♂François Breau

François Breau (born about 1674) was an Acadian of Grand-Pré, in the settlements of Les Mines^W on the Minas Basin, and the husband of Marie Comeau. Their son Alexis Brault lived through the exile of the Acadians in Massachusetts and died near Montréal in 1811. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Alexis Brault (1721–1811).

Early life

In the Port-Royal census of 1686, as transcribed, a François aged 12 is listed in the household of Marie Bourg, the widow of Vincent Breau. The same household lists him at 18 in 1693, at 24 in 1698 and at 25 in 1700, when he was still unmarried. Those ages put his birth about 1674. Bona Arsenault’s genealogy of the Acadians, a compiled work, names him as the son of Vincent Breau and Marie Bourg, of Port-Royal, and dates his marriage to Marie Comeau to about 1702; Cormier’s date for the marriage, given below, is about 1703. Vincent Breau and Marie Bourg are therefore most likely his parents.

Grand-Pré

By 1703 he was at Les Mines with a wife and no children yet. The roll for that year lists him as ‘francois Broc’ with his wife, and gives no ages. The 1707 census of Les Mines lists the household of François Breau, written Brault there, with his wife, who is not named: two daughters under twelve, four arpents of cultivated land, eight cattle, three sheep and seven pigs.

On 22 September 1721 a son was born at Grand-Pré to François Breau and his wife Marie Comeau, whose name the register writes Como. He was baptized Alexis on 1 November in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, with Étienne Como and Isabelle Theriot as his godparents. Apart from the census, this baptism and the two of their sons that follow are the only records of the couple used here.

Their sons Pierre and Chérubin were baptized at Grand-Pré in 1709 and 1711. In 1714 the household is listed at Rivière-aux-Canards with his wife and six children, three sons and three daughters. In 1715 he is on a list of the inhabitants of Les Mines, written ‘francois braux’.

The rest of what is known of them comes from compiled genealogies. Steven A. Cormier’s compilation on the Acadian families of Louisiana gives François’s birth as about 1674 and has him marrying Marie Comeau, probably at Port-Royal, about 1703, after which the couple settled at Grand-Pré. It credits them with twelve children, and among the families their sons married into it names the Barrieau, which is most likely the marriage of Alexis to Marguerite Bariault. When François and Marie died is not known.

Notes

The 1721 baptism is known here from a printed abstract of the Grand-Pré registers published by the Diocese of Baton Rouge; the register page itself has not been seen. The abstract writes the father’s name Breau and the mother’s Como; Arsenault writes the family name Breaux, and the tree gives the son as Alexis Brault, the form of the Québec registers.

The name was not unique. Arsenault also records an Alexis Brault, son of Alexandre Brault and Marie Dugas, who married Madeleine Trahan about 1750; he was a different man.

Cormier’s date and place for the marriage have not been matched to a record; his birth year agrees with the census ages.

The marriage and the rolls

The two rolls bracket the marriage. In 1700 François is listed as unmarried in his widowed mother’s household at Port-Royal; in 1703 the Les Mines roll lists him with a wife and no children. The marriage is therefore dated between 1700 and 1703. The 1703 roll gives no name for the wife and no ages, so the identity of the wife as Marie Comeau rests on the compilations’ dates and on the 1721 baptism, which names her as the mother of their son Alexis.

Their son Alexis

Bona Arsenault’s genealogy of the Acadians names Alexis, born in 1721, as the son of François Breau and Marie Comeau, and follows him through his marriage to Marguerite Bariault about 1745, his home at Rivière-aux-Canards, the deportation to Massachusetts and his burial at L’Acadie in 1811. No record yet found names the parents of the Alexis who went to Québec, so his place as their son rests on Arsenault’s identification and on the Grand-Pré baptism.

The dates agree. The baptism of 1721 is the only baptism of an Alexis Breau in the Grand-Pré registers from 1707 to 1748, and a reconstructed list of the passengers who took Alexis and his family to Québec in 1767 gives his age as 45, which fits a birth in 1721. Only the burial register at L’Acadie points elsewhere: it gave his age in 1811 as about eighty, which would place his birth about 1731.