♀Françoise Bourgeois

Françoise Bourgeois (born about 1659) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal, a daughter of the surgeon Jacob Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan and the wife of Claude Dugas, one of three marriages that joined her family to his. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by eight separate lines of descent, through five of her children: Marguerite, Joseph (born about 1680), Marie (born about 1674), Cécile and Agnès Dugas.

Life

When the census of Port-Royal was taken in 1671, Françoise was twelve, one of ten children in the household of Jacob Bourgeois, the only surgeon on the roll, and Jeanne Trahan. Her brother Charles was already married to Anne Dugast, seventeen, a daughter of the gunsmith Abraham Dugast and Marie Judith Doucet. Françoise went on to marry Anne’s brother Claude Dugas, and another of her brothers, Germain Bourgeois, married a younger Dugas sister, Magdelaine.

No record of their marriage survives, but it came after the census of 1671, which lists Claude, at nineteen, among his parents’ unmarried children and Françoise, at twelve, in her parents’ household. By the census of 1686, Claude was 38 and Françoise 25, and they had eight children, from Marie, aged twelve, down to Anne, the youngest; their son Joseph was six. The household had one gun, eight arpents of tilled land, twenty-five cattle, nine sheep and eleven pigs. The census of 1693 lists Claude and Françoise, with their children, in the household of Claude’s parents at Port-Royal.

If the ages on the two rolls are right, Françoise was no more than fifteen when her eldest child was born. Joseph, through whom one of the lines descends, later lived at Cobequid with his wife, Claire Bourg. Declarations made in exile on Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767, by Acadians tracing their families, say that Claude and Françoise both died at Port-Royal; the dates are not known.

Françoise died at Port-Royal between 1693 and 1698; no record of the death itself survives. By the 1698 census her husband Claude Dugas, then 49, was listed with Marguerite Bourg, 24, his wife by a second marriage. Later entries in the Port-Royal registers call Françoise deceased at three of her children’s marriages: Magdelaine’s in 1704, Jeanne’s in 1707 and François’s in 1713.

Lines of descent

Françoise reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by eight separate lines of descent, through five of her children: Marguerite, Joseph, Marie, Cécile and Agnès Dugas. Four lines, through Marguerite (twice), Joseph and Marie, are nine generations up; the other four are ten or eleven generations up. All eight reach Floyd on his mother’s side, through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). The lines meet again in Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926), whose parents both descend from Françoise, and in Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc (1794–1837), and finally in Ida, Floyd’s own mother. One of the lines, through Marie Dugas, Marie Melançon and Judith Landry (born 1728), rests on an identification that is probable rather than proved.

Notes

Her place as a daughter of Jacob Bourgeois and Jeanne Trahan rests on the censuses: she is the only Françoise Bourgeois on the 1671 roll, and the 1686 roll gives her as the wife of Claude Dugas. Her birth year comes from her age in 1671; the 1686 roll makes her 25, two years younger than the 1671 age allows.

Two of the 1767 declarations, by Marie-Josèphe Dupuis, Joseph’s granddaughter, and by Honoré Daigre, the widower of another granddaughter, name Joseph’s parents as Claude Dugas and Marie Bourgeois of Port Royal. The census of 1686, which lists Joseph in the household, names Claude’s wife Françoise Bourgeois. So does a third declaration, made by Jean-Baptiste LeBlanc in 1767, which names “Catherine Dugast” as a daughter of Claude Dugast and Françoise Bourgeois of Port Royal, though the same declaration also calls her Marie. The Port-Royal register records the marriage of Agnès Dugat, daughter of Claude Dugat and Françoise Bourgeois, to Michel Thibodeau on 13 November 1704; an Agnès, aged four, is among the children on the 1686 roll.

Magdelaine Dugas’s marriage to Germain Bourgeois rests on a transcription of the 1686 census of Beaubassin.

Their daughter Marie

The 1686 census lists Marie, aged twelve, among the children of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois. Bona Arsenault’s genealogy (vol. 2, p. 525) names her as their daughter, born about 1674, who married Philippe Melancon, and the 1767 declaration that calls Philippe’s wife Catherine gives the same parents. The Grand-Pré register calls the wife Marie.