♀Marie Boudrot

Marie Boudrot (born about 1675) was an Acadian woman, born at Port-Royal, who lost her mother as a child and, with her husband Jean-Charles Trahan, raised eight children at Les Mines^W, on the river the Acadians called the Rivière des Vieux Habitants. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son René Trahan (born about 1694).

Early life

Marie was the eldest of the seven children of Charles Boudrot and his first wife, Renée Bourg, counted at Port-Royal in 1686. By 1678 her parents had four small children, and she was the older of the two girls, aged three. Her mother most likely died between about 1683, when Marie’s twin brothers Claude and Jean-Baptiste were born, and 1686. At the census of 1686 her father, forty, was listed with no wife and seven children aged three to eleven; Marie, eleven, was the eldest. Charles had married again by 1693, to Marie Corporon.

Marriage and Les Mines

By 1693 Jean-Charles Trahan and Marie Boudrot, the eldest daughter of Charles Boudrot and his first wife, Renée Bourg, had married, probably about 1692. The census of 1693 counts them in a household of their own: Jean Trahan, 23, and Marie Boudrot, his wife, 19, with four cattle, two sheep, two hogs and six arpents^W of cultivated land.

By 1701 the family had settled at Les Mines, on the Rivière des Vieux Habitants, the river now called the Cornwallis, where the census of that year counted Jean Trahan, his wife, two boys and two girls. Their farm is said to have stood in the hamlet known as the village Trahan, in what became the parish of Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rivière-aux-Canards. In 1703 the household held one boy, three girls and one man able to bear arms. The couple had eight children, born between about 1694 and 1718. Four of them married in the church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré: Marie-Josèphe in 1714, René in 1717, Joseph in 1725 and Pierre in 1729. The youngest, Marie, was born on 10 April 1718 and baptized there on 8 May.

Widowhood

Jean-Charles died before 17 October 1729, when the act of their son Pierre’s marriage at Grand-Pré called him the late Jean Trahan. The same act names Marie Boudrot as Pierre’s mother without calling her deceased. When and where she died is not recorded.

The family

Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy follows three of the couple’s sons into the deportation of the Acadians in 1755. Jean was sent to Boston and settled in 1767 at Saint-Philippe-de-Laprairie. Joseph and Pierre were deported to Virginia and taken from there to England, where both died at Liverpool: Pierre on 10 August 1756, and Joseph in 1757, after his wife, Elizabeth Terriot, had died in Virginia in 1756.

Notes

Age and childhood

Her age of eleven in 1686 puts her birth about 1675; her age of 19 in 1693 would put it about 1674. The households of 1678 and 1686 are known from published transcriptions; the transcription of 1686 calls her father a widower, while the roll gives him no wife, so her mother’s death is inferred from her absence. The transcription of 1678 counts two boys of five and four ahead of her, although she is the eldest of the seven counted in 1686.

The census of 1693

The household of 1693 is known from a transcription of the roll, which lists it among the inhabitants of Les Mines. The same transcription also places her husband’s brothers Guillaume and Alexandre Trahan at Les Mines, while the original roll lists both of them at Port-Royal, so where the young couple lived in 1693 is not certain. The censuses of 1701 and 1703 place the family at Les Mines.

Marriage and the village Trahan

The date of the marriage, about 1692, and her parentage come from Bona Arsenault’s compiled Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (volume 3, pages 1308–1309), which calls her “Marie Boudrot, fille de Charles et de Renée Bourg”; the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. The marriage itself rests on the census of 1693 and on the Grand-Pré acts of the couple’s children, each of which names both parents. Arsenault places the family “au village Trahan”, on the river he calls the “riviere de la Vieille-Habitation (de nos jours riviere Cornwallis)”, in the parish of Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rivière-aux-Canards; the census of 1701 calls the river the Rivière des Vieux Habitants.

A conflicting declaration

A declaration made at Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767 by her husband’s nephew Pierre Trahant lists among the children of Guillaume Trahan and Magdeleine Brun “Jean Trahant … marié … à Marie Boudrot, fille de Charles Boudrot et de Marie Corporont”. It gives her mother as Marie Corporon, Charles Boudrot’s second wife. Marie was born about 1675, during her father’s first marriage, and Arsenault gives Renée Bourg as her mother.

The children

The eight children follow Arsenault’s list. Marie-Josèphe, René, Joseph, Pierre and Marie appear in the register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines with both parents named. Jean, Charles and Elizabeth rest on Arsenault alone, and Elizabeth’s birth year is not known: he lists her between Charles, born in 1710, and Marie, born in 1718. The sons’ deportation and deaths in England are Arsenault’s (volume 3, pages 1309–1310).