♂Michel Richard

Michel Richard (born about 1630) was an Acadian farmer of Port-Royal, Acadie, who at fifty-six, in the census of 1686, had a second wife aged eighteen, younger than one of the sons still living at home. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by five separate lines of descent, through five of his children, the nearest through his daughter Madeleine Richard (born about 1671).

Marriage and family

Michel married Madeleine Blanchard, a daughter of Jean Blanchard and Radegonde Lambert and about thirteen years his junior; a genealogical dictionary of the Belliveau families (Frère J.-Hervé Béliveau, 1984) places the marriage about 1656, as his first marriage. The census of 1671 lists him as a farmer of 41 at Port-Royal, with his wife, aged 28, and seven children: René, 14, Pierre, 10, Martin, 6, Alexandre, 3, Catherine, 8, and twin daughters, Anne and Madeleine, who were five weeks old. By the census of 1678 the couple had nine children, the youngest born about 1677.

Lines of descent

The five lines of descent to Floyd Amatus Delahorne run through five of his children, Madeleine, Anne, Pierre, Alexandre and Catherine Richard. Three descend on Floyd’s mother’s side, through Ida Serrette, and two on his father’s side, through Jeffrey Delahorne; the nearest is nine generations up, through his daughter Madeleine Richard. The lines meet again in Emilie Croker (born 1834) and Madeleine Ordalie Cormier (born 1827), and finally in Floyd himself, both of whose parents, Jeffrey Delahorne and Ida Serrette, descended from him. The line through Alexandre rests on the census household, since no record names his parents.

Second marriage

Madeleine Blanchard last appears with Michel in the census of 1678 and had died by about 1684. The census of 1686 lists Michel, aged 56, with a new wife, Jeanne Babin, aged 18, and six children at home: Martin, 19, Alexandre, 17, Marie, 12, Cécile, 10, Marguerite, 7, and Michel, 2; it adds that five other children were already married. His wife was thirty-eight years younger than he was, and a year younger than her stepson Martin. The census does not say which children were whose, but by her age only the two-year-old Michel can have been Jeanne’s son; the elder children were evidently Madeleine’s.

Later years and descendants

No record of Michel’s death or burial is known. His eldest son, René, the “René, 14” of the 1671 census, married Magdelaine Landry and had died by 1693, when the census already has her married to Pierre Dupuis, with three Richard children of the 1686 roll (Michel, Anne and Anthoine) in the household. In 1720 Alexandre’s daughter Jeanne married Pierre Dupuis, Magdelaine Landry’s son by that second marriage, so that Michel’s granddaughter married the half-brother of his own grandchildren; there was no blood tie between the couple through the Richards.

Notes

The census ages are approximate. Madeleine Blanchard’s age of 28 in 1671, beside a son of fourteen in the same household and a marriage about 1656, would make her very young at her marriage; the records give no other date for her birth, and none says whether the eldest children were hers.

Early life

Nothing is known of Michel’s parents or birthplace. His age is given as 41 in the census of 1671 and as 56 in that of 1686, which places his birth about 1630. No record of his baptism is known.