♀Françoise Boudrot

Françoise Boudrot (born about 1642) was an Acadian of Port-Royal, a daughter of the settlers Michel Boudrot and Michelle Aucoin, and the wife of the farmer Étienne Robichaud, who in 1671 walked out of the house rather than face the census-taker and left her to tell him that he would give no count of his cattle or his land. Widowed before 1686, she brought up their younger children on her own. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Madeleine Robichaud (born 1665).

Port-Royal

Françoise Boudrot was born about 1642, probably at Port-Royal, the first of the eleven children of Michel Boudrot and Michelle Aucoin, who had come to Acadia from France. Étienne Robichaud and Françoise Boudrot are said to have married at Port-Royal about 1663; no record of the marriage survives, since the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. The couple had six children, born between about 1665 and about 1677: Madeleine, Charles, Prudent, Marie, Alexandre and François.

The census of 1671

In 1671 the Franciscan missionary Laurent Molin went from house to house at Port-Royal, taking down each settler’s age, family, cattle and land. At Étienne’s house he got nothing. Under the word “Laboureur”, farmer, the roll reads: “Estienne Robichaut ne ma pas voulu voir Il a sorty de chez Luy et a dit a sa femme quel me dit qu’il ne me vouloit point donner Le Conte de ses bestiaux et terres” (Estienne Robichaut would not see me; he went out of his house and told his wife to tell me that he would not give me the count of his cattle and lands). Two other men on the same roll, the tailor Pierre Melanson and the cooper Pierre LaNoue, also refused: Melanson would give neither his age nor his holdings, and LaNoue would not give his age. The records do not explain why.

Because of the refusal, the roll gives no ages for Étienne or his children and no count of his farm. Françoise was counted all the same, at twenty-nine, on her parents’ line of the roll, among their three married daughters.

Widowhood

Étienne died before the census of 1686, which lists Françoise, aged forty-two, as “veuve d’Estienne Robichaud”, Étienne Robichaud’s widow. Five of their children were with her: Charles, 19, Prudent, 17, Marie, 14, Alexandre, 11, and François, 9, and the household kept six cattle and seven sheep. The eldest, Madeleine, had married Pierre Landry and had a son of her own, Pierre, aged three.

She was most likely the “Veuve Robichaux” whom the census of 1714 entered at the Cap, the point of land west of the mouth of the Moulin river at Port-Royal, straight after her sons Prudent and François and her son-in-law Pierre Landry, by then a widower. When and where she died is not known.

Notes

Her age

Her age of twenty-nine on her parents’ line of the census of 1671 places her birth about 1642, the year that Bona Arsenault’s compiled Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (volume 2, page 441) and Léopold Lanctôt’s compiled Familles acadiennes (volume 2, page 242) both give; Lanctôt places the birth at Port-Royal. The roll of 1686 gives her forty-two, which would place it about 1644.

The marriage

Arsenault places the marriage about 1663; Lanctôt gives 1663, at Port-Royal. Both name her as a daughter of Michel Boudrot and Michelle Aucoin, and Lanctôt calls her their eldest daughter.

The roll of 1671

The refusal is quoted as Lanctôt prints it from the census roll (Familles acadiennes, volume 1, page 34, and volume 2, page 242); Arsenault (volume 2, page 771) gives the same note in modern spelling and names the census-taker as Father Laurent Molin. Lanctôt adds that the couple then had three children, Madeleine, 6, Charles, 4, and Prudent, 2; those ages come from the children’s later records, not from the roll of 1671.

The roll of 1686

The roll of 1686 enters the household as “françoise Boudrot veuve d’Estienne Robichaud 42”, with the children “Prudhomme 17, Marie 14, Alexandre 11, françois 9, Charles 19”; “Prudhomme” is the roll’s spelling of Prudent. The count of six cattle and seven sheep, and the household of Pierre Landry, 22, Magdelaine Robichaut, 21, and their son Pierre, 3, are quoted from Lanctôt’s transcription (volume 2, page 243).

The widow of 1714

The census of 1714 names the widow only as “Veuve Robichaux”, with no first name or age. Her identification with Françoise is Lanctôt’s (volume 2, page 243), who notes that the four entries follow one another on the roll and places the Robichaud land at the Cap; the age of seventy-two that he gives her there is his own count from her birth year.