 1700 are read from transcriptions published on acadian-home.org. The entries for 1703, 1707 and 1714 were read on the manuscript census. The Beaubassin roll for 1701 has not been found in that census.

A compiled genealogy (Arsenault, vol. 3, p. 875) gives Charles Bourgeois’s widow as remarried to Jean-Aubin Mignault, which would make Jean-Aubin Claude’s stepfather.

The compiled dates for the marriage differ. The abbé Casgrain’s Collection de documents inédits sur le Canada et l’Amérique gives about 1700, Arsenault about 1701, and Placide Gaudet’s genealogy of the Acadian families (1905) 1703. No Beaubassin register before 1712 has been found, so no act for the marriage is cited.

Paul’s age of twenty-two in 1727 points to a birth about 1705.

The marriage of 1727 is known from the Nova Scotia Archives’ transcription of the registers of the parish of St-Jean-Baptiste at Annapolis Royal, 1702–1755, not from the register page.

The 1752 roll

The roll writes the place as “Baye Verte”; Baie-Verte is used here. The roll names the old man only as “Le Vieux Claude Bourgeois” and gives his wife no name. The identification with Claude rests on the label “le vieux” and on the entry being a couple.