♂Jean Comeau

Jean Comeau (born about 1656) was an Acadian settler of Port-Royal. He is known from the census of 1686, which lists him with his wife Françoise Hébert and five young children, among them twin sons. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through his son Étienne and his daughter Marie Comeau (died 1708 or 1709).

Parents

The census of 1671 lists him in the household of the cooper Pierre Comeau and his wife Rose Bayon at Port-Royal, among their unmarried children: “Jehan aagé de 14 ans”. The same household had a second son named Jehan, aged six; Jean is the elder, since by 1686 he was thirty and had a daughter of eight. Bona Arsenault’s genealogy and J.-Hervé Belliveau’s dictionary also make Jean a son of Pierre Comeau and Rose Bayon; Belliveau gives him as born in 1657 and married about 1677 to Françoise Hébert. The declarations that descendants made at Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767 give a different account, describing Jean Comeau as “descendu d’un autre Comeau venu de France avec sa femme”. The census, taken in his own lifetime, places him in Pierre Comeau’s household; the declarations may have confused him with his French-born father.

Port-Royal, 1686

The Port-Royal census roll of 1686 enters the household as “Jean Commeaux 30, françoise Imber 23. Enfans: Marie 8, Pierre et Estienne jumeaux 6, Jean 3, Anne 1”. Those ages put his birth about 1656 and hers about 1663. The roll writes her surname “Imber”; reading it as Hébert is the census transcribers’ interpretation. The family held four arpents^W of land, four head of cattle, ten sheep and five pigs. Bona Arsenault’s compiled abstract of the census (1955) prints the couple’s ages as 39 and 35, but the roll itself reads 30 and 23. Compiled genealogies date their marriage to about 1677.

Later life

The censuses of 1700, 1701 and 1703 list him still at Port-Royal as the head of a household: with his wife and nine children on the rolls of 1700 and 1701, and with seven sons and a daughter at home in 1703.

The Port-Royal register records the burial of Françoise Hébert on 17 February 1713, aged about fifty, in the cemetery of the Saint-Laurent chapel up the river. On 7 January 1720 at Port-Royal, as a widower, Jean Comeau married Catherine Joseph, the daughter of François Joseph and Jeanne Lejeune. The register describes her as “de la nation sauvage”, the period’s phrase for a woman of an Indigenous nation. A compiled genealogy by Bona Arsenault gives her birth as about 1688.

Their daughter Françoise was born on 21 November 1720 and baptized the next day at Port-Royal, the baptism naming her parents as living there. His death is not recorded with certainty; the Notes set out the one burial that is often taken for his.

Lines of descent

Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) descends from Jean Comeau and Françoise Hébert by two separate lines of descent. The first reaches him through their son Étienne Comeau, which makes the couple his sixth great-grandparents; the second runs, probably, through their daughter Marie Comeau (died 1708 or 1709), which makes them his eighth great-grandparents. The two lines meet again in Ida Serrette (1903–1990), Floyd’s mother, whose parents Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) and Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) both descend from this couple.

Notes

Daughter Marie

The eight-year-old Marie on the 1686 roll is presumably the Marie Comeau who married Pierre Giroard and died in 1708 or 1709. A standard compiled genealogy of Acadian families (Stephen A. White’s Dictionnaire, 1999) is reported to name her as the daughter of Jean Comeau and Françoise Hébert, born about 1678 and married about 1697. No known record names her parents, so the link is probable rather than proved.

Death

The Port-Royal register records the burial on 14 November 1720 of a “Jean Comot”, whose entry reads “mort apres une longue maladie”. Family trees often take him to be Jean Comeau, but the entry gives no age and no wife. His daughter’s baptism eight days later names both parents as living at Port-Royal and does not call the father deceased. Another Jean Comeau, who had married Magdelaine Amirault in October 1719, was also living at Port-Royal and stood as godfather on 10 November 1720. The records do not settle which man the burial was, so his death remains unrecorded with certainty. A record of Catherine Joseph as a widow after 1720 would settle it.

Marriage to Catherine Joseph

The marriage of 7 January 1720 names the bride’s father as François Joseph and her mother as Jeanne Lejeune. Witnesses were Guillaume Blanchard, Joseph Bourgeois and Pierre Blanchard. The bride’s birth year of about 1688 comes from Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy and is not in the register.