♂Jean Poirier

Jean Poirier (died about 1654) was one of the early French settlers of Port-Royal, who is remembered chiefly through his son: when the census of 1671 was taken at Port-Royal, Michel Poirier, then twenty, was entered as “fils de deffunct Jehan Poirié”, the son of the late Jehan Poirier. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Michel Poirier (born about 1650).

Life in Acadia

Jean Poirier is said to have come out from France as one of the hired men, or engagés^W, recruited to work in the fisheries of Nicolas Denys^W. His wife was Jeanne Chebrat. The compiled accounts of the family disagree on when the couple came: one has them sail together in 1641 aboard the Saint-François, others have them marry in France about 1648 and cross about a year later. Their son Michel was born about 1650, at Port-Royal by one account, and the same accounts give them a daughter, Marie-Françoise, who later married Roger Caissy.

Jean died in the colony while Michel was still a small child, probably about 1654 (another account gives 1652), and was still in his late twenties by the reckoning of one compiled history. Jeanne married again, to the farmer Antoine Gougeon, and in 1671 Michel was entered on the same census page as their household. By the compiled accounts, Floyd descends from Jeanne by both of her marriages: through Jean’s son Michel, and through Huguette Goujon, her daughter by Antoine Gougeon.

Notes

The dates of his life

No record of his arrival, marriage or death survives; the parish registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana has Jean Poirier come to Acadia from France in 1641 aboard the Saint-François with his wife Jeanne, to work in the fisheries established by Nicolas Denys, and die in the colony about 1654, “in his late 20s”, after fathering a son and a daughter; it has Jeanne remarry to Antoine Gougeon the year Jean died. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens and Frère J.-Hervé Béliveau’s genealogical dictionary of the Belliveau families, both of which spell her surname Chabrat, give him a birth in 1626, a marriage to Jeanne in France in or about 1648, an arrival in Acadia about 1649 and a death in 1652, and date Jeanne’s second marriage 1656. Arsenault adds that he was no doubt one of the groups of engagés who came from France to work at Denys’s fishing establishments on Cape Breton. The census of 1671 shows only that he was dead by then. The dates on this page follow Cormier’s account.

His wife’s origin

Cormier names Jeanne’s parents as Antoine Chebrat and Françoise Chaumoret of La Chaussée, in the Loudunais region of the Loire valley. The parish register of La Chaussée holds the baptism, in February 1627, of a Jeanne, daughter of Anthoine Chebra and Françoise Chaumoret, which fits her age; Stephen A. White’s genealogical dictionary of the Acadian families finds no proof that this child is the Jeanne who married Jean Poirier and Antoine Gougeon, though it calls the identification quite possible.

His daughter

Arsenault gives a daughter, Marie-Françoise, born about 1649, who married Roger Caissy of Beaubassin, and Béliveau names Marie-Françoise Poirier, daughter of Jean and Jeanne Chabrat, as the wife of Roger Kuessy; Cormier says only that the daughter married into the Caissie family.