♂Guillaume Giroir

Guillaume Giroir (born about 1686) was an Acadian farmer’s son of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal) who first appears in the colonial census as an infant three months old and later raised a family of eight children there. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Anne Girouard (born 1729).

Early life

The census of Port-Royal taken in 1686 lists, in the household of Jacques Girouard, 38, and his wife Marguerite Gautrot, 32, nine children, the youngest “Guillaume 3 months”. The same household counts him again at 7 in 1693, at 12 in 1698, and at 14 in 1700 and 1701 (in 1701 as “Guillaume 14” among the sons of Jacques Girouard, 52, and Marguerite Gautrot, 45), which places his birth about 1686. No other Guillaume Girouard of that age appears in any census of Port-Royal, and on that census evidence alone he is placed as a son of Jacques and Marguerite: no baptism, marriage or other record names his parents. The placement makes him a brother of Pierre Giroard, and because Floyd Amatus Delahorne already descends from Jacques and Marguerite through Pierre, it gives Floyd a second line of descent from the same couple.

Marriage and family

Guillaume married Marie Bernard. No record of the marriage has been found in the parish register of Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal), but the census of 1714 already shows him at the head of his own household, with a wife and one daughter, so the couple were married by then. The couple had eight children born between 1714 and 1729: Marie Magdelaine (born 1714), Anne, Marguerite, Guillaume, Françoise, Pierre, a second Anne, and Marie, who was buried at Port-Royal on 11 February 1752. An Anne Girouer was buried at Port-Royal in April 1720; the records do not show whether she was the couple’s first daughter, though the name Anne was given again to the daughter born in 1729. The children’s godparents came from the families of the men who appear as Guillaume’s brothers in the censuses: Charles Girouer and Isabelle Blanchard, the wife of Claude Girouer, stood for the first Anne in 1716, Alexandre Girouer for Marguerite in 1719, and children of Alexandre for Françoise in 1724 and for the younger Anne.

That younger Anne was born on 24 February 1729 and baptized at home by a layman^W, Pierre La Noue; the ceremonies were supplied in church on 23 April 1730, and the register spells the father’s name Guillaume Giroard in that entry. On 3 February 1751 Anne married Justinien Dupuis at Port-Royal, and on the same day her brother Pierre, born in 1726, married Justinien’s sister Theotiste Dupuis; the register, now spelling the name Giroir, again names her parents as Guillaume Giroir and Marie Bernard. A Guillaume Giroir and a Basile Giroir were among the witnesses. The entry does not say whether that Guillaume was the bride’s father or her brother of the same name, born in 1721, and it does not state how Basile was related to the family.

Later life and death

The British began deporting the Acadians of the Annapolis Royal district in 1755, and the records do not show whether Guillaume was among those removed. The only record that may bear on his death is a burial at Quebec. The register of Notre-Dame de Québec enters, on 24 November 1757, the burial of an Acadian named “guillaume giroüer”, aged seventy, who had died the day before. The entry names no parents and no spouse, so it is a probable identification rather than a proven one (see Notes). If it is he, he was about 72 when he died.

Notes

The records spell the surname in several ways, among them Giroir, Giroard, Girouer and Girouard. Guillaume’s parentage rests on the sequence of census households, not on a register naming his parents.

Identification

The Quebec burial is linked to Guillaume by name, age and origin only. The entry is marked “acad.” in the margin and names no parents and no spouse. A man three months old on the 1686 census was born in late 1685 and would have been about 72 in November 1757, while the entry gives the age as seventy. No other Acadian Guillaume Girouard of that generation is known, but no record links the entry to his wife, Marie Bernard.