♀Madeleine Bourgeois

Madeleine Bourgeois was an Acadian woman of Beaubassin^W, on the Chignecto isthmus, and the wife of Michel Poirier. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Abraham Poirier.

Life

Madeleine was probably born about 1683, a daughter of Germain Bourgeois and Magdelaine Dugas. Michel Poirier and Madeleine Bourgeois married about 1698, most likely at Beaubassin. They already had a household of their own at Mesagoueche, by the Missaguash River at Beaubassin, when the census of 1698 was taken, and the census rolls of 1699, 1701 and 1703 list them again. The couple are said to have had thirteen children, born between 1699 and about 1725, and seven sons and five daughters lived to marry. The youngest, Abraham, was born about 1725. No record gives the date or place of death of either Michel or Madeleine.

Notes

Sources

Her birth year of 1683 comes from Bona Arsenault’s genealogy of the Acadians. Her parentage rests on three compiled works that agree: Stephen A. White’s published transcription of the Beaubassin census rolls (2019), Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana, and Arsenault. The census entries come from White’s transcription, which also dates the marriage to about 1698. Cormier gives the couple thirteen children and names the families the sons and daughters married into; Arsenault lists fourteen, from Michel in 1699 to Abraham about 1725.

Two daughters named Madeleine

A Port-Royal register entry of 8 February 1724 records the marriage of Pierre Robichau to a Magdelaine Bourgois and names her parents as Germain Bourgois, then deceased, and Magdelaine Dugas. Since White, Cormier and Arsenault all make Michel Poirier’s wife a daughter of Germain Bourgeois and Magdelaine Dugas, the family appears to have had two daughters named Madeleine, the wife of Michel Poirier being the elder.

Their son Abraham

Abraham’s descent from Michel Poirier and Madeleine Bourgeois rests on compiled genealogies. White’s transcription of the Beaubassin rolls of 1752 and 1755 names Abraham, husband of Marie-Josèphe Bourg, as a son of this Michel, and takes him to be the Abraham Poirier who married Agnès Belliveau at Restigouche on 8 February 1761. The register of that marriage calls the groom “fils de Michel Poirier et de Magdelaine Bourgeois … de la paroisse de Beaubassin”. Cormier and Arsenault give the same parentage, and Arsenault places Abraham’s birth about 1725, the last of the couple’s children. The Restigouche act does not call the groom a widower, as he would have been had Marie-Josèphe Bourg died before 1761, and that is the one point the identification leaves open.