♀Marie Lefebvre

Marie Lefebvre (born 10 October 1649) was an Acadian of Port-Royal, the wife of the farmer Étienne Comeau and the daughter of Barbe Bajolet, a widow already in her sixties when the census of 1671 was taken. The register of Saint-Jean-du-Pérot at La Rochelle records her baptism on 18 April 1650, of a child born the previous 10 October, as the daughter of Martin Lefebvre, “officier de la maison du Roy”, and Barbe Bajolet; the register spells the names “Lefebure” and “Baiolet”. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Catherine Comeau (born 1671).

Port-Royal, 1671

The census of Port-Royal taken in 1671 names Marie twice. In her mother’s household, entered as “Barbe Baiolet veufve de deffunt Savinien de Courpon aagée de soixante et trois ans”, Barbe is said to have eight children, two of them in the colony, both married daughters: “Marie Peselet aagée de 26 ans, Mariane Le Febvre aagée de 21 ans”. The two daughters’ different surnames point to different fathers; the roll names neither. Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of 1955 also makes Marie the daughter of Barbe’s second marriage, to Martin Lefebvre; the baptism register names the same couple as her parents.

On the next page Marie appears in her husband’s household: “Laboureur Estienne Commeaux aagé de 21 an, sa femme Marie Anne Le Febvre aagée de 21 an”, with one child, “une fille aagée de trois semaines nommée Catherine”. Her age agrees with her baptism record. The parish registers of Port-Royal from before 1702 are lost, and no record of the marriage survives.

Family and death

Bona Arsenault’s compiled abstract of the 1686 census, published in 1955, lists “Etienne Commeaux, 36 ans, fils de Pierre, marié a Marie Lefebvre, 35 ans”, still at Port-Royal, with four children: Alexandre, Pierre, aged 3, Catherine, aged 14, and Marie, aged 10. Arsenault’s abstract of the 1693 census records Étienne as a widower, so Marie Lefebvre most likely died between 1686 and 1693; his entry in the 1714 census at Les Mines again calls him the widower of Marie Lefebvre. Those years fall before the surviving Port-Royal registers begin.

J.-Hervé Belliveau’s compiled genealogical dictionary names two of her daughters: Catherine, the wife of Jacques Michel, and Marie, who married Claude Doucet about 1696.