♀Marguerite Meunier

Marguerite Meunier (died before 3 June 1726) was an Acadian woman, the wife of François Michel, whose children were baptised and married at Grand-Pré in the 1710s; their daughter Marie Joseph was married there in 1712 in a triple wedding, in which three couples were married together. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marguerite Michel.

Family

She and François are thought to have married about 1695. The spring of 1712 brought the family a baptism and a wedding at Grand-Pré: their daughter Isabelle, born on 9 February, was baptized on 3 April, and on 23 May their daughter Marie Joseph married Louis Sire, of Dunkirk in France. Another daughter, Marie, was born on 18 July 1717 and baptized at Grand-Pré the same day. The censuses of 1701 and 1707 at Les Mines, and of 1714 at Pigiguit, list her in her husband’s household as his wife.

She had died by 3 June 1726, when their son Paul, aged twenty-three, married Marie Joseph Vincent at Annapolis Royal; the register calls her deceased and gives François’s parish as the Assumption at Pisiguit^W. The line descends through Marguerite Michel, presumably another of their daughters, who married Paul Doiron.

Notes

The records

The Grand-Pré baptisms of Isabelle in 1712 and Marie in 1717 name both parents, François Michel and Marguerite Meunier; they are known from the printed abstracts of the register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, published among the Catholic church records of the Diocese of Baton Rouge. The abstract of Marie Joseph’s marriage names her mother but leaves her father’s name blank; a François Michel was among the witnesses. It notes that the wedding was celebrated together with those of Antoine Prince and Anne Trahan and of François Prince and Catherine Benois. No record of the couple’s own marriage is known; Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians places it about 1695, and Marie Joseph’s birth about 1696. The rolls of 1701, 1707 and 1714 name her only as “sa femme”, his wife.

Her death

No record of her death is known. She was living at Marie’s birth in July 1717 and was dead by Paul’s marriage in June 1726. Paul’s birth about 1703 is reckoned from his age at that marriage, whose register writes Pisiguit as Pegighit.

Her daughter Marguerite

Marguerite Michel’s place in this family rests on Arsenault’s genealogy alone, which names her, born about 1706, as their daughter and the wife of Paul Doiron; no record of her baptism or marriage is known. Arsenault also names two more daughters, Cécile, about 1700, and Marie-Madeleine, about 1713, for whom no record is known either.