♂Jean Landry

Jean Landry was an Acadian of the parish of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré, in the district of Les Mines^W, and the father of at least twelve children, who was deported with his wife Madeleine Melançon in 1755 and carried to Boston, while their daughter Magdeleine and her family were carried across the Atlantic to England. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Magdeleine Landry (about 1722 – 1756).

Life at Grand-Pré

Jean was a son of Antoine Landry and Marie Thibodeau, who had settled at Les Mines by 1693, and he was likely born there about 1698. His wife was a daughter of Philippe Melancon and Marie Dugas of the same parish. Jean Landry and Madeleine Melançon were married by 1720: their first son, Antoine, was born on 26 October 1720 and baptized at Grand-Pré on 24 November. Over the next twenty-one years the parish register recorded the baptisms of nine more of their children, from Marguerite, born in January 1724, to Anselme, born on 19 October 1741. Two daughters have no baptism in it: Magdeleine, thought to have been born about 1722, and Osite, born about 1730, whose marriage it records in July 1747. Magdeleine married Jean Baptiste Granger and lived in the neighboring parish of Saint-Joseph, at Rivière-aux-Canards, where her children were born from 1741.

Jean could write his name. A Jean Landry, almost certainly the father, signed the entries for the baptisms of Paul in 1735 and of Simon Pierre in 1740. In November 1740 Jean was at Beaubassin^W, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, for the wedding of his eldest son: on 14 November Antoine married Anne Cormier, a woman of that parish, and the missionary priest entered Jean among the witnesses as “Jean Landry père de l’époux”, the bridegroom’s father. Jean signed the entry.

Exile

In the autumn of 1755 the British deported the Acadians of Les Mines to scattered destinations, and families were often divided between them. Jean and Madeleine were carried to Boston. Their daughter Magdeleine, with her husband and children, was held among the exiles at Falmouth, in England, where she and her husband both died in 1756. In February 1767, on Belle-Île-en-Mer, off the coast of Brittany, where many of the exiles from England had been resettled, the husbands of two of Magdeleine’s daughters declared their wives’ descent, and both recorded that Jean Landry and Magdeleine Mélançon were “tous deux transportés à Boston”, both carried to Boston. The declarations record where the couple’s own parents had died, in the parish of Saint-Charles; of Jean and Madeleine they give no death, only the deportation.

Jean and Madeleine most likely spent the rest of the exile in Massachusetts, close to their married sons Paul, Joseph and Charles: a Jean Landry, his wife Magdelaine and one boy appear beside those sons’ households on the list of Acadian families in the province that was certified at Boston on 14 August 1763 and sent to the French ambassador in London, with a plea to be taken to France. In June 1766 the same Jean Landry and his sons were on the list of families who asked the governor of Massachusetts for help to go and settle in Canada, where James Murray^W, the governor at Québec, had agreed to receive them. Jean probably died soon afterwards, in Massachusetts: when Madeleine sailed from Boston for Québec in June 1767, she went as his widow.

Notes

The 1767 declarations

The deportation to Boston rests on two declarations made on Belle-Île-en-Mer in February 1767 and printed in the Collection de documents inédits sur le Canada et l’Amérique published by Le Canada-Français: that of Jean Baptiste Thériot, the husband of their granddaughter Marie Marguerite Granger, on 15 February, and that of the brothers Joseph, Simon-Pierre and Chrysostome Trahant, the last the husband of their granddaughter Anne Granger, on 26 February. Both name Jean’s parents as Antoine Landry and Marie Thibodault, and Madeleine’s as Philippe Mélançon and Marie Dugast. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens likewise places the couple at Saint-Charles-des-Mines and has Jean deported to Boston. A third declaration of 1767, made by Jean-Baptiste LeBlanc, the husband of their daughter Marie, and printed in English translation in the Attakapas Gazette, names the same parents for Jean and calls Madeleine’s mother Catherine Dugast. It gives Marie’s birth as 29 November 1726 and her marriage as 3 November 1746; the Grand-Pré register has her born on 2 December 1726 and married on 8 November 1745.

Birth and marriage

Bona Arsenault gives Jean’s birth as 1698 and the marriage as about 1720. The Grand-Pré register, which begins in 1707, holds no act of either; the baptism of their son Antoine in November 1720 is the first record of the couple.

Their daughter Magdeleine

The Grand-Pré register holds no baptism of Magdeleine. The gap between Antoine’s birth in October 1720 and Marguerite’s in January 1724 leaves room for one child, and her birth about 1722 rests on Arsenault alone. The 1767 declarations name Jean Landry and Magdeleine Mélançon as her parents, and Arsenault gives her as their daughter and the wife of Jean-Baptiste Granger.

His signature

The printed abstract of the Grand-Pré register marks a Jean Landry as signing at the baptisms of Paul on 1 May 1735 and of Simon Pierre on 1 January 1740; at neither was he a godparent. The Beaubassin entry of 14 November 1740 names him as the bridegroom’s father and records his signature.

Massachusetts

Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (vol. II) prints the general list of the Acadian families in Massachusetts certified at Boston on 14 August 1763, on which a Jean Landry, his wife Magdelaine and one boy are followed by the households of Paul, René, Joseph and Charles Landry; Lanctôt identifies the first as Jean, the brother of François Landry, and the four as his sons. The list of 2 June 1766, printed by Placide Gaudet in the report of the Canadian Archives for 1905, enters a Jean Landry with a family of three between René Landry, six, and Charles Landry, four, and Lanctôt again identifies him with Jean, the brother of François. André-Carl Vachon’s reconstructed roll of the Acadians who went from New England to Québec counts “Magdeleine Melanson, veuve de Jean Landry”, aged sixty-eight, among the passengers of the schooners Grampus, Garrick and Two Brothers, which left Boston in June 1767 and reached Québec on 23 July. No record of Jean’s death is known; on these lists it falls between June 1766 and June 1767.