♀Marguerite Dugas

Marguerite Dugas (about 1681 – before 28 February 1729) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal and Les Mines^W, a daughter of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois and the wife of Jean Melancon. When her birth was recorded in 1681, her godfather was Alexandre, sieur de Beaubassin, who bore the title of the seigneury held by the commandant of Acadia. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through her daughter Marie-Josèphe Melanson (born 1713) and, most likely, her son Alexandre Melancon (born about 1717).

Early life

Marguerite was born about 1681; a printed abstract of the early registers of Beaubassin^W and Les Mines gives her birth on 19 March 1681 and names her godparents as Alexandre, sieur de Beaubassin, and Marguerite Bourgeois. The title was that of the seigneury of Beaubassin, held by Michel Leneuf de la Vallière^W, who was then the commandant of Acadia, and the godfather was most likely his eldest son, Alexandre, then about fourteen. For the daughter of a Port-Royal farmer, it was a godfather from the colony’s ruling family.

In the census of Port-Royal in 1686 she was five, the fifth of eight children in the household of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois. Seven years later, aged eleven, she was living with her parents, brothers and sisters in the household of her grandfather, the gunsmith Abraham Dugast. Her mother died within the next few years, and by 1698 her father had married again, to Marguerite Bourg.

Les Mines

Her elder sister Marie had married Philippe Melancon, the eldest son of Pierre Melancon dit La Verdure, one of the leading settlers of Les Mines. Marguerite married his younger brother Jean, and the wedding is said to have taken place at Saint-Charles-des-Mines on 11 January 1701. The couple made their home at Grand-Pré, in the Minas Basin. In 1714 Jean, aged 33, was counted there with Marguerite and five children, three sons and two daughters, among them Paul, six, Pierre, four, and Marie-Josèphe, a year old.

She bore at least nine children: Marguerite, probably the eldest, Jean-Baptiste, Paul, Pierre, Marie-Josèphe, Jacques, Madeleine, Cécile and Étienne. The register of the parish of Saint-Charles records the baptisms of Pierre on 4 September 1710 and of Madeleine on 25 February 1720. Her last child, Étienne, was born on 11 July 1724 and baptized the next day, with the parish’s surgeon-major, Étienne Racois, as his godfather.

Death

Marguerite died within the next five years, before 28 February 1729; the exact date and place of her death are not known. When her son Jean-Baptiste married Madeleine LeBlanc at Grand-Pré on 28 February 1729, the register named her as deceased, and it did so again at the marriages of Marie-Josèphe in 1732, Pierre in 1734 and Madeleine in 1739. Jean outlived her and signed the register as a witness at the weddings of Jean-Baptiste, Marie-Josèphe, Madeleine and Cécile.

Lines of descent

The first line runs through the couple’s daughter Marie-Josèphe Melanson (born 1713), seven generations above Floyd. Her son François Hebert, most likely, is the next link: his son Charles Hebert, Charles’s daughter Henriette Hebert and Henriette’s daughter Euphemie Dupuis lead to Pierre Anatole Serrett, whose daughter Ida Serrette (1903–1990) was Floyd’s mother.

The second line runs through Alexandre Melancon (born about 1717), most likely also a son of the couple and likewise seven generations above Floyd. The two lines meet again in Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette, whose parents Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) both descend from Jean Melancon and Marguerite Dugas.

Notes

Her birth

Her birth year of about 1681 comes from her ages on the census rolls of Port-Royal: five in 1686 and eleven in 1693. Lea Normandeau-Jones’s Finding Your Acadian Ancestors (2001, p. 49) prints, under the heading “Records from Beaubassin & Riviéres aux Mines 1679-1686”: “March 19 1681 - Birth Marguerite Dugas, daughter of Claude Dugas and Francoise Bourgeois. Sponsors, Alexandre Sieur de Beaubassin and Marguerite Bourgeois.” The abstract does not say where the birth took place. Her birthplace is taken to be Port-Royal, where the family was counted in 1686 and 1693; the heading of the abstract would put the entry among the Beaubassin and Les Mines records. The same page prints the marriage at Beaubassin in 1679 of her aunt Anne Dugast, widow of Charles Bourgeois, with “Mr. de la Valliers, Sieur de la Seigneurie de Beaubassin and Commandant of Acadia” and “Claude Dugast brother of the widow” among the witnesses.

The godfather

The abstract gives the godfather no surname. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 3, p. 1012) names an Alexandre Le Neuf de Beaubassin, born in 1667, son of Michel Le Neuf de la Vallière and Marie Denis, who became an ensign in Canada in 1690, a lieutenant in 1694 and a captain in 1710, and died in the wreck of the Héros on 19 September 1712. That he was the godfather of 1681 rests on the name and the title.

Her parents and marriage

The birth abstract and the census of 1686 make her a daughter of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois. Bona Arsenault’s genealogy (vol. 3, p. 1263) makes that daughter the wife of Jean Melanson, son of Pierre Melanson and Marie-Marguerite Mius d’Entremont, and gives the date and place of the marriage, 11 January 1701 at Saint-Charles-des-Mines. No act of the marriage is known; the surviving register of Saint-Charles begins in 1707.

The household and the children

Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres (1955, p. 162) prints the Grand-Pré household of 1714: “Jean Melanson, 33 ans, fils de Pierre, marié a Marguerite Dugas. Enfants: Trois garcons et deux filles, dont: Paul, 6 ans; Pierre, 4 ans ; et Marie-Josephte, 1 an.” The baptisms are from the abstract of the Grand-Pré register in Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1A: Pierre, born and baptized 4 September 1710; Madeleine, born 24 February and baptized 25 February 1720; Étienne, born 11 July and baptized 12 July 1724. Arsenault’s genealogy names ten children, from Marguerite, about 1701, to Étienne, 1724; the tenth is a son Alexandre, about 1716, who was most likely also hers.

Her death

The same abstract calls her deceased at the marriages of Jean-Baptiste (28 February 1729), Marie-Josèphe (17 November 1732), Pierre (8 June 1734) and Madeleine (23 November 1739). The entry for Cécile’s marriage to Claude Richard on 21 November 1740 names her as “Marguerite Dugast” without the word. The register spells her surname Dugas, Dugat and Dugast.

The first line

The Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1A, gives the baptism of Marie-Josèphe Melanson on 8 January 1713 at Grand-Pré, with Jean Melanson and Marguerite Dugas as her parents, and her marriage on 17 November 1732 to François Hébert, son of Jacques Hébert and Marguerite Landry, in the same volume. The baptism of her son François on 10 June 1738 is described on Marie-Josèphe’s own page.

The second line

Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 3, p. 1266) gives “ALEXANDRE MELANSON, 1716, fils de Jean et de Marguerite Dugas”. A Cormier compilation of Acadian families gives “born c1717, Minas; son of Jean MELANÇON & Marguerite DUGAS”. Both are compiled genealogies rather than parish registers. They date his birth 1716 and about 1717, and the date used here is about 1717.