♂Jean Boudrot

Jean Boudrot (about 1655 – before 30 November 1679) was an Acadian settler of Port-Royal and Beaubassin^W, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, the first husband of Marguerite Bourgeois; he died young and left her a widow with a small daughter. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Anne Boudrot (born about 1677).

Port-Royal and Beaubassin

Jean Boudrot was most likely the Jehan who, at sixteen, was living at Port-Royal in 1671 in the household of the farmer Michel Boudrot and Michelle Aucoin, the second of their seven sons. He is said to have been among the first settlers of Beaubassin, where Marguerite’s father, the surgeon Jacob Bourgeois, settled several of his sons and sons-in-law in the 1670s.

Jean and Marguerite Bourgeois probably married about 1676, when she was about eighteen. Their daughter was born about 1677.

His widow and daughter

Jean died young, probably in 1678, when he was about twenty-three. He was dead by 30 November 1679, when Marguerite, “veuve de Jean Boudrot”, married Emmanuel Mirande, a settler from the Azores, at Beaubassin.

Their daughter grew up in her stepfather’s house. In 1686 the census-taker at Beaubassin entered her apart from the Mirande children, as the only child “du premier Lict de Marguerite Bourgeois”, from Marguerite’s first marriage: a girl of nine, there called Marie. In 1693 she was Anne, fifteen. By 1700 she was most likely the Anne Boudrot, twenty-three, who was the wife of Pierre Arseneau at Beaubassin.

Notes

His parents

The census of Port-Royal of 1671 lists “Jehan 16” among the eleven children of Michel Boudrot and Michelle Aucoin. That he is the Jean Boudrot who married Marguerite Bourgeois rests on Bona Arsenault’s compiled Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (volume 2, pages 442 and 457; volume 3, page 859), which gives his birth as 1656, calls him “de Beaubassin” and says that he settled there. The record of Marguerite’s second marriage fits it: among the witnesses was Michel Poirier, named as her brother-in-law, and Arsenault gives Jean’s sister Marie Boudrot as the wife of a Michel Poirier of Beaubassin. His birth year here comes from his age in 1671; the place is not recorded.

Beaubassin, marriage and death

Arsenault (volume 1, pages 71 and 74) names Jean Boudrot among the first settlers of Beaubassin, about 1672, as one of three sons-in-law whom Jacques Bourgeois settled there. Since Jean was still at home at Port-Royal at sixteen in 1671, and married about 1676, his own move most likely came some years after the first settlement. Arsenault places the marriage about 1676 and gives Jean’s death as 1678; no record of either is known. The marriage record of 30 November 1679, which survives in a copy of the Beaubassin register, is the earliest record that shows him dead.

Their daughter

The censuses of Beaubassin show a single child of Marguerite’s first marriage: “Marie 9” in 1686 and “Anne 15” in 1693, the same girl by age. Arsenault gives the couple two daughters, Marie (1677) and Anne (1678), and marries his Anne to Joseph Hébert; elsewhere (volume 3, page 827) he makes Anne Boudrot, the wife of Pierre Arseneau, a daughter of Jean’s brother Charles Boudrot and Renée Bourg. A transcription of the census of Port-Royal of 1686 does list an Anne, eight, in Charles’s household. But Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, as quoted online, follows Marguerite’s daughter through the Beaubassin censuses of 1686, 1693, 1698 and 1700 to her marriage with Pierre Arseneau about 1697; she bore the surname Boudrot, and she was in the right settlement at the right age. The census of 1700 lists “Anne Boudrot 23” as Pierre Arseneau’s wife.