♀Marie Dugas

Marie Dugas (about 1674 – 20 September 1733) was an Acadian woman of Les Mines^W, the daughter of Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois of Port-Royal, the wife of Philippe Melancon and the mother of a large family raised in the parish of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through her daughters Marie Melançon (1699–1756) and Madeleine Melançon.

Marriage and family

In the census of Port-Royal in 1693 she was the eldest child, still unmarried, in her parents’ household with her grandparents. Philippe Melancon married Marie Dugas some time after 1693; Bona Arsenault’s genealogy of the Acadians dates the marriage about 1695. They made their home at Les Mines, where the registers of Saint-Charles-des-Mines record the baptisms of their children Anne Marie in 1710, Philippe in 1712 and Marguerite Josèphe in 1718. Their daughter Marie married Antoine Landry in 1717, and Marguerite married René Trahan in 1725. The Les Mines censuses of 1701, 1703, 1707 and 1714 list the household as “Philippe Melanson, his wife”, without naming her.

Anne Marie married Charles Babin in 1729 and then Charles Thibaudaux in 1735, Marguerite Josèphe married Paul Hébert in 1736, and their son Pierre married Marie Magdeleine LeBlanc in 1745. Bona Arsenault’s genealogy also gives a son Joseph, born about 1698, and a daughter Madeleine, born about 1700. The exiles’ declarations of 1767 name Joseph and a daughter Angélique among Philippe’s children.

Death

Marie died on 20 September 1733 and was buried the next day in the cemetery of the parish of Saint-Charles, with the notary Alexandre Bourg, who had married her husband’s sister Marguerite, among the witnesses. Her husband outlived her by eleven years. She did not live to see the deportation of 1755, which carried her daughter Marie and Marie’s husband to England, where both died at Southampton in 1756.

Lines of descent

The couple reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through their daughters. The first runs through Marie Melançon (1699–1756), who married Antoine Landry, and probably through her daughter Judith Landry (born 1728), the mother of Joseph Leblanc (born about 1756). It continues through Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc (1794–1837) and her descendants to Ida Serrette (1903–1990), Floyd’s mother. The second, one generation longer, runs through their daughter Madeleine Melançon. The two lines meet again in Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc, whose parents Joseph Leblanc and Julie Trahan (born 1765) both descend from this couple.

Notes

Her name

The Grand-Pré register calls her Marie Dugas at her daughter Marie’s marriage in 1717 and at her own burial in 1733, and Marie Dugat at Anne Marie’s baptism in 1710. The declarations made by her descendants on Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767 mostly call her Marie Dugast; one calls her Catherine and another Marguerite.

Her parents

The 1686 census of Port-Royal lists Claude Dugas and Françoise Bourgeois with the children Marie, aged twelve, and seven more. Bona Arsenault’s genealogy (vol. 2, p. 525) names her as their daughter, born about 1674, who married Philippe Melancon, and the 1767 declaration that calls her Catherine gives the same parents. She was not the Marie Dugas who married Abraham Bourg in 1709, nor the Marie Dugas, wife of André Leblanc, who was buried in the same cemetery in January 1734, aged about seventy.

Her age

The 1686 census gives her age as twelve, which fits the birth about 1674 at the head of this page. The census of Port-Royal in 1693 gives her age as seventeen, which would put her birth about 1676. The two ages do not agree; the date at the head of this page is retained and the difference is left open.

The marriage

No marriage act survives: the Grand-Pré register begins only in 1707. The date about 1695 comes from compiled genealogies. Bona Arsenault gives about 1695, Steven Cormier gives c1695 as probable, and Lanctot gives about 1696. The 1693 census shows her unmarried, and their daughter Marie was born at Les Mines in 1699.

The Les Mines households

The four censuses of Les Mines name the household “Philippe Melanson, his wife” and give the children in it: one boy and one girl in 1701, one boy and four girls in 1703, one boy under fourteen and eight girls in 1707, and two sons and five daughters in 1714.

The date of her death

The printed abstract of the Grand-Pré register gives 29 September 1733 for both her death and her burial. The Drouin Institute’s entry for the act and a compiled dictionary of Acadian families both give her death on 20 September and her burial on 21 September, and the late copy of the register shows the death on the 20th; those dates are used here.

The Judith Landry line

A baptism at Grand-Pré on 29 May 1728, entered in the 1895 copy of the register, names a girl born 12 March 1728, the daughter of Antoine Landry and Marie Melançon. Whether she is the Judith Landry counted in the 1767 lists cannot be settled from the records: the only other Judith Landry of her generation in the Grand-Pré registers married Claude Boudrot in 1747, but the registers of Pisiquid, Cobequid and Beaubassin are lost, so another Judith of the same age cannot be ruled out.