♂Jean Hébert

Jean Hébert (born about 1653) was an Acadian settler of Port-Royal and later of Les Mines, the husband of Anne Doucet and the father of a large family. He was most likely the younger of the two sons of the cooper Antoine Hébert whom the census of 1671 lists under the same name, Jehan, aged twenty-two and eighteen. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Joseph Hébert.

Early life

In 1671 Antoine Hébert, a cooper of fifty, and his wife, Geneviève Lefranc, had three children at home at Port-Royal: the two Jehans and a daughter, Catherine, fifteen. The elder Jehan is said never to have married. Catherine, most likely Jean’s sister, married Jacques LeBlanc.

Marriage and family

Anne Doucet and Jean Hébert married, probably at Port-Royal, about 1676. She was the eldest daughter of the mason Pierre Doucet and Henriette Pelletret. In both 1678 and 1686 the census-takers wrote the young couple’s household beside those of Antoine Hébert and of Jacques LeBlanc and his wife, Catherine Hébert, most likely Jean’s parents and sister. In 1678 Jean and Anne, written “Marye Doucet”, had a son of one year, twenty cattle and ten acres of land.

In 1686 Jean was thirty-two and Anne twenty-two, with five children: Jacques, nine, Pierre, seven, Jean, five, Jeanne, three, and Joseph, two months. The census of 1693 lists seven children, Jean, Matieu, Jacques, Pierre, Genevieve, Anne and Christophe, but neither Jeanne nor Joseph, and the two lists do not agree on the children’s names and ages. The couple are said to have had fourteen children in all, eight sons and six daughters, born between 1677 and the early 1700s.

Joseph, said to have been born at Port-Royal in November 1685, was most likely the Joseph Hébert who married Anne Boudrot and farmed at Beaubassin^W, and the line descends through him.

Les Mines

In 1693 the census counted the family at Les Mines, the settlement on the Minas Basin, with twelve cattle, twelve sheep, six hogs, eleven arpents^W and a gun. The family most likely moved there in the early 1690s and is said to have settled at Grand-Pré.

Death

The compiled genealogies agree that one of the couple died at Grand-Pré in November 1710 but not on which: one gives the burial, on 3 November, to Jean, the other gives the death to Anne and has Jean dead about 1707.

Notes

Parentage

No record names his parents, so his place in Antoine Hébert’s family is probable, not proved. The census of 1671 lists Antoine and Geneviève Lefranc at Port-Royal with “Jehan 22, Jehan 18, Catherine 15”, and Jean’s own ages, thirty-two in 1686 and forty in 1693, fit the younger Jehan. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled Acadian genealogy gives Antoine two sons named Jean, born about 1649 and about 1653, of whom only the second married, to Marie-Anne, daughter of Pierre Doucet and Henriette Pelletret. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens lists Antoine’s children as Jean, 1649, Jean-Baptiste, 1653, and Catherine, 1656, and makes “Jean Hébert, 1653, fils d’Antoine et de Genevieve Lefranc” the husband of Anne Doucet; his L’Acadie des ancêtres prints the 1686 entry as “Jean Hébert, 33 ans, fils d’Antoine”.

In the roll of 1678 the entries for Antoine Hébert and Geneviève, Jacques LeBlanc and Catherine Hébert, and Jean Hébert and “Marye Doucet” are written together in one block, and in 1686 the households of Jacques LeBlanc, Jean Hébert and Antoine Hébert follow one another; adjacency in the rolls proves nothing on its own. He is a different man from Jean Hébert, the son of Étienne Hébert and Marie Gaudet, who was thirteen in 1671.

Marriage and children

The marriage about 1676 is the reckoning of Arsenault and Cormier; no record of it survives, because the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. The son of one year in 1678 fits Jacques, whom Arsenault places in 1677. Arsenault lists the children as Jacques, 1677; Pierre, 1679; Jean, 1681; Jeanne, 1683; Joseph, 1686; René, 1688; Christophe, 1689; Augustin, 1691; and Madeleine, 1694. Cormier counts fourteen, eight sons and six daughters, born between 1677 and the early 1700s, and the birth of Joseph in November 1685 is his.

The two censuses cannot both be complete as they stand: the eldest child in 1686 was Jacques, nine, yet the list of 1693 opens with Jean, fifteen, and Matieu, thirteen, both older than the Jacques, eleven, and Pierre, nine, who follow them, and it leaves out Jeanne and Joseph. Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres prints the 1686 household with a Mathieu, four, as well.

The census of 1693

The household is placed at Les Mines in 1693, the census listing it under “A list of the inhabitants of Mines”. Cormier has the family counted at Minas in the early 1690s, and Arsenault writes that Jean “s’est établi a Grand-Pré”.

Joseph Hébert

The census of 1686 lists a Joseph, two months old, in the household, and the list of 1693 does not. Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens has Joseph, born in 1686 and “fils de Jean et d’Anne Doucet”, settling at Beaubassin, and names him in the same work as the husband of Anne Boudrot; Cormier has him born at Port-Royal in November 1685 and married to Anne-Marie Boudrot about 1707. The compilers do not agree on her parents, and another passage of Arsenault gives Joseph a first wife. No act names the Beaubassin Joseph Hébert’s parents, so the link is probable, not proved.

Death

Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (volume 3, page 1183) says of Jean, “Il fut inhumé a Saint-Charles-des-Mines, le 3 novembre 1710”. Cormier has Jean dying probably at Minas about 1707, in his fifties, and Anne dying at Grand-Pré in November 1710.