♂Michel Poirier

Michel Poirier (born about 1674) was an Acadian man of Beaubassin^W, on the Chignecto isthmus, and the husband of Madeleine Bourgeois. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Abraham Poirier.

Life

Michel was probably born at Port-Royal about 1674, the eldest son of Michel Poirier and Marie Boudrot. While he was still a small child, his parents left Port-Royal for the young settlement at Beaubassin, and he grew up there.

Michel Poirier and Madeleine Bourgeois married about 1698, most likely at Beaubassin. They already had a household of their own at Mesagoueche, by the Missaguash River at Beaubassin, when the census of 1698 was taken, and the census rolls of 1699, 1701 and 1703 list them again. The couple are said to have had thirteen children, born between 1699 and about 1725, and seven sons and five daughters lived to marry. The youngest, Abraham, was born about 1725. No record gives the date or place of death of either Michel or Madeleine.

Notes

Sources

His birth at Port-Royal about 1674 and his place as the eldest son of Michel Poirier and Marie Boudrot come from Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana and from Bona Arsenault’s genealogy of the Acadians. Cormier dates his parents’ move to Chignecto to the late 1670s or early 1680s; Arsenault counts his father among the settlers of Beaubassin about 1682. The census entries come from Stephen A. White’s published transcription of the Beaubassin rolls (2019), which also dates the marriage to about 1698. Cormier gives the couple thirteen children and names the families the sons and daughters married into; Arsenault lists fourteen, from Michel in 1699 to Abraham about 1725.

Two Michel Poiriers at Beaubassin

Beaubassin had two Poirier families of the same generation. Arsenault separates this Michel, son of Michel Poirier and Marie Boudrot, from Michel Poirier called de France, born about 1667, who married Marie Chiasson about 1692 and whom Arsenault takes to be a cousin. White’s transcription keeps the two households apart on every roll.

Their son Abraham

Abraham’s descent from Michel Poirier and Madeleine Bourgeois rests on compiled genealogies. White’s transcription of the Beaubassin rolls of 1752 and 1755 names Abraham, husband of Marie-Josèphe Bourg, as a son of this Michel, and takes him to be the Abraham Poirier who married Agnès Belliveau at Restigouche on 8 February 1761. The register of that marriage calls the groom “fils de Michel Poirier et de Magdelaine Bourgeois … de la paroisse de Beaubassin”. Cormier and Arsenault give the same parentage, and Arsenault places Abraham’s birth about 1725, the last of the couple’s children. The Restigouche act does not call the groom a widower, as he would have been had Marie-Josèphe Bourg died before 1761, and that is the one point the identification leaves open.