♂Martin Aucoin

Martin Aucoin (about 1651 – 14 May 1711) was an Acadian settler at Les Mines^W, on the Minas Basin, where in 1686 his family was one of just ten households counted on the Baye des Mines, and he lived out his life there with his wife, Marie Gaudet, and a large family. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Isabelle Aucoin (born about 1680).

Marriage

Martin Aucoin was born about 1651. His descendants remembered him as a man who had come from France, but no record names his parents or the place of his birth. He married Marie Gaudet 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.

Les Mines

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.

Death

Martin died on 14 May 1711, aged about sixty, and was buried the same day at Grand-Pré, in the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, whose register calls him a habitant of Rivière-aux-Canards. That day was the Feast of the Ascension^W, and he is said to have died suddenly on his way home from Mass, a man who had always lived devoutly and as an example to others. More than fifty years later his descendants, declaring their ancestry as exiles on Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767, still remembered that Martin Aucoin and Marie Gaudet had both died at Rivière-aux-Canards.

Notes

His origin

The tree names no parents for him. 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) make him a son of Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé, of the parish of Cougnes near La Rochelle; Arsenault qualifies it with “sans doute”. Stephen A. White’s dictionary of the Acadian families, in its corrections, no longer makes him a son of the elder Martin Aucoin. The 1767 declarations of the exiles on Belle-Île-en-Mer, printed in English in the Attakapas Gazette, say that he came from France but name no parish.

He is a different man from the Martin Aucoin whose wife was Barbe Minguet and whose daughters Michelle and Jeanne were baptized at Les Sables-d’Olonne in 1620 and at La Rochelle in 1630; that Martin was of an earlier generation.

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”. The register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, as abstracted in the Diocese of Baton Rouge’s Catholic church records, volume 1A, names the parents of two sons at their marriages, Antoine on 20 November 1713 and Charles on 28 January 1726, as Martin Aucoin, deceased, and Marie Godet.

Beaubassin

Isabelle’s birth at Beaubassin rests on the 1767 declaration for Claude Pitre’s family. Arsenault and Beliveau place Martin at Beaubassin in 1684, while other declarations give his daughter Agnès as born at Rivière-aux-Canards, so the family’s movements before 1686 are not settled.

The censuses

His 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 rest on the transcriptions of the censuses published on acadian-home.org. The 1693 census gives him as forty-six, which would put his birth about 1647; the census of 1686 and his burial point to about 1651.

Death and burial

The register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, in the Baton Rouge abstract, records “Martin Aucoin, age ca 60, habitant de la Riviere des Canards”, died and buried on 14 May 1711. Arsenault and Beliveau give the burial as 11 May; Arsenault adds that he died suddenly on Ascension Day, coming home from Mass, «ayant toujours vécu fort chrétiennement et avec édification». Easter fell on 5 April in 1711, so Ascension Day was 14 May, which agrees with the register’s date; the date here follows the register.