♂Pierre Comeau

Pierre Comeau (born about 1596) was a cooper at Port-Royal in Acadia, where the census of 1671 found him aged 75 at the head of a household of nine children. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by eight separate lines of descent, through four of his children.

Port-Royal, 1671

The 1671 census of Port-Royal lists the cooper (“Tonnelier”) Pierre Commeaux, aged 75, with his wife Rose Bayon, aged 40, and “Leurs enfans neuf”, their nine children, of whom one, Estienne Commeau, aged 21, was married. Placide Gaudet’s printed transcription of the roll names the eight unmarried children, from Pierre, aged 18, down to Jehan, aged 6; two of the sons were named Pierre and two were named Jehan. Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of 1955 tells the two Pierres apart as Pierre l’aîné and Pierre dit des Loups Marins. Of the sons, Étienne was already married and was counted in a household of his own, with his wife and a daughter three weeks old. The elder of the two Jehans, aged 14, is taken to be Jean Comeau (born about 1656), one of the sons through whom the lines descend; the identification is probable rather than proved, because that entry rests on printed transcriptions of the roll, and the declarations made at Belle-Île in 1767 instead call Jean’s father another Jean Comeau from France.

The historian N. E. S. Griffiths, writing on the 1671 census, counts Pierre as one of four coopers at Port-Royal, a trade of some importance when barrels and boxes were needed to store food and goods, and credits him with sixteen cattle, twenty-two sheep and six acres of cleared land. She also notes that he was the oldest grandparent in the settlement that year; the only grandchild counted with the household was Étienne’s three-week-old daughter.

Arrival and death

Arsenault’s genealogy gives his arrival in Acadia as about 1636, and its abstract of the 1686 census lists him as a widower, with his sons Pierre and Antoine still living with him. The roll writes the surname Commeaux and Commeau. The date of his death is not known.

Lines of descent

Pierre Comeau and Rose Bayon reach Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by eight separate lines of descent, through four of their children: Étienne Comeau (born about 1650), Pierre Comeau (about 1653), and the two sons named Jean Comeau (about 1656 and about 1665). All eight run on Floyd’s mother’s side, through Ida Serrette (1903–1990); the nearest is nine generations up. The lines meet again in several later couples, notably in the marriages that produced Leonard Thibodeau (1823–1857) and Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), where both parents descend from this couple. Some of these lines pass through a probable identification: the Jehan aged 14 on the 1671 roll, taken to be Jean Comeau (about 1656).