♂Jean Doiron

Jean Doiron (born about 1649) was an Acadian settler of Pigiguit^W, on the Minas Basin, who was still raising the children of his first marriage when he took a second wife, Marie Trahan, who was counted in the census of 1693 at the same age as his eldest son. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through his son Paul Doiron (born about 1710), of the second marriage, and his daughter Jeanne Doiron (born about 1678), of the first.

First family

Compiled genealogies agree that he came to Acadia from France, but not on where he was born or when he crossed; one makes him a soldier of the company that came out with the governor Grandfontaine in 1670. The census of 1686 found Jean Douaron, aged 37, at Port-Royal with his wife Marie-Anne Canol, aged 35, and seven children, from Abraham, 14, down to Noël, 2. Within a few years he had left the old settlement for the mouth of the Pigiguit river, on the south shore of the Minas Basin; Lanctôt’s family history counts him among the first three men to settle there.

Marie Trahan and Pigiguit

By 1693 his first wife was gone. In the census of 1693 the household at Pigiguit was Jean Douaron, in his early forties, his wife Marie Trahan, about 20, and the children of his first marriage, from Abraham, about 20, down to twins of 4; they kept eight head of cattle, four sheep and six pigs, had five and a half arpents under the plow and owned one gun. The census of 1701 lists the household at Les Mines, with six sons and four daughters.

Jean and Marie then raised a second family. Their children were born at Pigiguit, whose parish register has been lost, so they are known chiefly from the register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré: their daughter Marie married Pierre Girouard, a widower from Port-Royal, there in 1709; a daughter Catherine was baptized there on 19 May 1709; and their son Alexandre married Anne Vincent there on 20 October 1727, his parents named as of the parish of Pigiguit. Two compiled genealogies, Bona Arsenault’s and Léopold Lanctôt’s, name among their sons Paul Doiron, called le Grand Paul, born about 1710; no record of his baptism survives. The census of 1714 still found the family at Pigiguit, with a houseful of children at home.

Death

No record of his death is known. The census of 1714 is the last record known to name him; Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana has him dying at Pigiguit between April 1735 and June 1736. Marie Trahan outlived him: in 1752, aged 80, she was living on Île Saint-Jean^W in the household of Magdelaine Douaron and her husband, François Nogues.

Lines of descent

Both lines reach Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) on his mother’s side, through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). By the first, through Paul Doiron (born about 1710), probably his son by his second marriage, to Marie Trahan, Jean was Floyd’s seventh great-grandfather. By the second, through Jeanne Doiron (born about 1678), probably his daughter by his first marriage, to Marie-Anne Canol, he was Floyd’s eighth great-grandfather.

The two lines meet again in the marriage of Jean Baptiste Daigle (born 1847) and Melia Thibodeaux (born 1850). Their daughter Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) was Ida Serrette’s mother, and both of Amelia’s parents descend from Jean Doiron.

Notes

The censuses of 1686, 1693 and 1714 are known here from the transcriptions printed by Léopold Lanctôt (Familles acadiennes) and Bona Arsenault (L’Acadie des ancêtres). They differ by a year or so in the ages: 42 and 20 for the couple in 1693 in one, 44 and 21 in the other, with Abraham the same age as Marie in both. The copy of the 1714 census printed by Lanctôt calls the wife Jeanne Trahan. For 1686 the wife’s name and age differ between copies: Arsenault’s transcription and the online copy of the roll read Marianne Canol, 35, while Lanctôt’s copy reads Marianne Carrol, 36.

A compiled genealogy by Bona Arsenault gives his birth as about 1647, two years earlier than the date above; the census ages of 1686 and 1693 point to the later date.

Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens makes Marie Trahan’s husband a son of the first couple, Jean, born 1678, who married her about 1698 and afterwards Anne LeBlanc. The censuses do not allow it: in 1693 that Jean was a boy of about 12 in his father’s house, and Marie Trahan was already his father’s wife; she was still living in 1752. Lanctôt and Cormier make the younger Jean the husband of Anne LeBlanc.

Cormier’s compiled history gives the couple a son Paul who married Marguerite Doucet about 1725, and does not say whose son le Grand Paul was. A Paul Douaron baptized at Grand-Pré on 19 April 1710 was the son of Noël Douaron and Marie Henry, not of this couple.

The Grand-Pré register dates Marie’s marriage to Pierre Girouard “le 14 de 9bre” 1709, that is, 14 November; the printed abstract of the register gives 14 September, misreading the month.