♂Étienne Hébert

Étienne Hébert (died before 1671) was a settler of Port-Royal in Acadia, remembered by his Acadian descendants a century later as the man who “came from France” with his wife, Marie Gaudet. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by seven separate lines of descent, through four of his children: his son Emmanuel Hebert, his daughter Françoise Hébert, his son Jean Hébert and his daughter Martine Hébert.

Life

No record of his birth, his marriage or his death survives; the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. He was dead by the census of 1671, which lists his household under his widow: “Marie Gaudet veufve de Estienne Hebert aagée de trente huict ans, ses enfans dix, deux de mariés, Marie aagée de 20 ans, Marguerite aagée de 19 ans. Les autres a marier, Emmanuel aagé de 17 ans, Estienne aagé de 17 ans, Jehan aagé de 13 ans, françoise dix ans, Catherinne neuf, Martinne six ans, Michel 5 ans, Anthoine un an”. A transcription adds that the household had four cattle, five sheep and three arpents^W of cultivated land.

Nearly a hundred years later, when the exiled Acadians settled on Belle-Île-en-Mer made sworn declarations of their ancestry in 1767, several of his descendants named him as the head of their line. The declarations, as printed and translated, say that Emmanuel Hébert “was the son of Etienne Hebert who came from France with his wife, Marie Godet, to settle at Port Royal”, and that both died there; another declarant, descended through his son Étienne, uses almost the same words. A compiled genealogical dictionary adds that he was born about 1625, a brother of Antoine Hébert, came to Acadia in 1640, married at Port-Royal in 1650 and died in 1670; those details rest on the compilation, which also writes the name of his widow’s second husband Garant. The 1686 census of Port-Royal, as transcribed, lists “Dominique GARAULT 60, Marie GODET” with her sons Michel, twenty, and Antoine, sixteen, and a Garault child aged nine; the transcription gives the sons’ father as “Emanuel HEBERT”, but Michel and Antoine are the sons listed in 1671 at five and one. A Garault child aged nine places the remarriage by about 1677.

Lines of descent

All seven lines run on Floyd Amatus Delahorne’s mother’s side, through Ida Serrette, and through four of the children named in the 1671 census. Emmanuel Hebert carries three, two of them ten generations up and one eleven; Françoise Hébert carries two, nine and eleven generations up; Jean Hébert carries one, ten generations up; and Martine Hébert carries one, eleven generations up. The nearest line is nine generations up, through Françoise. The lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents Melia Thibodeaux and Jean Baptiste Daigle both descend from him, and in Melia Thibodeaux, whose parents Madeleine Ordalie Cormier and Leonard Thibodeau both descend from him.