♀Jacqueline Benoit

Jacqueline Benoit (died 1755) was an Acadian woman of Pigiguit^W, in the parish of l’Assomption in the Minas Basin of Acadia, who died in Virginia among the exiles of 1755. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), by two separate lines of descent, through two of her children.

Acadia and marriage

Jacqueline was a daughter of Martin Benoist and Marie Chaussegros, settlers from France who died at Port-Royal. About 1691, at Port-Royal, she married Guillaume Trahan, probably as a widow. The couple settled at Pigiguit, where they raised at least eight children, among them Joseph, born in 1708. On 23 May 1712 her daughter Anne and her sister Catherine were married on the same day, to Antoine and François Prince, with Guillaume among the witnesses. On 5 November 1731, at Joseph’s marriage in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, both parents were recorded as being “of the parish of l’Assomption de Pigiguit.”

Deportation and death

When the British deported the Acadians of the Minas Basin in 1755, Jacqueline was shipped to Virginia and died there that same year. Her husband did not share that fate: Guillaume died at Pigiguit itself that September, so the couple’s lives ended within months of each other, in two different colonies. Virginia refused the exiles and sent them on to England in 1756, and after the peace of 1763 the survivors reached France, where in 1767 three of her grandsons recorded her death in a sworn declaration before French authorities at Belle-Île-en-Mer. Her son Pierre, born at Pigiguit in 1696, made his own declaration on the island that year.

Lines of descent

Floyd Amatus Delahorne descends from Jacqueline Benoit along two separate lines, and each of them makes her his sixth great-grandmother. The first runs through her son Joseph Trahant (1708–1756). The second runs through her daughter Marguerite Forest, born about 1687, whom a compiled genealogy gives as the child of Jacqueline’s marriage to Michel de Forest. The two lines meet again in Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926), whose parents, Firmin Serrette (born 1818) and Euphemie Dupuis (born 1817), both descend from her.

Notes

Sources

Her parents, her death in Virginia and her husband’s death at Pigiguit in September 1755 come from the 1767 Belle-Île declarations, which describe Martin Benoist and Marie Chaussegros as “tous deux de France” and dead at Port-Royal; the declaration of her son Pierre, made at Locmaria on Belle-Île, names them the same way. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana dates the marriage to about 1691 and agrees on both deaths. The census rolls show the earlier marriage: the 1686 roll lists her, aged 13, in the household of Michel de Forest, and the 1693 roll lists a Marguerite de Forest, aged 6, in her house with Guillaume Trahan. Cormier also gives her as Michel de Forest’s widow. No register of either marriage is known, and her birth year is not recorded in any source.

The 1712 weddings

The parish register names Catherine’s parents as Martin Benois and Marie Chosegros, “of Pigiguit”, the couple the declarations give as Jacqueline’s parents, though the declarations say they died at Port-Royal. It calls Anne’s husband Antoine Prince; the declarations write Antoine Leprince.

Her name

A compiled genealogy calls her Jacqueline dite Jacquette; Cormier writes Jacquette and the 1731 register Jaquette. Family trees add that her father carried the by-name “dit Labrière”, but neither declaration uses it, and it is not repeated here.

The second line

Arsenault’s Acadian genealogy (volume 2, page 545) gives Marguerite Forest, born 1687, as the daughter of Michel Forest and Jacqueline Benoit. It is a printed compilation, not a parish register. The 1693 roll’s Marguerite de Forest, aged 6, in her house, given above, fits that birth year.