♀Elisabeth Melancon

Elisabeth Melancon (born about 1679 – died before 26 November 1720) was an Acadian woman of the Minas district, a daughter of Pierre Melancon and Marie Marguerite Mius d’Entremont, who married Rene LeBlanc at Grand-Pré in 1709 as the widow of a royal notary. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Desire LeBlanc (born about 1717).

Life

She appears as Isabelle, aged seven, in her parents’ household at Les Mines in the census of 1686, among a large family of brothers and sisters. Her first husband was Allain Bugeaud, whom her second marriage act calls a royal notary. They are said to have married about 1694, and they had at least three sons, Louis Amand, Allain and Paul, whose own marriages at Grand-Pré in 1726–1728 name them both as parents, by then dead; a daughter, Marie, the wife of Pierre Gautreau, and a son, Joseph, are also given to them. She was Allain’s widow when, on 30 July 1709, she married Rene LeBlanc at Grand-Pré. The act names her father as “Pierre Melanson, Sieur de la Verdure” and her mother as “Demoiselle Marguerite Mius”. Melansons named Philippe and Pierre, names also found in her parents’ household, signed as witnesses; the bride made her mark.

The tree also counts her brother Pierre Melancon among the ancestors of Floyd Amatus Delahorne, through another line, so her parents stand twice in the same pedigree; his place in the family rests on census and witness evidence rather than an act naming his parents.

The registers of Saint-Charles-des-Mines record her daughter Elisabeth, born on 6 December 1718. Her own death came before 26 November 1720, when her husband, Rene LeBlanc, married again at Port-Royal as her widower. When another daughter, Marie Joseph, married on 27 April 1734, the act called her mother “decd.”

Notes

Her place as the mother of Desire LeBlanc rests on a modern dictionary of Acadian families, seen as quoted online, supported by the Grand-Pré registers: in 1736 Desire stood godfather to a daughter of Marie Joseph. No act naming Desire’s parents has been found. No burial of her is recorded in the Grand-Pré registers, so her death is dated from her husband’s 1720 marriage. Online family trees give December 1718, days after the birth of her daughter Elisabeth; no record of that death is known.