♂Pierre Comeau

Pierre Comeau (born about 1653) was an Acadian farmer on the river at Port-Royal, the elder of two sons named Pierre in the household of the cooper Pierre Comeau. The record of his daughter’s marriage in 1715 calls him “Pierre Comeau L’aîné”, the elder, and adds his byname, “l’esturgeon”: the sturgeon. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by three separate lines of descent: two through his daughter Marie-Francoise Comeau (born about 1693), and one, a generation longer, through his son Abraham Comeau (born about 1679).

Early life

He was born at Port-Royal about 1653. He was most likely the Pierre, aged 18, whom the census of 1671 lists as the eldest unmarried child of the cooper Pierre Commeaux and his wife Rose Bayon; a younger brother, also named Pierre, was 13. The byname l’aîné set him apart from that brother, who was known as Pierre dit des Loups Marins. The records do not explain why he was called the sturgeon.

Marriage and farm

He is said to have married Jeanne Bourg, a daughter of Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry, about 1677; the Port-Royal parish registers from before 1702 are lost. The census of 1686 finds the couple next door to his brother Étienne, entered as “Pierre Como, 32 ans, et Jeanne Bourc 22 ans”, with their son Abraham, aged 7, an infant son Joseph and four daughters. They owned a gun, ten head of cattle, ten sheep and six pigs.

The farm grew with the family. By 1693 there were ten children in the house and twenty arpents^W under the plow, with fifteen cattle, twenty sheep and fifteen pigs. In 1698 thirteen children were still at home, the land worked had reached twenty-six arpents and the couple had thirty fruit trees, while their eldest daughter, Marie, was married to Claude Pitre.

The couple are said to have had eighteen children. Two of them married a brother and sister of the Pitre family, Marie to Claude Pitre and Abraham to Marguerite Pitre, and two daughters married brothers of the Thibodeau family: Elizabeth married Claude Thibodeau on 5 November 1709, and Marie-Francoise married Charles Thibodeau at Port-Royal on 19 December 1715.

Later life

The British had taken the fort in the Siege of Port Royal^W in 1710 and renamed the town Annapolis Royal, but the register of Marie-Francoise’s wedding still describes Pierre and Jeanne as “habitans de port royal”. In the census of 1714 four sons and three daughters still lived with them, and most of their married children were settled close by; three daughters lived at the Cap, a point of land west of the fort. He died at Port-Royal in April, aged about 80; the compiled genealogies disagree on the year, 1730 or 1736.

Lines of descent

Pierre Comeau reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by three separate lines of descent, all on Floyd’s mother’s side through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). Two are nine generations up and run through his daughter Marie-Francoise Comeau (born about 1693), the wife of Charles Thibodeau. The third is ten generations up and runs through his son Abraham Comeau (born about 1679), probably the Abraham aged 7 in his household in 1686.

The lines meet again in two marriages. Nicolas Thibodeaux (born 1771) and Éléonore Prejean, the parents of Anne Doralie Thibodeau (1799–1855), both descend from him. So do Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847) and Melia Thibodeaux (born about 1850), the parents of Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906).

Notes

His name

The marriage of Charles Thibodeau and Françoise Comeau on 19 December 1715, in the register of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Port-Royal, names the bride as “fille de Pierre Comeau L’aîné et de l’esturgeon et de Jeanne Bourg habitans de port royal”; the “et de” before “l’esturgeon” is the priest’s slip for the byname. A modern abstract of the 1709 marriage of Elizabeth Comeau and Claude Thibodeau gives her father as “Comeau Lainé Lesturgeon”, and Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy gives the bride of Jacques Laure dit Lamontagne, married at Port-Royal on 17 November 1708, as “Angélique Comeau, fille de Pierre dit l’Esturgeon et de Jeanne Burg”. Régis Brun’s study of the Acadians before 1755 lists L’Esturgeon, and also Loup-Marins, among the named places along the river at Port-Royal. J.-Hervé Belliveau’s compiled dictionary says he lived “dans le haut de la rivière Port-Royal”, on the upper river.

His parents

The 1671 roll names two sons Pierre in the cooper’s household, aged 18 and 13. Arsenault, Belliveau and Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (1994) all make Pierre l’aîné the son of Pierre Comeau and Rose Bayol, born in 1653; Steven A. Cormier gives about 1652. His later ages fit the elder Pierre: 32 in 1686, 42 in 1693 and 47 in 1698, as Lanctôt prints the rolls.

The censuses

The household details for 1686, 1693, 1698 and 1714 are as Lanctôt quotes the rolls; that his brother Étienne was his immediate neighbor in 1686 rests on the order of the households as Lanctôt gives them. Jeanne Bourg’s ages drift: she was 12 in 1671, but 22 in 1686, 36 in 1693 and 37 in 1698. Antoine Bourg and Antoinette Landry had two daughters named Jeanne; Pierre’s wife was the younger, aged 12 in 1671, and her elder sister married Jehan Belliveau.

Marriage and children

The marriage year, about 1677, is the one Arsenault, Belliveau, Lanctôt and Cormier all give. Cormier counts eighteen children, and Lanctôt names them with their marriages, among them Marie’s to Claude Pitre in 1696 and Abraham’s to Marguerite Pitre in 1702, both children of Jehan Pitre and Marie Pesseley. Abraham’s place as their son rests on the 1686 household and on Arsenault, who calls him “fils de Pierre et de Jeanne Bourg”. The register’s next act after the 1715 wedding, on 27 December 1715, marries Jeanne Comeau, “fille de Pierre Comeau et de Jeanne Bourgeois”, the daughter of the younger Pierre: the register keeps the two couples apart, which settles which Françoise Comeau married Charles Thibodeau.

His death

Cormier gives his death at Annapolis Royal in April 1730, aged 80. Lanctôt gives 9 April 1736 at Port-Royal, quoting his age as 80 on one page and 83 on another. Born about 1653, he would have been about 77 in 1730 and about 83 in 1736.