♂Jean Thibodeau

Jean Thibodeau (about 1672 – 9 December 1746) was an Acadian of the Minas settlements who could sign his name, and who appears again and again as a signing witness in the parish register of Grand-Pré. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Cécile Thibodeau (born 1712).

Life

The census of 1686 lists him at Port-Royal, aged 13, and the census of 1698 gives him as 24, both times in his parents’ household. On the census of 1701 he was still in that household, aged 27, the son of Pierre Thibodeau (written Tibaudeau on the roll), then 71, and Jeanne Thériot. On 7 February 1703 he married Marguerite Hébert at Port-Royal, before the Récollet Félix Pain, after three banns^W. The act names the parents of both: he was the son of “pierre tibodau et de jeanne teriot”, she the daughter of “emanuel hebert et andrée Brun”, and Jean signed “Jean tibeaudeau”. A compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians, following Stephen White’s genealogical dictionary, places the marriage probably at Chipoudy; the register shows Port-Royal, and the compiled history is the outlier. The same census rolls list a Marguerite in the Hébert household, aged 16 in 1698 and 18 in 1701.

By 1707 the couple had settled at Les Mines^W; the census of that year lists his household there: his wife, a boy under fourteen, a girl under twelve, three arpents of land and thirteen cattle. The census of 1714 lists him at Les Mines again, with his wife, four males and two females in the household. On 12 March 1715 he was among the inhabitants of Les Mines, Grand-Pré and the rivers round about, named on the list of that year as “Jean tibaudeaux”.

The couple’s children were baptized and married at Grand-Pré; their daughter Cécile was born there on 5 November 1712, and their son Jean-Baptiste married Marie LeBlanc on 14 January 1727, by which date Marguerite had died. Jean’s signature, written as “Tibeaudeau” or “Tibaudau”, stands on many marriages and burials of his neighbors in the register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines. At a time when most of the settlers who witnessed these acts made a mark, he signed.

He died on 9 December 1746, aged about 74, and was buried in the cemetery of the parish of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré.

Notes

Through his wife, Andrée Brun is an ancestor twice over: she was also the mother, by her first husband Germain Theriot, of another line of the same family.