♂Jérôme Guérin

Jérôme Guérin was an Acadian farmer of Port-Royal who, about 1701, was one of only three settlers named in the bay of Cobequid^W, at the head of the Minas Basin. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Françoise Guérin (born about 1710).

Port-Royal

In 1698 Jérôme Guérin, aged thirty-three, and his wife, Isabelle Aucoin, aged eighteen, were living at Port-Royal with no children yet; they had probably married the year before. His age puts his birth about 1665.

Cobequid

By about 1701 the family had moved to Cobequid, on the bay at the head of the Minas Basin, where Mathieu Martin is said to have held a seigneury^W since 1689. A list of the settlers of the bay from about that year names just three men: Martin Bourg, Martin Blanchard and Jérôme, written Girard Guerin.

The couple stayed. In 1703 the household was Jérôme, his wife and three daughters; in 1707 the couple, still with three daughters under twelve, were farming six arpents^W with ten cattle, six sheep and ten hogs; and by 1714 there were one son and six daughters in the household.

They are said to have had ten children in all, born between 1698 and 1725. Their daughter Elizabeth Guérin was born at Cobequid on 29 September 1704, and their son Pierre Guérin on 12 June 1712; he was baptized at Cobequid on 21 October, with Pierre Blanchard and Judith Guerin as godparents. Françoise Guérin, born about 1710, through whom the line descends, was most likely their daughter too. The records do not show when or where Jérôme died.

Notes

His name in the rolls

The census of 1698, the census of 1714 and his son Pierre’s baptism in 1712 call him Jerome Guerin. The list of about 1701 writes him Girard Guerin (a published transcription reads Giraud), and the census rolls of 1703 and 1707, as transcribed, write Giraut and Girault Guerin. The roll of 1707 pairs Girault Guerin with Isabelle Aucoin, the name the 1712 baptism gives Jerome Guerin’s wife, so the entries are taken here as one man. The census entries after 1701 rest on a published transcription of the rolls.

Birth, marriage and children

His age of thirty-three in 1698 puts his birth about 1665. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens gives 1664, has him marry Isabelle Aucoin about 1697, and lists ten children born between 1698 and 1725, among them Elizabeth (1704), Françoise (1710) and Pierre (1712). Pierre’s birth and baptism are recorded in the parish register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, as printed in abstract, which names his parents. Elizabeth’s birth date and birthplace come from a sworn declaration made on Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767 for the family of her widower, Claude Pitre, which gives her as born “de Jerome Guerin et d’Elisabeth Aucoin”.

Parents

Arsenault makes Jérôme a son of François Guérin and Anne Blanchard, of Port-Royal, and Stephen A. White’s dictionary of the Acadian families, as quoted on a published family tree, gives the same parents. Claude Pitre’s declaration of 1767 instead calls him the son of “another Jerome Guerin, who had come from France and was married to Marie Blanchard.” Arsenault has an elder Jérôme Guérin, born about 1610, married to a Marie Blanchard, so the declaration most likely names a generation further back. Neither parentage is followed here.

The first families of Cobequid

Arsenault names the families of Martin Bourg, Jérôme Guérin and Martin Blanchard, all of Port-Royal, as the first three to follow Mathieu Martin to Cobequid, and gives 1689 as the year of Martin’s seigneurial grant on the river Wecobequitk (vol. 1, p. 89). The list of about 1701 names the same three men and gives no ages, families or livestock.

Françoise’s parentage

No record names Françoise’s parents. Arsenault, in two places (vol. 4, pp. 1492 and 1529), and White’s dictionary, as quoted on a published family tree, make her a daughter of Jérôme Guérin and Isabelle Aucoin. The other evidence fits: a compiled history of the Acadians in Louisiana gives her origin as Cobequid; a Pierre Guérin aged forty, the age of Jérôme’s son, was living at Baye de Mordienne, on Île Saint-Jean, in the same settlement as her household in 1752; and she named a daughter Isabelle.