♀Marie Gaudet

Marie Gaudet (born about 1659) was an Acadian woman, the wife of Martin Aucoin, with whom she settled at Les Mines^W, on the Minas Basin, where in 1686 her family was one of just ten households counted on the Baye des Mines. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Isabelle Aucoin (born about 1680).

Early life

She was most likely a daughter of Denis Gaudet and Martine Gauthier, of Port-Royal. The census of 1671 lists their household with two daughters named Marie: an elder Marie, twenty-one, one of the two children already married, and a younger Marie, fourteen, still at home with two brothers who were both named Pierre. Acadian children were often named after a godparent, so two living children of one family could share a name. The younger Marie’s age agrees with Marie Gaudet’s in the censuses of 1686 and 1693.

Marriage and Les Mines

She married Martin Aucoin probably about 1672, at Port-Royal, when she was about fifteen. Their eldest son, Martin, was born about 1674. Before Les Mines the family seems to have lived for a time at Beaubassin^W, where, by later family testimony, their daughter Isabelle was born about 1679.

By 1686 the family was living on the Baye des Mines, where the census of that year counted just ten households, fifty-seven people in all. The Aucoins were among the largest of them: Martin, thirty-five, Marie, twenty-seven, and eight children from Martin, twelve, down to Cécile, seven months old, with one gun, fifteen cattle, ten sheep and six hogs.

In 1693 they were still at Les Mines, now with twelve children at home, from Martin, twenty, down to Catherine, one, and with eight arpents^W under cultivation, fourteen cattle, ten sheep and four hogs. Martin and Marie are said to have had seventeen children, born between about 1674 and 1700. Their daughter Isabelle, through whom the line descends, married Jérôme Guérin and by about 1701 had settled with him at Cobequid.

Widowhood

Martin died at Rivière-aux-Canards on 14 May 1711, aged about sixty. Marie outlived him, most likely by many years: when their son Charles married in January 1726, Martin was named as dead and she was not. More than fifty years after Martin’s death, their descendants, declaring their ancestry as exiles on Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767, remembered that Martin Aucoin and Marie Gaudet had both died at Rivière-aux-Canards. No record gives the date of her death.

Notes

Her parents

No record names her parents. The census of 1671 at Port-Royal reads, in the manuscript: “Denis Gaudet aagé de quarante six ans, sa femme Martine Gautier aagée de cinquante deux ans, Leurs enfans cinq, deux de marié. La premiere Anne Gaudet aagée de vingt cinq ans. La seconde Marie aagée de 21 ans, Pierre aagé de 20 ans, Pierre aagé de 27 ans, Marie aagée de quatorze ans tous cinq sans metiers”. Anne and the elder Marie are the two married children; the elder Marie is most likely Marie Gaudet (1651–1734), the wife of Olivier Daigre, who is twenty in her own household in the same census. The younger Marie was fourteen in 1671; Martin Aucoin’s wife was twenty-seven in 1686 and thirty-six in 1693. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 3, p. 1086) and Frère J.-Hervé Beliveau’s genealogical dictionary of the Belliveau families (p. 56) both make Martin Aucoin’s wife a daughter of Denis Gaudet and Martine Gauthier. The second Pierre’s age, 27 on the manuscript, is printed as 17 in Beliveau. Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 449) notes that the Acadians often gave a child the name of a father, a mother or, more often, a godparent, so that two or even three children of one family could bear the same name.

She is a different woman from Marie Gaudet (born about 1633), the wife of Étienne Hébert, who appears in the same census of 1671 as a widow.

Marriage and children

Arsenault gives the marriage as about 1672 and lists seventeen children, from Martin (1674) to Charles (about 1700); Beliveau also gives about 1672. The declaration made in 1767 for the family of Claude Pitre says that Martin Aucoin “married at Port Royal Marie Gaudet”. Isabelle’s birth at Beaubassin rests on that declaration; Arsenault and Beliveau place the family at Beaubassin in 1684, while other declarations give their daughter Agnès as born at Rivière-aux-Canards.

The censuses

The entry in the census of 1686 at the Baye des Mines, “Martin Aucoin 35, Marie Gaudet 27”, with Isabelle aged seven, is given from the manuscript census. The children’s names, the livestock, the count of ten households and fifty-seven people, and the whole entry of 1693, where she is written Marie Godet, rest on the transcriptions of the censuses published on acadian-home.org.

After 1711

Martin’s death and burial on 14 May 1711 are recorded in the register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, as abstracted in the Diocese of Baton Rouge’s Catholic church records, volume 1A. The same abstracts give the parents of their sons Antoine, married 20 November 1713, and Charles, married 28 January 1726, as Martin Aucoin, deceased, and Marie Godet; only Martin is marked as deceased. A Marie Godet stood godmother on 15 November 1722 to Magdeleine Aucoin, a daughter of René Aucoin and Magdeleine Bourg, and so probably to her own granddaughter. The places of death of Martin and Marie rest on the 1767 declarations.