♂Joseph Dugas

Joseph Dugas was an Acadian of Cobequid^W, the husband of Claire Bourg, known from a handful of entries in the Grand-Pré church register and from two declarations made by his family in exile on Belle-Île-en-Mer, off the coast of Brittany, in 1767. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Josèphe Dugas (died 1747).

Family

Joseph was born at Port-Royal about 1680, the son of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois, and the census of 1686 lists him, aged six, in their household. No record of his baptism or of his marriage to Claire Bourg has been found. The registers kept at Cobequid itself have not been found, and the settlement’s families appear only in the register of Grand-Pré. On 27 February 1767 his granddaughter Marie-Josèphe Dupuis, the widow of Pierre Theriot, declared before witnesses on Belle-Île that her mother, Marie-Josèphe Dugas, had been born at Cobequid in 1703 to Joseph Dugas and Claire Bourg of Cobequid, and that Joseph’s parents, Claude Dugas and a wife she called Marie Bourgeois, of Port Royal, had both died there. The declaration was printed in French in the abbé Casgrain’s Collection de documents inédits sur le Canada et l’Amérique, and in English translation in the Attakapas Gazette in 1983.

In 1698 the Port-Royal census lists Joseph, aged 18 and unmarried, in his father Claude Dugas’s household, and Claire, aged 15 and unmarried, in her father Bernard Bourg’s household. Joseph and Claire most likely married about 1699, and both had left their parents’ homes by the census of 1700. The census of Cobequid for 1703 lists Joseph Dugas with his wife, a boy, a girl and an arms bearer. In 1707 both are named together, written “Joseph Dugast, Clair Bourg”, with a boy under fourteen and two girls under twelve in the household. The census of 1714 lists Joseph Dugas with his wife, four sons and three daughters.

The Grand-Pré register records a son, Alexis, born on 24 June 1708 and baptized at Cobequid on 15 July 1708, with Alexis Aucoin and Louise Aucoin as his godparents. On 17 June 1734 another son, Paul Dugas, of Cobequid, about 25 years old, married Anne Marie Hebert; the entry names Joseph Dugas and Claire Bourg as his parents. A Joseph Dugas who signed with a mark was among the witnesses, but the register does not say whether he was the groom’s father. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana names a further son, Jean-Baptiste, who was married three times, the third time in exile at Saint-Suliac, in France, in 1760.

A further son, Claude Dugas, of the parish of Saint-Louis, married Marguerite Cyr (written “Cire” in the register) at Port-La-Joye^W on Île Saint-Jean^W on 10 September 1753, after three banns^W had been published. He was the son of Joseph Dugas and Claire Bourg of Acadia. The bride was the daughter of Louis Cyr and Marguerite Josèphe Michel of the parish where they married; in 1752 Marguerite, then 25, was still living with her parents on the island.

According to the 1767 declaration, the daughter Marie Josèphe married Antoine Dupuis at Cobequid, in the parish of Saints-Pierre-et-Paul, in 1719, and their children were born at Rivière-aux-Canards, where Antoine died in March 1747 and Marie Josèphe in the same year.

Notes

A second declaration made on Belle-Île in 1767, by Honoré Daigre, the widower of Joseph’s granddaughter Françoise-Ozide Dupuis, also gives Marie-Josèphe Dugas’s birth at Cobequid in 1703 and names Joseph’s parents as Claude Dugas and Marie Bourgeois. The tree follows the census of 1686, which names Claude’s wife as Françoise Bourgeois, over the two declarations, which call her Marie; a third declaration, made by Jean-Baptiste LeBlanc, names Françoise Bourgeois as Claude Dugas’s wife. Its English translation calls Joseph’s wife Marie Bourg, and the English translation of the first declaration spells her surname “Bouig”; the French printing of both declarations gives Claire Bourg, as does the Grand-Pré register.

The Grand-Pré register also records a Joseph Dugas, son of Abraham Dugas and Jeanne Guillebaud, who married Marguerite Richard on 12 January 1711. Since the declarations make this Joseph the son of Claude Dugas, the husband of Marguerite Richard was most likely a different man. No record of Joseph’s death has been found.

The date of the marriage

Two compiled histories date the marriage differently. Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes, tome I, gives 1699, and Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens, second edition, gives about 1700. No marriage act is known, because the Port-Royal register begins in 1702. The censuses of 1698 and 1700 fit either date: both were unmarried and at home in 1698, and both had left their parents’ homes by 1700.