♂Jean Comeau

Jean Comeau (born about 1665) was an Acadian settler of Port-Royal and later of Les Mines^W, the youngest son of the cooper Pierre Comeau. With his wife Catherine Babin he raised a large family that settled at Rivière-aux-Canards on the Minas Basin. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through two of his daughters.

Port-Royal

The census of Port-Royal taken in 1671 lists Jean, “Jehan six ans”, as the last of the nine children of Pierre Comeau and his wife Rose Bayon. The same household held an elder son also named Jehan, then fourteen. That brother, Jean Comeau (born about 1656), married Françoise Hébert, and genealogists tell the two apart as Jean l’aîné and Jean le jeune. Both brothers are ancestors of Floyd Amatus Delahorne, each through a daughter named Marie.

Fifteen years later, in 1686, Jean was 21, still unmarried and living with his widowed father and his brothers Pierre and Antoine. Jean Comeau and Catherine Babin married between 1686 and 1693; Bona Arsenault’s and Steven A. Cormier’s compiled genealogies both give Port-Royal and about 1686, but the surviving Port-Royal registers begin only in 1702. By the census of 1693, taken at Les Mines, when he was 28 and she 22, they had three daughters: Marie, Geneviève and Isabelle, aged six, four and two.

Les Mines

The census of 1701 places the household at Rivière-aux-Canards, on the Minas Basin: Jean, his wife and six daughters, with four arpents, ten cattle, eight sheep, eight hogs and one gun. The census of 1707 at Les Mines lists the household as “Jean Commeau sa femme”: two sons and five daughters, with two arpents, ten cattle, ten sheep and eight hogs. Three more children were baptized in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré between 1708 and 1712. At the last baptism, in December 1712, the godfather was Jean Mouton, the surgeon of Les Mines. The census of 1714 at Rivière-aux-Canards counts Jean, his wife, four sons and six daughters.

Five of the children married at Grand-Pré between 1712 and 1728, three of them to Landrys: Marguerite and Claude married a son and a daughter of Claude Landry and Catherine Thibodeau in 1718 and 1721, and Étienne married Claude’s granddaughter Marie Joseph Landry in 1728. By then Jean and Catherine were living in the parish of Saint-Joseph at Rivière-aux-Canards. Thirteen of their children are known by name, born between about 1687 and 1712, and by one account Comeau Village at Les Mines consisted mainly of their large family. When Jean and Catherine died is not known.

Lines of descent

Jean Comeau reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both on Floyd’s mother’s side through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). The nearer line, nine generations up, runs through his daughter Marie Josèphe Comeau (born about 1705); the longer, ten generations up, runs through his daughter Marie Comeau. Marie Josèphe’s place as the couple’s daughter rests on probable evidence: the record of her marriage to Joseph Landry at Grand-Pré in 1727 names Jean and Étienne Comeau among the witnesses, and a compiled genealogy by Bona Arsenault names her as their daughter.

The two lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents, Melia Thibodeaux (born 1850) and Jean Baptiste Daigle (born 1847), both descend from Jean Comeau and Catherine Babin.

Notes

Which Jean

That the Jehan aged six in 1671 is the Jean who married Catherine Babin rests on his ages in the later rolls: 21 in 1686, 28 in 1693 and, in Arsenault’s abstract of the 1714 census, 49 and “fils de Pierre”. The 1714 roll itself gives no ages; the 49 is Arsenault’s compiled figure, not a figure on the roll. Arsenault, Steven A. Cormier and Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes all make him the son of Pierre Comeau and Rose Bayon, born in 1665; Arsenault calls him Jean-Augustin.

Marriage and children

The marriage year, about 1686, is the one Arsenault’s and Cormier’s compiled genealogies both give; the surviving Port-Royal registers begin only in 1702, the Grand-Pré register in 1707. The Grand-Pré entries, as printed in the Diocese of Baton Rouge’s abstract, write the surname Commeau, Commeaux, Comot and Comeau, and each of the five marriages names the bride or groom as a child of Jean Comeau and Catherine Babin. The registers and Arsenault name thirteen children; Cormier gives fifteen and is the source for Comeau Village. Lanctôt places the couple at Pigiguit; the Grand-Pré register places them at Rivière-aux-Canards, as Arsenault does.

Daughter Marie

Marie Comeau, the wife of François Breau, is not named in any record as their child; the identification is compiled. Arsenault lists a daughter Marie, born in 1687, fitting the Marie aged six in 1693, and Cormier names François Breau’s wife as the daughter of Jean Comeau le jeune and Catherine Babin, married about 1703. The censuses count several other girls named Marie Comeau of about her age, among them daughters of Jean’s brothers Jean, Étienne and Pierre; in favor of the identification, the 1714 list sets the households of Jean Comeau and François Breau side by side.

Death

White’s corrections to the Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, as reported on WikiTree, place his death between September 1755 and September 1756 at Bristol, England. No record confirms the date.