♂Louis Saulnier

Louis Saulnier (born 1663 – died before 4 June 1740) was an Acadian sailor of Grand-Pré. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Jacques Saulnier (born 1685).

Life

He was born in 1663 and was a matelot, a sailor. About 1684 Louis Saulnier married Louise Bastinaux, also called Pelletier. Their first child, Jacques, was born the following year, and they are said to have had thirteen children in all, the last of them, Jean, in 1707. Etienne, the twelfth, was born about 1705.

The family belonged to Grand-Pré, in the Minas Basin, a district that grew fast in those years: eleven families had lived there in 1686, and more than 150 by 1714. In 1693 the couple were living at Les Mines, Louis then aged thirty. In the census of 1714 a Louis Saulnier and a Marcel Saulnier were listed side by side on the Rivière de la Vieille Habitation, the Vieux Logis, two of five names on that river. They were most likely Louis and his son Marcel, born about 1692, who had married at Port-Royal in 1710. Louis had died before 4 June 1740, when his son Etienne married at Beaubassin^W.

Notes

Sources

His birth year, his trade, his marriage and his children come from Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (2nd edition, volume 3), which gives him as “né en 1663, matelot” and his wife as Louise Bastinaux dit Pelletier. It names the children Jacques, Geneviève, Marguerite, Paul, Marcel, Marie-Anne, Louise, René, Pierre, Marie, a second Marguerite, Etienne and Jean, most of the later ones with an approximate year. The volume on the next generation calls Etienne a son “de Louis et de Louise Bastinaux, de Grand-Pré”. No parents are known for Louis or for Louise.

The 1714 listing

The names on the Rivière de la Vieille Habitation, and the counts of families in the Minas district in 1686 and 1714, are from Arsenault’s earlier book L’Acadie des Ancêtres (1955), which sets out the 1714 census by place. The list gives names only, without ages or relationships, so the identification of the two men with Louis and his son rests on the names, the place and the timing.

The 1693 census

The 1693 census of Acadia gives the Les Mines household as “Louis SAUNIER, sailor, 30, Louise PELTIER his wife”. The census writes his name Saunier, and its word sailor agrees with Arsenault’s “matelot”.

The 1740 marriage

The Beaubassin marriage register for 4 June 1740 (LAFRANCE act 6162097, Drouin Institute) describes the groom, Etienne, as “veuf fils de Louis Saunié et de Louise Bertinaud deffunts”: a widower, son of Louis Saunié and Louise Bertinaud, both deceased. The register spells the parents’ names Saunié and Bertinaud; this page uses Saulnier and Bastinaux.