♀Marie Gautrot

Marie Gautrot (about 1647 – 29 November 1732) was an Acadian resident of Port-Royal, in the colony of Acadie. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through two of her children, Germain Thériot (born about 1662) and Anne Thériot (born about 1672).

Port-Royal

Marie was a daughter of François Gautrot and Edmée Lejeune. The 1671 census of Port-Royal lists François, a farmer aged 58, and Edmée, 47, with several married children still returned in their household, including two daughters both named Marie: one aged 35, by then remarried to Michel Dupuis after an earlier marriage to a man named Potet, and Marie herself, aged 24, wife of Claude Thériot. The two Maries were probably only half-sisters — a family-history compilation of the Acadian registers, known only through a secondary quotation, gives the elder Marie’s mother as an unnamed first wife of François Gautrot rather than Edmée Lejeune, who would have been only about twelve years old at the elder Marie’s birth. That first wife has not been identified with certainty. Marie and Claude Thériot’s son Germain was born about 1662.

Claude Thériot and Marie Gautrot most likely married about 1661. The Port-Royal register begins in 1702, so the date survives only in compiled genealogies.

Later years

Claude and Marie’s household was counted in the Port-Royal census in 1678, 1686, 1693, 1698 and 1700. The 1678 roll, known as Duchesneau’s roll, returned the household of Claude Thériot with three acres, five cattle and seven children, three boys and four girls, and a land list places the family’s holding at Gros Cap. In 1686 Claude was 49 and Marie 40. In 1693 Claude was 55 and Marie 48, with eight children, and a transcription spells her surname Goutrot. By 1698 Claude was 60 and Marie 53, with six children, and by 1700 Claude was 62 and Marie 55, with eight children.

Death

Marie died at Port-Royal on 29 November 1732, at about ninety years old, and was buried the next day. The burial register calls her the widow of Claude Thériot, who had died at Port-Royal in 1725.

Lines of descent

Claude and Marie reach Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both ten generations above him. The first runs through their son Germain Thériot (born about 1662), and the second through their daughter Anne Thériot (born about 1672). Both lines come to Floyd through his father’s side, by way of Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929).

The two lines meet again in Emilie Croker (born 1834), Floyd’s great-grandmother on his father’s side. Her parents, Joseph Croquer (1811–1862) and Marie Cidalise Lambremont (born 1799), both descend from Claude and Marie, so the marriage that produced Emilie is where the two lines rejoin.

Notes

The elder Marie’s parentage rests on that secondary quotation of a published Acadian genealogical compilation, not on a register entry, and has not been independently confirmed. Frère J.-Hervé Béliveau’s genealogical dictionary of the Belliveau families, a compiled genealogy, names Claude Thériot’s mother as Périnne Bourg, where the 1671 Port-Royal census gives Perrine Rau; that conflict is unresolved. The burial record’s age of ninety would put Marie’s birth about 1642; the census of 1671, which gives her age as twenty-four, points to about 1647, the birth date used above.

Marriage

Two compiled genealogies put the marriage about 1661: Béliveau (page 11) and Arsenault (volume 2, page 804), each spelling the wife’s name differently from the other. The Port-Royal register begins in 1702, after the marriage, so no register entry of it survives.

Death and burial

The St-Jean-Baptiste burial register, printed as An Acadian Parish Remembered: Registers of St. John the Baptist (Nova Scotia Archives), gives her death on 29 November 1732, about ninety years old, as the widow of Claude Thériot. The Drouin Institute’s LAFRANCE database lists her burial on 30 November 1732 and gives her as the wife of Claude Thériot, aged ninety. Claude had died in 1725, so widow fits the register’s entry; the two entries differ on that one word.

The censuses

The 1698 census lists 12 cattle, 20 sheep, 12 hogs, 18 arpents, 50 fruit trees and one gun for the household, and the 1700 census 10 cattle, 13 sheep, 15 arpents and one gun. The 1693 return lists 12 cattle, 15 sheep, 7 hogs, 15 arpents and one gun. The 1678 roll gives three acres and five cattle, and was probably taken early in 1679. The 1671, 1686, 1693, 1698 and 1700 returns are manuscript nominal censuses of Acadia; the 1678 roll is Duchesneau’s, in translation.