♂Claude Landry

Claude Landry (born about 1663 – died September 1747, Grand-Pré) was an Acadian settler of Les Mines^W — the Grand-Pré settlement that grew into the principal Acadian community of Nova Scotia. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Joseph Landry (1708–1764).

Early life

According to Cormier’s compilation, Claude was a son of René Landry, called le jeune, and Marie Bernard of Port-Royal. The compilation distinguishes him from a namesake of the same birth year, a son of René Landry l’aîné, who married Marguerite Thériot and died at Annapolis Royal in 1740; the two are not to be confused, and neither is to be confused with Claude’s own son and namesake, who married Madeleine Doucet in 1712. About 1684, at Port-Royal, Claude married Marie-Catherine, called Catherine, Thibodeau, a daughter of Pierre Thibodeau and Jeanne Thériot, according to Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana. By the same compilation, Catherine’s father was a miller who had helped found the Acadian settlement of Chepoudy on the Bay of Fundy, and her elder sister Marie had already married Claude’s own brother Antoine.

Family at Les Mines

According to Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana, Claude and his elder brother Antoine were named in a 1702 colonial report among “the first residents of Les Mines”; the report itself has not been seen. Claude and Catherine moved on to the Minas Basin, where the couple were later styled “habitans de Mines” in a son’s own marriage act. Cormier’s compilation credits them with thirteen children; the Grand-Pré parish register, which begins only in 1707, documents eight: sons Claude, René, Jean Baptiste and Joseph, and daughters Marguerite, Marie, Claire and Marie Magdeleine. One daughter and two sons married into the neighboring Comeau family (Comot in the register): Jean Baptiste in 1718, Claire in 1721 and Joseph in 1727 — the same family Claude’s own parish record ties him to as a witness at several of the weddings, signing only by mark. Catherine had died by 11 November 1721, when her daughter Claire’s marriage act at Grand-Pré named her mother as already deceased.

Later life

Cormier’s compilation has Claude remarrying about 1725 to Marie, a daughter of Antoine Babin and Marie Mercier, and calls the marriage childless. The Grand-Pré register, as abstracted in the Diocese of Baton Rouge’s published Catholic church records (volume 1A), records the burial of “Marie Babin, age 76, wife of Claude Landry” on 24 September 1737 (SGA-2, 165). On 15 May 1741 Claude, a widower, married Jeanne Bellemère, widow of Mathieu Brasseux (SGA-3, 9a); the register names no parents for either. Cormier’s compilation calls Jeanne a daughter of André Célestin, called Bellemère, and Perrine Basile, and the widow of Mathieu Brasseur, called La Citarty, and calls this marriage likewise childless. Claude was still living on 10 November 1727, when he witnessed, by mark, the marriage of his son Joseph. The register records his burial on 14 September 1747, aged about eighty-six, in the cemetery of the parish of St. Charles at Grand-Pré, with Pierre Doucet, Joseph Thériot, René Landry, Bernard Daigre and J. B. Landry as witnesses (SGA-3, 44b-45a).

Notes

Cormier’s compilation places the marriage to Catherine Thibodeau at Port-Royal about 1684 and counts thirteen children of the couple; the Grand-Pré register, which begins only in 1707, gives no date or place for the marriage and documents eight children, not thirteen. The register does not name Joseph’s parents directly; the identification rests on his 1708 baptism entry, the presence of Claude and a brother as witnesses at his 1727 marriage, and the family’s pattern of marrying into the Comeau family three times in nine years. The burial register gives Claude’s age as about eighty-six in September 1747, which would put his birth about 1661; Cormier’s compilation gives about 1663, and so does the census of Port-Royal in 1686, if he is, as the compilations hold, the Claude aged twenty-three counted that year in the household of René Landry and Marie Bernard.