♀Marie Marguerite Mius d'Entremont

Marie Marguerite Mius d’Entremont (born about 1650) married Pierre Melancon dit La Verdure of Les Mines and had at least ten children by him; when the census-taker reached her household in 1686, she had given birth the day before, and the roll lists “a child one day old” after her eight older children. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by nine separate lines of descent, through six of her children; one of these, through her son Philippe Melancon (born about 1666), is most likely rather than certain.

Life

She was the eldest daughter of Philippe Mius d’Entremont^W, squire, sieur of Pobomcoup on the southern coast of Acadia, and his wife Madeleine Hélie. The census of 1671 found her parents at Pobomcoup, “near the islands of Tousquet”, he aged 62 and she 45, and the census-taker wrote there that their eldest daughter Marguerite was married to Pierre Melanson; at home were three sons and a two-year-old daughter, with twenty-six cattle, twenty-nine sheep, twelve goats and twenty hogs. In the census of 1686 she is “Marie Mius dautremon”, thirty-six, at Les Mines; in 1693 the roll calls her “Marg[uerit]e Myus”, aged forty-five. A compiled online tree reconciles the two as “Marie Marguerite Anne Mius dit d’Entremont”, born about 1650. Paul Delaney’s 2012 study of the Melanson family, quoting Stephen A. White’s genealogical dictionary, dates her marriage to Pierre Melanson about 1665, when she would have been about fifteen. The same reconstruction gives her husband’s death at Saint-Charles-des-Mines after the census of 1714; no record gives her own death, though she was still living in October 1705.

Her children grew up in one of the largest households of Les Mines. The censuses of 1686 and 1693 together name ten of them: Philippe, Cécile, Pierre, Marie, Marguerite, Isabelle, Jean, Madeleine, Anne and Paul. Her son Paul married Marie Terriot, daughter of Germain Terriot and Anne Richard, at St-Charles-des-Mines, Grand-Pré, on 8 November 1712; the register names the groom’s mother as Marguerite Mius and his father as Sieur Pierre Melanson. Her son Pierre’s children were baptized and married in the parish register of Grand-Pré (a compiled online tree places his own marriage at Cobequid), and his daughter Francoise married Joseph Theriot there on 4 October 1724; her descendants reached Louisiana after the Acadian exile.

On 29 November 1702, at Port-Royal in the parish of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, her daughter Madeleine married Louis Simon Le Poupet de Saint-Aubin, chevalier de La Boularderie, an ensign of the king’s ships and captain of a company. He was the son of Antoine Le Poupet, sieur de Saint-Aubin, and Jacqueline Arnoulet of the parish of Saint-Germain-le-Vieux in Paris. The act calls the bride’s mother “demoiselle Marguerite Mius, of the parish of Les Mines”, and Marguerite signed it herself, “marguerite mius”, beside the signature of the governor, Brouillan^W. She signed her own name on her daughter’s marriage act, the only record after 1693 that names her in her own hand.

On 15 October 1705, also at Port-Royal, her daughter Anne married Thomas Jacob, son of Samuel Jacob and Judith Fillieu, of Saint-Martin in the diocese of Saintes. The act names the bride’s parents as “sieur Pierre Melansson and damoiselle Marguerite Mius” and calls neither of them deceased, so both were living that day. The same day, a “damoiselle Marguerite Mius” stood godmother at the baptism of Antoine de La Boularderie, Madeleine’s son, born 23 August 1705. The godmother was a Marguerite Mius, very likely the child’s grandmother, though other women of that name lived at Port-Royal.

Lines of descent

Nine lines run to Floyd through six of their children: two through Jean Melancon, two through Philippe Melancon, two through Pierre Melancon, and one each through Elisabeth, Cécile and Marguerite Melancon. Seven come by Floyd’s mother’s side and two by his father’s side, the nearest nine generations up. One of the two lines through Philippe, the nearer, runs through his daughter Marie Melançon and her daughter Judith Landry (born 1728), and is most likely rather than certain (see Notes). The lines meet again in three marriages: Ida Serrette’s parents, Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle; Pierre Anatole’s parents, Firmin Serrette and Euphemie Dupuis; and finally Floyd’s own parents, Ida Serrette and Jeffrey Delahorne.

Notes

Identifications in the lines

Marie Melançon (1699–1756), who married Antoine Landry at Grand-Pré in 1717, was the mother of Judith Landry (born 1728). Judith’s baptism at Grand-Pré names Antoine and Marie as her parents, but her identification with the Judith who was the wife of Charles Leblanc, the mother of Joseph Leblanc, is probable rather than proven, so the line is most likely rather than certain. From Joseph it runs down the Leblanc and Serrett families to Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette.

Two of the lines are named here. One runs through their son Pierre Melancon (born about 1671) and his daughter Francoise Melancon to Floyd’s mother; another runs through their daughter Elisabeth Melancon and her son Desire LeBlanc (born about 1717) to Floyd’s father, Jeffrey Delahorne. The son Pierre’s place in the family rests on census and witness evidence rather than an act naming his parents.

The two nearest meeting marriages are these. Ida Serrette’s parents, Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), both descend from the couple, and so do Floyd Amatus Delahorne’s parents: his father, Jeffrey Delahorne, descends by way of Elisabeth and his mother, Ida Serrette, by way of Pierre.

The census households and the godparents and witnesses at the family’s baptisms, marriages and burials make Francois LeBlanc a brother of Elisabeth’s husband, Rene LeBlanc, although no act says so outright; if that is right, the Melanson and LeBlanc families were joined twice in twenty years, since Francois’s daughter Anne LeBlanc married Marie Melanson’s son Germain Landry at Grand-Pré in 1729.