♀Marie Bourg

Marie Bourg (born about 1645) was an Acadian woman of Port-Royal, a daughter of the early settlers Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry, who was left a widow with ten children by 1686 and headed the household for at least fourteen years. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through her sons François Breau and Antoine Breau.

Marriage

Marie was the eldest daughter of Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry. When the census of 1671 was taken at Port-Royal she was twenty-six, and her parents’ entry counts her among their four married children. Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians has her marrying Vincent Breau about 1661, when she was about sixteen.

In the same census Marie appears with her husband Vincent, a farmer of forty, and four children of their own, Marie, 9, Antoine, 5, Marguerite, 3, and Pierre, 1. The family had nine cattle, seven sheep and four arpents^W of land.

Widowhood

Vincent died before 1686. The census of 1686 records Marie as his widow with ten children, from Antoine, 22, to a daughter only a few months old. With the elder daughter Marie, aged 9 in 1671 but no longer at home in 1686, the censuses name eleven children of the marriage, the same eleven that Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy gives the couple.

Marie was still recorded as Vincent’s widow in 1693, 1698 and 1700, and her household prospered as the children grew. The roll of 1693 lists her as a widow of forty-eight with eight children in her household. By 1693, with three sons of fifteen to twenty-two at home, it worked twelve arpents, three times the land of 1671, and kept fourteen cattle, twenty sheep, eight hogs and a gun. In 1700, at fifty-five, she still had seven children with her, among them her son François, then twenty-five, along with twelve arpents and fifteen cattle. The census of 1700 is the last census to name her.

Death

Marie died at Port-Royal on 19 September 1730 and was buried the same day. The burial entry gives her age as about eighty-six, calls her the wife of the late Vincent Breau, and names her son Jean Breau as one of the two witnesses.

Lines of descent

Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) descends from Marie Bourg and Vincent Breau by two separate lines of descent, both on his mother’s side. One runs through their son François Breau (born about 1674). The other runs through their son Antoine Breau (born about 1666), and from him through Alexandre Breau, Joseph Braux and Marie Claire Braud to Anaclet Melancon, then through the Melancon and Daigle families to Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) and Ida Serrette (1903–1990), Floyd’s mother.

The two lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle, whose parents, Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847) and Melia Thibodeaux (born about 1850), both descend from Marie Bourg and Vincent Breau.

Notes

Marie’s birth about 1645 rests on her age of twenty-six in 1671, recorded on the original roll in her parents’ household. Her place as the wife of Vincent Breau rests on her age of twenty-six in his household in the same census and on Arsenault, who gives Marie Bourg, born in 1645, daughter of Antoine and Antoinette Landry, as the wife of Vincent Brault.

Her household of 1693 is taken from the original roll; the other census entries for her own household are known here from an online transcription of the Port-Royal rolls. The transcription renders her household of 1686 twice, with different figures: she is 50 in one reading and 41 in the other, and the youngest daughter is “Susanne 2 months” in one and “Isabelle 5 months” in the other. The later censuses call that daughter Elisabeth, and Arsenault gives her as Elizabeth-Suzanne, born in 1686. Marie’s later ages, 48 in 1693, 53 in 1698 and 55 in 1700, drift as census ages often do; the 41 of 1686 and the 55 of 1700 agree with a birth about 1645.

The transcription spells her husband’s surname Brot, Breau, Brau and, in 1698, Brun; the widow and children are the same household in every year.

The death and burial of 19 September 1730 are entry 1801 in the Nova Scotia Archives’ An Acadian Parish Remembered (RG 1, vol. 26a, p. 72). The entry writes her husband’s name Brau and gives her age as about eighty-six, which puts her birth in 1644 or 1645, close to the estimate above.