♀Michelle Aucoin

Michelle Aucoin (died 17 December 1706) was a settler of Port-Royal in Acadia, the wife of the farmer Michel Boudrot, with whom she had come from France, and the mother of their eleven children. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by twelve separate lines of descent, through seven of her children.

Port-Royal

On 29 January 1620 a priest at Les Sables-d’Olonne, on the coast of Poitou, baptized Michelle, daughter of Martin Aucoin and Barbe Minguet, with Jehan Breau as her godfather; she is probably the Michelle of Port-Royal. She probably married Michel Boudrot about 1640 or 1641. Between about 1642 and about 1666 they had eleven children, four daughters and seven sons.

When the census of 1671 was taken at Port-Royal, the roll entered the household by Michel’s trade: “Laboureur Michel Boudrot aagé de soixante et onze ans, sa femme Michelle aucoin aagée de cinquante et trois ans” (the farmer Michel Boudrot, aged seventy-one, his wife Michelle Aucoin, aged fifty-three). Three of their daughters were married: Françoise, 29, Jeanne, 25, and Marguerite, 20. The other eight children were still at home, from Charles, 22, down to François, 5. The family kept twenty cattle and twelve sheep and had eight arpents^W of land under the plow. The household the census-taker entered just before theirs was Jeanne’s, with her husband, Bonaventure Thériot, and their four-year-old daughter.

Widowhood

In 1685, at about eighty-five, Michel is said to have been named the king’s lieutenant-general for Acadia, the colony’s judge in civil and criminal cases. The census of 1686, as transcribed, lists the couple second at Port-Royal, straight after the seigneur, with only two of their children, Michel, 26, and François, 20, still at home.

Michel died at Port-Royal, probably between 1688 and 1693. The census of 1693, as transcribed, lists Michelle as his widow, aged seventy-three, at the head of a household with her youngest son, François, and his wife, on twenty-five arpents with twenty cattle and eighteen sheep. Once again the census-taker entered her household straight after her daughter Jeanne’s. Michelle died at Port-Royal on 17 December 1706 and was buried there the next day as the wife of Michel Boudrot, “in his lifetime judge of the place”.

In 1767, Acadian exiles on Belle-Île-en-Mer^W, off the coast of Brittany, set down their family histories in declarations made before witnesses, and several of them, descended from the couple’s son Charles, took their line back to Michel and Michelle: “Charles Boudrot was the son of Michel Boudrot, who had come from France with his wife, Michelle Aucoin, and settled at Port Royal, where they both died.”

Lines of descent

Michelle Aucoin reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by twelve separate lines, all through Ida Serrette (1903–1990) on Floyd’s mother’s side. The lines run through seven of her children: Claude, Jeanne, Charles, Marguerite, Marie, Françoise and Jean. The nearest is nine generations up, through Claude. The lines meet again in Ida’s parents, Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle; in Pierre Anatole’s parents, Firmin Serrette and Euphemie Dupuis; and in Melia Thibodeaux, whose parents Leonard Thibodeau and Madeleine Ordalie Cormier both descend from her. Some links down the lines through Jeanne, among them the one through Judith Landry (born 1728), are probable rather than proved, resting on identification by age and register or on compiled genealogies.

Notes

Her parents and origin

The baptism of 1620 is the only record of her birth, and it names her mother as Barbe Minguet, not Marie Sallé; no record of her marriage survives. The identification of the baptized Michelle with the Port-Royal woman rests on her name and on the ages in the census, which fit a birth about 1618 to 1621: a fit, not a proof. Léopold Lanctôt’s compiled Familles acadiennes makes her the eldest child of Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé, born near La Rochelle in 1618; it has her come to Port-Royal about 1640 with her mother, by then remarried to Jean-Claude Landry, and marry Michel Boudrot there in 1641. John Mack Faragher’s history of the Acadians, A Great and Noble Scheme, also counts Martin Aucoin and Marie Sallé among the founding settlers and calls Michelle their daughter. Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy has her marry Michel in France about 1640, before the couple sailed, and gives the Aucoin family’s home as Cougnes, in the diocese of La Rochelle. Lanctôt and Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana make her a sister of Jeanne Aucoin, the wife of Francois Girouard of Port-Royal, and Arsenault implies the same. The declarations of 1767 say that she came from France with her husband, which fits Arsenault’s account better than Lanctôt’s.

Her age and death

Her age of fifty-three in the census of 1671 places her birth about 1618. Transcriptions of the census of 1686 give her age as sixty-five, and the transcription of 1693 gives seventy-three. Her burial record, dated 18 December 1706 in the Port-Royal parish register, says she had died the day before and gives her age as more than ninety-five; Lanctôt prefers the age from the census of 1671, which makes her about eighty-eight.

Her husband’s office

Michel Boudrot’s appointment as lieutenant-general rests on the letters patent of 1685 as quoted by Lanctôt and on the transcriptions of the census of 1686; his page gives the sources. Michelle’s burial record of 1706 also remembers him as the judge of Port-Royal.

The lines through Jeanne

Some links further down the three lines through Jeanne Boudrot rest on identification by age and register, or on compiled genealogies, rather than on a record naming the parents; Jeanne Boudrot’s page sets them out.