♀Elizabeth Petitpas

Elizabeth Petitpas (born about 1670) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal), in Nova Scotia, the daughter of Claude Petitpas, whom the census of 1686 calls “Sieur de la Fleur, clerk of the court”, and the wife of Alexandre Richard. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Jeanne Richard.

Early life

The census of 1671 lists “Elisabet”, aged 1, as the youngest of seven children in the household of Claude Petitpas, a farmer of 45, and his wife Catherine Bagard, 33, at Port-Royal; the census, not a baptism, is what places her in that family. By 1686 her father appears in the census with a title and an office - “Sieur de la Fleur”, clerk of the court. Few household heads in that census carry any title or office; most are entered with nothing more than their ages, land and livestock. She was no longer in his household that year.

Marriages

The census of 1686 lists “Isabelle Petitpas”, aged 17, as the wife of Olivier Boudrot, 25, with four cattle and six sheep. Isabelle is the French form of Elisabeth, and no other Petitpas woman of that name and age appears, so this is most likely her first marriage. No record of that marriage, or of what became of Olivier Boudrot, has been found.

By the census of 1693 she was the wife of Alexandre Richard, entered as “Isabel Petitpas”, and the couple appear together in the censuses of Port-Royal from 1693 to 1707, with a few cattle, sheep and hogs and a small holding of land; the roll of 1707 enters the household only as “Alexandre Richard et sa femme”, with four boys under fourteen, two girls over twelve and two under twelve, six arpents^W of land, ten cattle, fourteen sheep, ten pigs and two guns.

In 1698 the household included a daughter Jeanne, aged 4, and by 1700 several children were listed, among them Jeanne, then 5, and an Angélique, aged 2 - most likely the Angélique Richard who, with Germain Richard, stood as godparent to Jeanne’s son Justinien in 1725. The census of 1701 also lists a servant in the house, “Anne Petitpas”, aged 13, who carried her own surname; the records do not say how the two were related.

Between about 1691 and 1709 she bore Alexandre ten children, from Marie Josèphe, born about 1691, to the youngest, Anne Marie, born 20 May 1709. Her daughter Marie married François Savoye at Port-Royal on 23 November 1707. Elizabeth was still living in 1712, when on 24 April she stood godmother at Port-Royal to Birgitte Savoye, Marie’s child. Alexandre had died before 1 August 1713, when the Port-Royal register records him as deceased at their daughter Marguerite’s marriage. The Port-Royal census of 1714 lists her household only as that of “the widow Richard”, with four boys and two girls; it does not give her own name.

On 6 January 1720 the parish register of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal) recorded Jeanne’s marriage to Pierre Dupuis, naming her as the daughter of the late Alexandre Richard and Elizabeth Petitpas. The entry calls Alexandre “the late” but not Elizabeth; it does not say, either way, whether she was then living. No record of her death has been found in the Port-Royal register under her name. A compiled online genealogy gives 18 September 1729, a date not confirmed by a record.

Notes

Her age in the censuses drifts: 1 in 1671, 17 in 1686, 30 in 1698, 35 in 1700 and 30 again in 1701. Most of them put her birth between 1668 and 1671; the 35 of 1700 alone points to about 1665. The name she is given changes with the clerk - Elisabet, Isabelle, Isabel, Elisabeth. The census of 1671 gives her mother’s surname as Bagard; the census of 1686 spells it Bugaret.