♂Martin Lefebvre

Martin Lefebvre (about 1604 – buried 15 November 1651), sieur de Montespy, was an officer of the household of the King of France^W who married at La Rochelle in 1647, and the father of a girl who grew up to be a farmer’s wife at Port-Royal in Acadia. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Lefebvre (born 1649).

Origins and office

He is said to have been born about 1604 at Reims, in the parish of Saint-Symphorien, the son of Jean Lefebvre, a master goldsmith there, and Jeanne Doubleau, both of whom were dead by the time he married. By then he was in the king’s service. At his wedding in January 1647 the register called him “Sr de Montespi servant ordinaire de la Chambre”, and at his first daughter’s baptism that October he was “secretaire ordinaire de la Chambre aux deniers du Roy”, a secretary of the Chambre aux deniers, the treasury that paid the expenses of the king’s household, above all its table. In 1650 he was entered simply as “officier de la maison du Roy”, an officer of the king’s household.

Marriage at La Rochelle

His marriage contract with Barbe Bajolet, the widow of Isaac Pesseley, is said to have been signed on 16 December 1646, with Emmanuel Le Borgne^W, the business agent of the governor of Acadia, among the witnesses. Barbe had, by the same account, only lately come back from Canada. The wedding followed on 10 January 1647 in the church of Saint-Barthélemy at La Rochelle. Their daughters were baptized in the parish of Saint-Jean-du-Pérot: Louise on 29 October 1647, and Marie Lefebvre, entered as Marie Anne, who was born on 10 October 1649 but not baptized until 18 April 1650.

Death

Martin Lefebvre was buried at Saint-Jean-du-Pérot on 15 November 1651, entered by the curé as “martin [le]febure dit montespy”. Marie was just two. Barbe married again, to Savinien de Courpon, and by 1671 she was his widow at Port-Royal in Acadia, where the census of that year found Marie, aged 21, married to Étienne Comeau, a farmer.

Notes

His origins

His birth at Reims and his parents’ names come from published genealogies. Bernadette and Philippe Rossignol’s 2017 article on the Roy de Courpon de La Vernade family, in Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, gives “o ca 1604 Reims, Saint Symphorien” and names his late parents as Jean Lefebvre and Jeanne Doubleau. Denis Beauregard’s online entries on Acadian ancestors give the same parents and call Jean “maître orfèvre à Reims”, dead before 1647. Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (1994) has Martin born about 1600 in the same parish, reports that the marriage contract calls both his parents dead, and gives his age at burial as 51. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens calls him “Martin Lefebvre sieur de Montespy, originaire de Reims”. The marriage register of 1647 names no parents.

The contract and Canada

The contract is among the notarial records of La Rochelle. Beauregard names the notary as Cherbonnier, Lanctôt as “Abel Charbonnier”. Lanctôt lists the witnesses, Emmanuel Le Borgne, sieur de Coudray, first among them, and gives the words “depuis peu de retour de Canada” of Barbe and of another witness, Sébastien Thevenet dit Bon Vert. The Rossignols apply them to Martin as well: “depuis peu de retour du Canada en 1647, comme Barbe Bajolet, d’après leur contrat de mariage”. Whether Martin himself had been to Canada rests on that one compiled reading. In the marriage register, the entry for Barbe, “vefve de feu Ysaac Pessele”, goes on to mention “Port Royal de l’Acadie”.

Dates

Older compiled accounts date the marriage to 1646, the year of the contract: Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres (1955) has “a LaRochelle, en France, en 1646”, and the first volume of Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes also gives 1646. The register of Saint-Barthélemy dates the wedding 10 January 1647. In Marie’s baptism entry the day of her birth is partly unclear and is read as the tenth; her age of 21 in the census of 1671 fits a birth in October 1649.

Names

The registers write him “Martin le Fevre” at his marriage, “Martin Lefebure” at both baptisms and “martin [le]febure” at his burial, with the title “Sr de Montespi” in 1647 and “dit montespy” in 1651. The census of 1671 writes his daughter “Mariane Le Febvre” in her mother’s household and “Marie Anne Le Febvre” in her husband’s. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Comeau family names her parents as “Martin Lefebvre and Barbe Bajolet of La Rochelle, France”.