♂Martin Blanchard

Martin Blanchard (born about 1647) was an Acadian farmer of Port-Royal, a son of the early settlers Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert, who appears in the censuses of the colony from 1671 to 1714. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by four separate lines of descent, two through his son Rene Blanchard and two, less certain, through his daughter Marie Blanchard.

Port-Royal

Martin Blanchard married Françoise LeBlanc at Port-Royal, probably about 1670. In the census of 1671 Martin was listed among the married children of Jehan Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert, and also with a household of his own: a farmer of 24, with his wife Françoise LeBlanc, 18, no children yet, five cattle, two sheep and fifteen arpents^W of land. Fifteen years later, in 1686, he was 38, with three children of that first marriage, Françoise (14), Marie (12) and Rene (9), and a second wife, Marguerite Guilbeau (written Guilebault in the census), aged 18 and twenty years his junior. The household then kept one gun, nine cattle, twelve sheep and seven hogs on three arpents.

The second marriage added at least three more children, Marguerite, Pierre and Martin, who appear in the censuses of 1693 and 1698. The farm grew with the family: by 1693 it carried fifteen cattle, sixteen sheep and twelve hogs on ten arpents, and in 1698, when Martin was 53, it had ten and a half arpents, twenty fruit trees and two guns. His son Rene, then 20, was still living at home, and was still there at 23 in the census of 1700.

Cobeguit

After the Port-Royal roll of 1700, the next record that places Martin is a list of the settlers in the bay of Cobeguit, where he is named with Martin Bourg and Girard Guerin. That page gives no ages, families or livestock and carries no year; it is placed in 1701 by its order among the rolls. The records do not explain the move.

The roll of 1703 lists the household at Cobeguit as Martin Blanchard, his wife, three sons, two daughters and one able to bear arms. By the census of 1707 it was Martin Blanchard and Marguerite Guilbeau, with two sons over fourteen, one younger child, a daughter over twelve and two younger children. The farm then had eight arpents, fourteen cattle, nine sheep and nine hogs. The 1714 roll is the last one that names him: Martin Blanchard and his wife, with four males and three females in the household, under a heading that spells the place Vekopequit.

No record of Martin Blanchard’s death is known.

Lines of descent

Four lines of descent run from Martin to Floyd through two of his children, Rene Blanchard and Marie Blanchard, two through each. The nearest, nine generations above Floyd, runs through Rene. One runs down Floyd’s father’s side through Jeffrey Delahorne; three run down his mother’s side through Ida Serrette. The lines meet again in three marriages: those of Ida Serrette’s parents, Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle; of Amelia’s parents, Melia Thibodeaux and Jean Baptiste Daigle; and, last, Floyd’s own parents, Ida Serrette and Jeffrey Delahorne, since both of them descend from Martin. The two lines through Marie rest on compiled genealogies for her identification with Pierre Melancon’s wife, so they are less certain than the other two.

Notes

The records do not agree on Martin’s first wife. The census roll of 1671 itself reads “sa femme françoise Le blanc aagée de 18 ans”, while a later hand on the census of 1686 noted beside his children that they were “issus du 1er mariage avec Marie Leblanc”. A published transcription of the 1698 census glosses her as Françoise Boudrot, and the 1767 declarations call her Marie Leblanc in two recitals and Anne Leblanc in a third. She is recorded here as Françoise LeBlanc, the name the census gave her in her own lifetime. The marriage date of about 1670 is from Lanctot’s compiled Familles acadiennes; Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens gives about 1671.

On the census roll of 1700, the entry “Marie 25” in Martin’s household has a note added beside it in a later hand: “veuve de Charles Bourgeois”, widow of Charles Bourgeois. The note is not part of the original entry, and a Charles Bourgeois and his wife Marie Blanchard appear alive and together on the same roll.

The 1767 declarations also give Martin’s parents as Guillaume Blanchard, “come from France,” and “Huguet Poirier” (one declaration names her; the other says only “his wife”). The census of 1671, taken in Martin’s own lifetime, lists him instead among the children of Jehan Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert, and that parentage is followed here. The 1686 census shows Martin’s younger brother, Guillaume Blanchard, married to a wife named Huguette Goujon, the same pair of given names the declarations attach to Martin’s parents.

No surviving act names Rene Blanchard’s parents at his marriage, which predates every surviving register of the area. His identification with Martin’s son Rene of the censuses rests on the 1767 declarations, which name Martin as his father, together with the census ages, which place Martin’s Rene at home until 1700, just before a Rene Blanchard and his wife appear in the census of 1701.

Remembered in exile

Seventy years later, after the deportation of the Acadians, descendants of Martin’s son Rene living as exiles on Belle-Île-en-Mer, off the coast of Brittany, made sworn declarations of their ancestry before the local clergy in 1767. Two of them recite the same chain: Rene Blanchard “of Cobequit” was the son of Martin Blanchard, and Martin descended from a Blanchard who had come from France with his wife and settled at Port-Royal.