♂François Pellerin

François Pellerin (about 1636 – before 24 April 1679) was a farmer of Port-Royal in Acadie who moved on to the new settlement of Beaubassin^W, where his death after a sudden fever was blamed on witchcraft. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Anne Pellerin (born about 1671).

Early life and marriage

François Pellerin was born about 1636. He is said to have come from Saint-Étienne-de-Bacilly, near Avranches in Normandy, and to have been the elder brother of Étienne Pellerin, who also settled at Port-Royal. He probably married Andrée Martin, the daughter of Pierre Martin and Catherine Vigneau, at Port-Royal about 1665.

When the census was taken in 1671, François was a farmer of thirty-five at Port-Royal and Andrée was thirty, and they had three daughters: Huguette, five, Marie, two, and a baby girl two days old who had not yet been named. She was Anne, through whom the family line descends. The household owned a single sheep and one arpent of plowed land.

Beaubassin

François is said to have gone soon afterward with Jacob Bourgeois to help found the new settlement at Beaubassin, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, and by 1678 the family was living there.

Death

In 1678 Jean Campagna, a farmer of Beaubassin, was working on the marsh of Michel Leneuf de la Vallière^W, the seigneur of Beaubassin. As Andrée later told it, she blew into François’s eye, and then François asked Campagna to do the same; at that moment he felt a pain rising into his head, and that evening he was seized by a violent fever. He died not long afterward, while Pierre Mercier, who would marry his widow, was away at Port-Royal on La Vallière’s business. His son Pierre is said to have been born a few months after his death.

The sorcery trial

Campagna already had a quarrel with the family. In 1675 at Port-Royal, by Andrée’s account, he had tried to strike her, and she had hit him with a stick for the liberties he was trying to take with a girl; he told her she would be sorry. François’s death was laid to his spells. Campagna was arrested on La Vallière’s orders, accused of killing men and cattle at Beaubassin by sorcery, and at his trial in 1685 Andrée, then about forty, told the story of the stick and the fever. Andrée’s sister Marie Martin and Pierre Mercier, her second husband, testified to the same effect, and the neighbors Thomas Cormier and Madeleine Girouard also gave evidence. Campagna is said to have been acquitted on 28 June 1685.

The family

François and Andrée had seven children, six daughters and a son: Huguette, Marie, Anne, Isabelle, Jeanne, Catherine and Pierre. Two of them followed their mother to Canada. According to the Acadian genealogies, Catherine married Pierre Godin and settled at Saint-Thomas, on the Rivière du Sud below Quebec, and died in 1758 at Saint-François-du-Sud, aged about eighty-two. Pierre, the only son, married Marie-Anne Quessy at Beaubassin in 1709; after her death he joined his mother at Saint-Thomas, and on 1 June 1722 he married Marie-Anne Bélanger at Quebec.

Notes

Birth, origin and brother

His birth about 1636 rests on his age, thirty-five, in the census of 1671. Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (vol. 2, pp. 182 and 184) also gives 1636 and makes him forty-two at his death; Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 2, p. 710) gives 1642. The birthplace Saint-Étienne-de-Bacilly comes from Lanctôt alone (vol. 2, p. 182); Frère J.-Hervé Belliveau’s dictionary of Acadian families (p. 44) says that the origins of the Pellerins are unknown. Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 186) makes Étienne Pellerin, born in 1646, his younger brother.

The marriage

Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 182) puts the marriage at Port-Royal in 1665; Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 710) has “vers 1665”, about 1665. Both name the bride’s parents as Pierre Martin and Catherine Vigneau.

The 1671 and 1686 censuses

Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 182) prints the 1671 entry: “Laboureur — François Pellerin aagé de 35 ans, sa femme Andrée Martin aagée de trente ans, Leurs enfans 3, Huguette aagée de 5 ans, Marie aagée de 2 ans et une petite fille aagée de deux jours non nommée. Leurs bestiaux une brebis, terre labourable un arpan.” Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 185) identifies the unnamed baby as Anne, and her ages of fourteen in 1686 and twenty-three in 1693 agree. The 1686 roll of Beaubassin lists Pierre Mercier, 40, and Andrée Martin, 37, then the “Enfans d’Andrée Martin et de feu françois Pellerin”: Marie 16, Anne 14, Isabelle 12, Jeanne 10, Catherine 8 and Pierre 6, followed by Joseph Mercier 5, Magdelaine 3, Alexandre 2 and Marie Joseph, six months. Lanctôt’s printing of the same roll (vol. 2, p. 184) gives several of these ages differently.

Beaubassin

The move with Jacob Bourgeois comes from Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 182). The family’s presence at Beaubassin in 1678 comes from Andrée Martin’s deposition at the trial of Jean Campagna.

His death

The limit of 24 April 1679 is the day of his widow’s second marriage, and the 1686 roll calls him “feu”, the late François Pellerin. Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 183) gives the year of his death as 1678. The account of the fever comes from Andrée Martin’s deposition, printed in extract by Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 183): “et en même temps ledit François Pellerin auroit senti le mal qui lui montoit à la tête, et fut le soir attaqué d’une grosse fièvre chaude”. That he died before Pierre Mercier came back from Port-Royal, where La Vallière had sent him, comes from Thomas Cormier’s deposition in the trial file, held by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. That his son Pierre was born after his death is Lanctôt’s statement (vol. 2, p. 184); the 1686 roll gives Pierre’s age as six.

The trial

Lanctôt (vol. 2, pp. 183–184) prints extracts from the trial file. Campagna’s interrogation asked whether he had blown into François Pellerin’s eye in 1678, and whether he had said to Pellerin, as he lay near death, “Voilà bien moudre pour de l’orge”; Campagna answered that he had said something of the kind, but of his own pain, as a joking saying of his country. Andrée Martin’s deposition speaks of “les insolences qu’il vouloit faire à une fille”, the improper advances he meant to make to a girl. The arrest, the charge, the testimony of Marie Martin and Pierre Mercier, the attribution of the death to Campagna’s “maléfices” and the acquittal on 28 June 1685 all come from Lanctôt.

The children

The count of seven rests on the censuses of 1671 and 1686. Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 185) gives Catherine’s husband as Pierre Gaudin, son of Laurent Gaudin dit Châtillon, her move to Saint-Thomas, and her death at Saint-François-du-Sud in 1758 at eighty-two; Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 711) spells him Godin. Lanctôt (vol. 2, pp. 185 and 230) gives Pierre’s first marriage to Marie-Anne Quessy at Beaubassin in 1709 and says he went on to his mother at Saint-Thomas; Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 711) gives his marriage to Marie-Anne Bélanger at Quebec on 1 June 1722.