♂François Levron

François Levron (born about 1650 – buried 23 June 1714) was an Acadian farmer of Port-Royal who appears in the censuses of 1686, 1693, 1698 and 1700 with his wife Catherine Savoie and a growing family. In 1698 his sixteen-year-old daughter Magdeleine and her husband were counted as the household next to his own. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Magdeleine Levron.

Family

No record of his birth or parents has been found. Two published histories of Acadia call him “Levron dit Nantais” and list him among the families who settled in the colony between 1671 and 1686, which would make him a newcomer from France, and from Nantes if the by-name means what it seems to; no document seen says so directly. The census clerks wrote his surname Leuron, Leveron and Levron. In 1686 he was thirty-three, living with Catherine Savoie and their children Jacques, nine, Magdelaine, five, Anne, two, and Marie, one. By 1698 he was fifty, with ten cattle, thirteen sheep and fifteen arpents, and the family had grown to include Elisabeth, Jeanne, Jean Baptiste and Pierre. The same roll lists, directly after his household, Clément Vincent, twenty-two, and his wife “Magdne Leveron”, sixteen. Two years later, in 1700, Magdelaine, eighteen, was counted again in her parents’ household, and no household of Clément’s appears on that roll; the census does not say why.

In 1703 the roll lists “françois Leuron” with his wife, four boys and four girls, and two men of the household able to bear arms. In 1707 it lists him as “Le bonhomme Nantois”, the old man Nantais, with his wife and two boys over fourteen and two under, two girls over twelve and one under; they held half an arpent of land, two cattle, two pigs and a gun.

Later years

The parish register of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, which survives from 1702, follows the family through the marriages of five of his children: Marie in 1703, to a soldier of the garrison from the diocese of Poitiers; Isabelle in 1705; Jacques in 1710; Jeanne in February 1714; and Jean Baptiste in 1716. Each act names François and Catherine Savoie as the parents. In 1710 the British took Port-Royal and renamed it Annapolis Royal, and the register continued under the new name. François died in June 1714 and was buried on 23 June, the burial entry giving his age as about seventy, older than his census ages suggest. The 1714 roll lists the household afterwards as “La vœuve Nantois”, the widow Nantais, with two males and one female. At Jean Baptiste’s marriage in January 1716 he is named as deceased.