♀Marguerite Gaudet

Marguerite Gaudet (born about 1688) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal whose marriage to Bernard Pellerin in 1713 was one of four marriages between the children of Pierre Gaudet and Marie Blanchard and the children of Étienne Pellerin and Jeanne Savoie. Between 1707 and 1716 two Gaudet brothers and two Gaudet sisters married two Pellerin sisters and two Pellerin brothers, so that the two households were joined four times over in a single generation. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Marguerite Pellerin (born 1718).

Life

Marguerite was probably born at Port-Royal about 1688, and grew up there among a large family of brothers and sisters. Port-Royal fell to the British in 1710^W and became Annapolis Royal, but its Acadian families stayed on their farms along the river and kept their own parish.

On 27 November 1713, in that parish, Bernard Pellerin married Marguerite Gaudet, daughter of Pierre Gaudet and Marie Blanchard, before the priest Justinien Durand. Her brother Pierre had married Bernard’s sister Madeleine in 1707, and early in 1716 two more weddings followed: her sister Jeanne married his brother Alexandre on 13 January, and her brother Bernard Gaudet married his sister Marguerite on 7 February. When Bernard and Marguerite’s own daughter Marguerite was baptized in May 1718, her godmother was that sister-in-law, “Marguerite Pellerin wife of Bernard Godet”. Bernard and Marguerite had nine children baptized at Port-Royal between 1714 and 1730, five sons and four daughters.

In 1743 she and Bernard were godparents to their granddaughter Agnes Eulalie, the daughter of Joseph Brun and their daughter Marguerite, who had been baptized at home that February, months before her parents’ wedding. Neither godparent could sign the register. Her sons Paul and Grégoire and her daughters Marie-Madeleine, Marguerite and Agnès were all married at Port-Royal between 1737 and 1752. When and where she died is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines of descent run through her daughter Marguerite Pellerin (born 1718), on Floyd’s mother’s side through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). They meet again in Floyd’s grandmother, Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents, Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847) and Melia Thibodeaux (born about 1850), both descend from Bernard and Marguerite.

Notes

Birth and parents

The marriage act of 1713 names her parents as Pierre Godet and Marie Blanchard. Her birth about 1688, as Marie-Marguerite, comes from Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 2, p. 557), a compiled genealogy, which calls her father Pierre Gaudet dit le Jeune; Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (vol. 2, p. 190) places her birth at Port-Royal.

The four marriages

All four acts are in the register of Saint-Jean-Baptiste of Annapolis Royal, and each names the same two sets of parents: Pierre Godet and Magdelaine Pellerin, 17 January 1707; Bernard Pellerin and Marguerite Godet, 27 November 1713; Alexandre Pellerin and Jeanne Godet, 13 January 1716; Bernard Godet and Marguerite Pellerin, 7 February 1716. Lanctôt dates the last to 17 January 1716 and calls Alexandre’s bride Marie; the register’s date and name are used here.

Later years

Her last certain appearance is as godmother in April 1743, when the priest wrote that the godparents “nont sut signer”. The act of Grégoire’s marriage to Cécile Prejean on 10 January 1752 marks the bride’s mother as dead but says nothing of the kind of Bernard or Marguerite, which suggests they were both still living then.

Names

The register spells her surname Godet throughout; Arsenault’s extract of the 1714 census calls her Marguerite Godin.