♂Isaac Pesseley

Isaac Pesseley (died about 1645) was the first husband of Barbe Bajolet. When Barbe married again at La Rochelle in January 1647, the register called her “vefve de feu Ysaac Pessele”, the widow of the late Isaac Pesseley. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Pesselet (about 1645–1707).

Coming to Acadia

He is described as a merchant of Piney, in Champagne, east of Troyes, where he had married Barbe Bajolet. Early in 1636 he is said to have joined the colonists that Nicolas Le Creux, sieur du Breuil, was recruiting for La Hève and Port-Royal, meeting them at Troyes and sailing with them from La Rochelle on the Saint-Jean on 1 April 1636. Barbe was expecting a child, so he left her at Piney, and their first daughter, Marguerite, was born there that summer. He went back to France, perhaps in 1637, and by 1638 he was at Port-Royal again with his wife and daughter.

Major of Port-Royal

Acadia was by then divided between two rival governors, Charles de Menou d’Aulnay^W at Port-Royal and Charles de La Tour^W on the Saint John River, and their quarrel soon turned into open war^W. Isaac is probably the Isaac Pesseley who gave evidence on 14 July 1640 in d’Aulnay’s inquiry against La Tour, in which he is called “major de Port-Royal”, the officer of the garrison there.

Isaac and Barbe are said to have had six children, the eldest born at Piney and the rest at Port-Royal. Marie, the youngest, was the only one of them known to have gone back to Acadia.

Death

In March 1645 d’Aulnay gathered every man of his settlements who could carry a musket and laid siege to La Tour’s fort at the mouth of the Saint John River, held in La Tour’s absence by his wife, Françoise-Marie Jacquelin^W, with forty-five men. He took it on Easter Day, 16 April 1645, after three days and nights of assault, and lost many men in doing so. Isaac most likely died in that fighting: the Acadian genealogies hold that he was killed in d’Aulnay’s attack on La Tour’s fort.

That August d’Aulnay paid the captain of the Cardinal, sailing from Port-Royal to La Rochelle, partly in skins meant to make some return to the widows and heirs of the soldiers and sailors killed in the assault. Barbe may have gone home to France on that ship with her children. She married Martin Lefebvre at La Rochelle on 10 January 1647, and years later she is said to have come back to Port-Royal with her third husband, Savinien de Courpon, bringing Marie with her.

Notes

The sources

Apart from the 1647 marriage, his life rests on the compiled Acadian genealogies: Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (tome II, pp. 197–200, with mentions in tome I), and Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (2:718) and L’Acadie des ancêtres. The register of Saint-Barthélemy at La Rochelle, 10 January 1647, names the bride as “Barbe Barjole vefve de feu Ysaac Pessele” and mentions Port-Royal in Acadia.

Birth and marriage

Lanctôt gives his birth as 1600 at Piney and his marriage to Barbe Bajolet as 1635, when he was “marchand à Piney”. Arsenault gives “né vers 1618” and “marié vers 1641”, and the Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, as quoted on WikiTree, about 1629. Lanctôt’s birth of the eldest daughter at Piney in 1636, which he takes from Barbe’s 1646 marriage contract, fits a marriage before the voyage.

The voyage of 1636

Lanctôt cites the roll of the Saint-Jean registered at the admiralty of La Rochelle on 16 May 1636, where “Isaac Pesseley, marchand, de Piney, en Champagne” stands directly below Nicolas Bayolle, a laborer from Dijon; he suggests Bayolle was a kinsman of Barbe, and WikiTree’s profile calls that kinship unlikely. L’Acadie des ancêtres gives the name on a list of Le Creux’s workmen as “Isaac Pesselin de Champagne”. Barbe Bajolet’s own page follows L’Acadie des ancêtres in having her arrive with him in 1636; Lanctôt has Isaac sail alone and bring her out by 1638. André-Carl Vachon (2022) suggests he may have been one of Bernard Bugaret’s hired men in 1638.

Major of Port-Royal

L’Acadie des ancêtres (p. 40) quotes Casgrain and Rameau’s Documents inédits: “c’est bien là cet Isaac Pesseley, major de Port-Royal, qui témoigne dans l’information de Latour, le 14 juillet 1640”. Lanctôt writes that he was questioned in an inquiry into a naval fight between d’Aulnay and La Tour, and elsewhere names him, with Guillaume Trahan and Germain Doucet, as one of the “représentants des habitants de Pentagoët, de La Hève et de Port-Royal” charged with the inquiry. On his death, Lanctôt writes, Germain Doucet succeeded him as major.

Death

His death is given here as about 1645. Arsenault writes that he “aurait été tué” on 17 April 1645 (printed “1745”) in d’Aulnay’s attack on La Tour’s fort, which he places at Jemseg; WikiTree gives 16 April 1645. Lanctôt places the fort at the mouth of the Saint John and writes “Il est fort probable qu’Isaac Pesseley fut tué ou blessé mortellement au combat”, reasoning from the birth of his last child in 1644 and his widow’s remarriage at La Rochelle in 1646. An article in the Attakapas Gazette (1988) says he died in 1645 or 1646. For the Cardinal, Lanctôt quotes the captain’s report of 8 November 1645: the skins were to reward “les veuves et les héritiers des soldats et mariniers qui auraient été tués”. That Barbe sailed on it is his inference.

The children

Lanctôt lists six: Marguerite (Piney, 1636), Jeanne (1638), Charlotte (1639), Henriette (1640), Gilles (1642) and Marie (1644), the last five at Port-Royal. Arsenault names Jeanne (1638) and Marie (1641) “et plusieurs autres enfants qui ont fait souche en France”; the Dictionnaire gives eight, adding Etienne and Perrette. In 1671 Barbe told the census taker she had “huict enfants, deux en ce pays et six tant en France qu’ailleurs”, a count that includes her Lefebvre daughters. Only Marie appears on this site.

His name

The 1647 register writes Ysaac Pessele; other forms are Pesselin and Peseley. His daughter’s name is written Peselet, Pesseler and Pincelet.