♂Jacques LeBlanc

Jacques LeBlanc (born about 1651, died after 26 May 1731) was an Acadian of Port-Royal and later of Les Mines, a son of Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet and the husband of Catherine Hébert. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Cécile LeBlanc (buried 1731), by three separate lines of descent, and his parents were already Floyd’s ancestors by four other lines, through Jacques’s brother Rene LeBlanc and his sister Françoise LeBlanc.

Life

In the Port-Royal census of 1671 he was listed as Jacques, aged twenty, the eldest of the six unmarried sons in the household of Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet. No record of his marriage survives, because the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. A compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians gives his wife as Catherine, probably a daughter of Antoine Hébert and Geneviève Lefranc, and dates the marriage to about 1673 at Port-Royal.

The census of 1686, as transcribed, lists the household at Port-Royal as “Jacques LEBLANC 35, Catherine HEBERT 23” with nine children, from Jean, twelve, to Rene, one month old; among them was Catherine, three. By 1693 the family had moved to Les Mines, where the census, again as transcribed, lists “Jacques LEBLANC 42, Caterine HEBERT his wife 32” with ten children, from Jean, nineteen, to Ignace, one, and Catherine now eleven.

Four of their children married at Grand-Pré, and the register abstracts name Jacques and Catherine as the parents each time: Magdeleine on 12 October 1711 to Michel Hache, whose parents lived in the parish of Beaubassin^W; François on 19 September 1712 to Marguerite Boudrot; Bernard on 7 February 1714 to Marie Bourg, when his parents were described as inhabitants of Les Mines; and Pierre on 15 November 1718 to Marie Landry. The abstracts write Catherine’s surname as Hubert in some entries and Hebert in others. Among the witnesses at Magdeleine’s wedding were a Jacques Leblanc, who made his mark, and a Pierre Cormier.

Another daughter, Cécile, married Michel Boudrot and was buried at Grand-Pré on 26 May 1731, aged about 45; her burial entry names her father as Jacques Leblanc. Her brother Bernard stood godfather to her daughter Françoise in January 1712.

The same compiled history says that Jacques was 80 when he died, that the couple had thirteen children, and that three of their daughters married Cormier brothers from Chignecto: Marguerite married François Cormier, Marie married Alexis Cormier, and Catherine married Pierre Cormier.

Death

He was still living on 26 May 1731, when he attended the burial of his daughter Cécile at Grand-Pré. He died some time after that in the parish of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré, as a declaration made by his granddaughter on Belle-Île in 1767 records.

Lines of descent

Jacques is an ancestor of Floyd Amatus Delahorne by three separate lines, all on his mother’s side. The nearest is eight generations up, through his daughter Cécile LeBlanc, who married Michel Boudrot, and her daughter Marguerite Boudrot. The other two are ten generations up: one through his daughter Catherine Leblanc, who married Pierre Cormier of Chignecto, and their son Pierre Cormier, and down the Cormier family; the other again through Cécile LeBlanc, by way of her daughter Anne Boudrot. The lines meet again in Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette, whose parents Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle both descend from Jacques, and in Amelia Pennison Daigle, whose parents Melia Thibodeaux and Jean Baptiste Daigle both descend from him.

His parents, Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet, were already Floyd’s ancestors by four lines, two through Jacques’s brother Rene LeBlanc and two through his sister Françoise LeBlanc, so through Jacques they are his ancestors three more times, seven in all.

Notes

His place as a son of Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet rests on the 1671 census household, on a declaration of 1767 made on Belle-Île, decades after his lifetime, which describes him as “descendu de Daniel Leblanc” (descended from Daniel Leblanc), and on the compiled history; no register act of his own time names his parents. His daughter Catherine’s place in the family rests on the compiled history and on the censuses, which list a Catherine of the right age in his household; no act names her parents. His wife, Catherine Hébert, was probably the daughter of Antoine Hébert and Geneviève Lefranc: the 1671 census lists a Catherine of fifteen in their household, and the compiled history agrees, but no act names her parents either. The 1686 and 1693 transcriptions give her age as 23 and 32, which would put her birth about 1661 to 1663; the eldest child, Jean, aged twelve in 1686, points instead to a birth by about 1656. His daughter Cécile’s place rests on her burial entry, on the elimination of the other men named Jacques LeBlanc, and on Bernard’s standing godfather; neither the 1686 nor the 1693 census lists a Cécile in his household. He is a different man from the younger Jacques LeBlanc who married Catherine Landry and appears in the same Grand-Pré registers.

Death

The date after which he died rests on his presence at his daughter Cécile’s burial on 26 May 1731, where he is named as her father. The place rests on a declaration of 1767, made on Belle-Île by his granddaughter, a daughter of his son Pierre, and printed in Casgrain (vol. III, p. 24), which names the parish as Saint-Charles; Arsenault (3:1216) gives the same parish. Saint-Charles was the parish of Grand-Pré, in the Les Mines district. The age of 80 at death comes from the compiled history.