♀Marie Comeau

Marie Comeau (died 1708 or 1709) was an Acadian of the Minas Basin, the first wife of Pierre Giroard, who died within months of the birth of her son Etienne. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Claude Giroir (born about 1699).

Her parents were probably Jean Comeau and Françoise Hébert. The 1686 census of Port-Royal lists the household as “Jean Commeaux 30, françoise Imber 23” with the children “Marie 8, Pierre et Estienne jumeaux 6, Jean 3, Anne 1”; the surname is written “Imber” there, which transcribers read as Hébert. No record names her parents directly. With Pierre Giroard she had a son, Claude, born about 1699.

The census of 1701 lists Pierre Girouard, as the census spells his name, and his wife at the Rivière de Kiniscour in the Pisiguit district, with one son and one daughter, six arpents of land, eleven cattle, eight sheep, eight pigs and one gun. The census of 1707 lists him at Les Mines with his wife, two boys under fourteen and two girls under twelve, on four arpents with eight cattle, five sheep and six pigs, on the same page as Jean, Étienne and Pierre Commeau. Neither census gives the wife’s name or age; she is taken to be Marie because Pierre was called her widower in 1709 and each census lists only one Pierre Girouard.

She also had a son, Etienne, born on 21 December 1708 and baptized on 14 April 1709 in the church of St. Charles aux Mines at Grand-Pré, where the register names his parents as “Pierre Girouar and Marie Commeaux”. His godparents were “Etienne Commeaux and Suzanne Breaux”, which suggests she had Comeau kin nearby, but the register does not say how they were related. The godfather may have been her brother Étienne, one of the twins listed in 1686 and so born about 1680, but this is a possibility only. She did not live long after that birth: on 14 November 1709 Pierre married Marie Douaron, and the record of that marriage calls him the widower of Marie Commeaux. Her death therefore fell between December 1708 and November 1709; no record of her burial has been found. Seventeen years later, when her son Claude married Magdeleine Vincent at Annapolis Royal in 1726, the register again named his mother, as “Marie Comau, deceased”. The records spell her surname in several ways, among them Commeaux and Comau.