♂Joseph Préjean

Joseph Préjean (born 1696) was an Acadian of Port-Royal who made his home at Chipoudy, a settlement on Shepody Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy, in what is now New Brunswick. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Basile Prejean (born about 1744).

Joseph was probably born at Port-Royal in 1696, a son of Jean Préjean dit LeBreton and Andrée Savoie. Joseph Préjean and Marie-Louise Comeau were married at Port-Royal in 1723. They made their home at Chipoudy, where they were still living in 1755, the year the deportation of the Acadians began. The records do not tell what became of them after that.

The family

Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians names seven children of the couple, born between 1725 and 1741, and a later volume adds Basile, born in 1744. In 1766 Basile was living on the Mississippi near three of the brothers Arsenault names, Amand, Joseph and Charles. Charles had married Marguerite Richard in Acadia “with the consent of the spouses’ parents, in the presence of many witnesses, in the absence of a priest”, and the marriage was blessed at New Orleans on 3 February 1766.

Notes

Dates and sources

The year of his birth, 1696, comes from Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens, which lists him among the children of Jean Préjean dit LeBreton and Andrée Savoie of Port-Royal. Arsenault gives the wedding as 28 September 1723 at Port-Royal. Stephen A. White’s edition of the census rolls of the Beaubassin region (2019) gives the marriage as 1723 at Port-Royal and lists the couple at Chipoudy on a roll of 1755. A collaborative online tree gives his birth as 1700.

Basile’s parentage

Arsenault’s entry for the family names Marguerite (1725), Amand (about 1726), Anne (1730), Joseph (1731), Charles (1735), Amable (1738) and Abraham (1741), and leaves out Basile. His later volume on the Acadians of Louisiana makes Basile, born in 1744, a son of Joseph and Marie-Louise Comeaux of Chipoudy, and a collaborative online tree agrees. Basile’s census ages, 22 in 1766 and 24 in 1769, fit a birth about 1744. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians makes Amand and Charles sons of Joseph Préjean and Marie-Louise Comeaux of Chipoudy, and quotes the New Orleans entry of 1766 for Charles’s marriage.