♀Isabelle Aucoin

Isabelle Aucoin was an Acadian woman who lived at Port-Royal as a young wife and who, with her husband, Jérôme Guérin, was among the first settlers of Cobequid^W, at the head of the Minas Basin, in the first years of the 1700s. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Françoise Guérin (born about 1710).

Port-Royal

She was born about 1680, by later family testimony at Beaubassin. In 1698 Jérôme Guérin, aged thirty-three, and his wife, Isabelle Aucoin, aged eighteen, were living at Port-Royal with no children yet; they had probably married the year before.

Cobequid

By about 1701 the family had moved to Cobequid, on the bay at the head of the Minas Basin, where Mathieu Martin is said to have held a seigneury^W since 1689. A list of the settlers of the bay from about that year names just three men: Martin Bourg, Martin Blanchard and Jérôme, written Girard Guerin.

The couple stayed. In 1703 the household was Jérôme, his wife and three daughters; in 1707 the couple, still with three daughters under twelve, were farming six arpents^W with ten cattle, six sheep and ten hogs; and by 1714 there were one son and six daughters in the household.

She almost certainly stood godmother twice at Cobequid: in 1708, with Martin Bourg as godfather, and on 20 October 1712 to Pierre, a son of Pierre Theriot and Marie Bourg, the day before her own son Pierre was baptized.

They are said to have had ten children in all, born between 1698 and 1725. Their daughter Elizabeth Guérin was born at Cobequid on 29 September 1704, and their son Pierre Guérin on 12 June 1712; he was baptized at Cobequid on 21 October, with Pierre Blanchard and Judith Guerin as godparents. Françoise Guérin, born about 1710, through whom the line descends, was most likely their daughter too. The records do not show when or where Isabelle died.

Notes

Her name

Isabelle and Elisabeth were the same name in the usage of the time. The census of 1698 and the 1767 declaration of her son-in-law’s family call her Elisabeth Aucoin; the census of 1707 and her son Pierre’s baptism in 1712 call her Isabelle. The census entries after 1701 rest on a published transcription of the rolls.

Birth and parents

Her age of eighteen in 1698 puts her birth about 1680; Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens gives 1679 and makes her a daughter of Martin Aucoin and Marie Gaudet. A sworn declaration made on Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767 for the family of her daughter Elizabeth’s widower, Claude Pitre, says that “Elizabeth Aucoin was born at Beaubassin to Martin Aucoin, who had come from France and who married at Port Royal Marie Gaudet.” That Martin Aucoin was a younger man than the Martin Aucoin whose wife was Barbe Minguet, and the two are not to be confused. Her parents are not followed here.

Godmother at Cobequid

The parish register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, as printed in abstract, names an Isabelle Aucoin as godmother at two baptisms at Cobequid: Pierre, son of Alexis Aucoin and Anne Marie Bourg, born 29 May and baptized 18 July 1708, with Martin Bourg as godfather; and Pierre, son of Pierre Theriot and Marie Bourg (written Terriot in the register), born 5 September and baptized 20 October 1712, with Germain Terriot as godfather. Neither entry names her husband; she is taken to be Jérôme Guérin’s wife, who was living at Cobequid from about 1701.

Birth, marriage and children

Arsenault has her marry Jérôme Guérin about 1697 and lists ten children born between 1698 and 1725, among them Elizabeth (1704), Françoise (1710) and Pierre (1712). Pierre’s birth and baptism are recorded in the Saint-Charles-des-Mines register, which names his parents. Elizabeth’s birth date and birthplace come from the 1767 declaration, which gives her as born “de Jerome Guerin et d’Elisabeth Aucoin”.

Françoise’s parentage

No record names Françoise’s parents. Arsenault, in two places (vol. 4, pp. 1492 and 1529), and Stephen A. White’s dictionary of the Acadian families, as quoted on a published family tree, make her a daughter of Jérôme Guérin and Isabelle Aucoin. The other evidence fits: a compiled history of the Acadians in Louisiana gives her origin as Cobequid; a Pierre Guérin aged forty, the age of Isabelle’s son, was living at Baye de Mordienne, on Île Saint-Jean, in the same settlement as her household in 1752; and she named a daughter Isabelle.