♀Marie-Josèphe Melanson

Marie-Josèphe Melanson (born about 1713) was an Acadian woman of Grand-Pré, in the Minas Basin, who bore at least nine sons there. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son François Hebert (born 1738).

Grand-Pré

She was the daughter of Jean Melancon and Marguerite Dugas. When the families of Grand-Pré were counted in 1714, she was a year old, one of five children in her father’s household.

On 17 November 1732, aged about twenty, she married François Hébert, son of Jacques Hébert and Marguerite Landry, in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré. Her mother had died before 28 February 1729. Her father signed the marriage entry as a witness, while she and François made their marks.

The couple stayed in the parish, and the children came steadily over the next eighteen years: at least nine sons, born between 1733 and about 1750, and probably a daughter, Madeleine, about 1752. Their son François was born and baptized on 10 June 1738, with a Cécile Melançon, most likely his mother’s sister, as godmother.

Exile

In 1755 the British deported the Acadians of the Minas Basin, and Marie-Josèphe, François and their children were probably carried to Maryland. Eight years later she was apparently still with them: a report of July 1763 on the Acadians at Georgetown and Frederick, Maryland, lists François with his wife Marie-Josèphe, seven of their sons and their daughter.

She died between July 1763 and 1767, most likely in Maryland. When François and their six unmarried children came to Louisiana from Maryland in 1767 and settled at St. Gabriel, on the Mississippi, he was a widower, and the marriage of their son Jean-Baptiste in 1769 names her as deceased. François died at St. Gabriel on 28 March 1789, aged seventy-nine.

Notes

Birth and age

Her own baptism, in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines on 8 January 1713, is in the abstract of the register in Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1A (1707–1748), entry SGA-1, 31. The baptisms and marriages of her brothers and sisters at Grand-Pré, from 1708 to 1747, name the same parents. The year also appears in Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 3, p. 1263, in her parents’ entry), a compiled genealogy. It agrees with two other sources: Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres (1955, p. 162) prints the 1714 Grand-Pré household of Jean Melanson, aged 33, son of Pierre, and his wife Marguerite Dugas, with three sons and two daughters, among them “Marie-Josephte, 1 an”; and her marriage entry of 1732 gives her age as about twenty.

The marriage entry

Arsenault (vol. 3, p. 1191; vol. 6, p. 2508) and the abstract of the Grand-Pré register in Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1A, agree on the date of 17 November 1732. The abstract gives the groom’s age as 23 and the bride’s as about 20, names both sets of parents, calls her mother deceased, and lists the witnesses: Jacques Hébert (his mark), Jean Melanson (signed), the notary Alexandre Bourg, Pierre Leblanc, Joseph Terriot and François Landry. The bride and groom both made marks. The register had already called Marguerite Dugas deceased by 28 February 1729 (vol. 1A, SGA-2, pp. 228–229), so her mother’s death falls before that date. The Saint-Charles-des-Mines registers survived the expulsion and are kept with the records of St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Arsenault places the wedding at Saint-Charles-des-Mines in one volume and at Grand-Pré in the other; the parish church stood at Grand-Pré.

Children

Arsenault lists ten children: Paul (1733), Alexandre (1735), François (1738), Amand (1740), Jean-Baptiste (1742), Étienne (1744), Pierre-Cajetan (1747), Joseph (about 1748), Charles (about 1750) and Marie-Madeleine (about 1752). The tree carries the nine sons. The daughter rests on Arsenault and on Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana, which counts a Madeleine, aged 14, among the children who came to Louisiana with their father in 1767. The 1738 baptism of François, with sponsors “Jacque Hubert and Cecile Melancon”, is from the same register abstract; Arsenault gives Jean Melanson and Marguerite Dugas a daughter Cécile, who married in 1740, so the godmother was most likely her sister.

Exile and death

Arsenault says the family was deported to Georgetown, Maryland. The report of July 1763 is known from Cormier’s abstract, which gives the household as “Prut. François” with his wife “Marie-Josèphe”, no surname given, seven sons, the daughter Marie-Madeleine, a Marguerite Richard and an orphan, Marie Boudrot. The identification of this wife with her rests on the given name and the sons’ names. Cormier describes François as a widower when he reached Louisiana in 1767, and the 1767 St. Gabriel settlement report, as Cormier abstracts it, lists him as a widower aged 56. The Baton Rouge diocesan abstract of the 27 March 1769 marriage of their son Jean-Baptiste names his parents as François Hébert and “Marie Josephe Melancon, decd.” No record of her death or burial is known. Her last sighting is the July 1763 report, and the 1767 settlement report already lists François as a widower, so her death falls between the two; where she died, whether in Maryland or on the way south, is not documented. Cormier’s compiled history records her husband’s death at St. Gabriel on 28 March 1789, at the age of seventy-nine.

Her name

Her surname is written Melanson and Melançon in the Acadian and Louisiana records, and the 1771 marriage of her son Étienne names her “Josette Melancon”.