♂Jean-Charles Trahan

Jean-Charles Trahan (born about 1668) was an Acadian farmer, born at Port-Royal when his father, the early settler Guillaume Trahan, was about sixty, who moved with his young wife to Les Mines^W and farmed there on the river the Acadians called the Rivière des Vieux Habitants. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son René Trahan (born about 1694).

Early life

Jean-Charles was born at Port-Royal about 1668, the second of the three sons of Guillaume Trahan and his second wife, Magdeleine Brun. His father had come out to Acadia in 1636 aboard the Saint-Jehan, and when the census was taken in 1671 he was a smith “aage de soixante ans ou environ”, while Magdeleine was twenty-five. The roll lists their children as “Guilleaume Trahan aagé de quatre ans, Jehan Charles aagé de trois ans, Alexandre aagé d’un an”. Three sisters followed in the 1670s.

His father died between 1678 and 1686, and his mother married again, to Pierre Bézier dit La Rivière. The census of 1686 lists Jean, seventeen, among the “Enfans du premier lict de sa femme” in his stepfather’s household at Port-Royal.

Marriage and Les Mines

By 1693 Jean-Charles Trahan and Marie Boudrot, the eldest daughter of Charles Boudrot and his first wife, Renée Bourg, had married, probably about 1692. The census of 1693 counts them in a household of their own: Jean Trahan, 23, and Marie Boudrot, his wife, 19, with four cattle, two sheep, two hogs and six arpents^W of cultivated land.

By 1701 the family had settled at Les Mines, on the Rivière des Vieux Habitants, the river now called the Cornwallis, where the census of that year counted Jean Trahan, his wife, two boys and two girls. Their farm is said to have stood in the hamlet known as the village Trahan, in what became the parish of Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rivière-aux-Canards. In 1703 the household held one boy, three girls and one man able to bear arms. The couple had eight children, born between about 1694 and 1718. Four of them married in the church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré: Marie-Josèphe in 1714, René in 1717, Joseph in 1725 and Pierre in 1729. The youngest, Marie, was born on 10 April 1718 and baptized there on 8 May.

Death

Jean-Charles died before 17 October 1729, when the act of his son Pierre’s marriage at Grand-Pré called him the late Jean Trahan. He most likely died at Rivière-aux-Canards.

The family

Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy follows three of the couple’s sons into the deportation of the Acadians in 1755. Jean was sent to Boston and settled in 1767 at Saint-Philippe-de-Laprairie. Joseph and Pierre were deported to Virginia and taken from there to England, where both died at Liverpool: Pierre on 10 August 1756, and Joseph in 1757, after his wife, Elizabeth Terriot, had died in Virginia in 1756.

Notes

Name and age

The census of 1671 names him Jehan Charles, aged three; every later record calls him Jean. The census of 1686 enters his mother’s household twice. In the entry under her husband, written Pierre Joan, the Trahan children are “Guillaume 19, Jean 17, Jean Charles 15”, and by age the “Jean Charles 15” there is his brother Alexandre, who is sixteen in the entry under Magdeleine’s own name. His age of 23 in 1693 would put his birth about 1670; the census of 1671 puts it about 1668.

The census of 1693

The household of 1693 is known from a transcription of the roll, which lists it among the inhabitants of Les Mines. The same transcription also places his brothers Guillaume and Alexandre at Les Mines, while the original roll lists both of them at Port-Royal, so where the young couple lived in 1693 is not certain. The censuses of 1701 and 1703 place the family at Les Mines.

Marriage and the village Trahan

The date of the marriage, about 1692, comes from Bona Arsenault’s compiled Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (volume 3, pages 1308–1309); the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. The marriage itself rests on the census of 1693 and on the Grand-Pré acts of the couple’s children, each of which names both parents. Arsenault places the family “au village Trahan”, on the river he calls the “riviere de la Vieille-Habitation (de nos jours riviere Cornwallis)”, in the parish of Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rivière-aux-Canards, and says he died there before 1729; the census of 1701 calls the river the Rivière des Vieux Habitants.

A declaration made at Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767 by his nephew Pierre Trahant, a son of his brother Guillaume, lists among the children of Guillaume Trahan and Magdeleine Brun “Jean Trahant … marié … à Marie Boudrot, fille de Charles Boudrot et de Marie Corporont”. It gives her mother as Marie Corporon, Charles Boudrot’s second wife; Marie was born about 1675, during her father’s first marriage, to Renée Bourg.

The children

The eight children follow Arsenault’s list. Marie-Josèphe, René, Joseph, Pierre and Marie appear in the register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines with both parents named; the 1729 act is the one that calls their father deceased. Jean, Charles and Elizabeth rest on Arsenault alone, and Elizabeth’s birth year is not known: he lists her between Charles, born in 1710, and Marie, born in 1718. The sons’ deportation and deaths in England are Arsenault’s (volume 3, pages 1309–1310).