♂Pierre Cormier

Pierre Cormier (25 March 1682 – before 17 July 1730) was an Acadian settler of Chignecto, the youngest son of one of the settlement’s early landholders, who headed his own household there from about 1703. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Pierre Cormier.

Early life

He was born and baptized on 25 March 1682 at Beaubassin. The register names his parents as Thomas Cormier and Madeleine Girouard (written Girouer in the register). The baptism was performed by the Recollet friar Claude Moireau. His godparents were Pierre Lallemand, a pilot of La Rochelle, and damoiselle Marie Joseph Le Neuf de La Valliere, of the family of the king’s commandant in Acadia. A godparent from the commandant’s own family was an unusual honor for a settler’s child.

The censuses of Acadia place him as a boy in the household of Thomas Cormier and Madeleine Girouard at Chignecto, aged 8 in 1686, 11 in 1693 and 16 in 1698. In 1686 his father, then 55, held 40 arpents^W with 30 cattle, 10 sheep and 15 hogs; by 1693 his mother is listed as a widow. A compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians calls him “Pierre dit Palette”, and says he married Catherine Leblanc, a daughter of Jacques LeBlanc and Catherine Hébert of Minas, about 1702; by that account two of his older brothers also married daughters of the same couple.

Household

From 1703 he appears in the censuses as the head of his own household: “Pierre Cormier and his wife” in 1703; with Catherine Leblanc and two boys under fourteen in 1707, on 6 arpents with 9 cattle, 10 sheep and 8 hogs; and in 1714 with six children, Pierre, Marie, Jean-Baptiste, Madeleine, Michel and Catherine. The compiled history counts eleven children in all. On 28 March 1715 he is on a roll of the Beaubassin inhabitants present at the proclamation of the King of England, listed with his brothers Alexis, Germain and François Cormier.

He had died by 17 July 1730, when his son Pierre married Cécile Thibodeau at Grand-Pré and the register described him as deceased, naming Catherine Leblanc as the groom’s mother.

Notes

Baptism and birth

The baptism is entered in the Beaubassin register of Catholic civil-status acts for 1679 to 1686 (Acadie et Gaspésie, Registres de l’état civil catholique, volume 1; Public Archives copy, pages 9 and 10). The entry gives the birth as the same day, 25 March 1682, and names the Recollet friar Claude Moireau as the officiant. The mother’s surname is written Girouer there, a spelling the copy also uses for another woman of that surname; she is known elsewhere as Girouard. Earlier accounts said no register survives for Chignecto before 1712; this copy covers 1679 to 1686. A compiled history of the Louisiana Acadians also gives his birth as March 1682.

Godparents

On the same page the register records the baptism, on 27 September 1681, of Barbe, daughter of Michel Le Neuf, écuyer, sieur de La Valliere and of Beaubassin, commandant for the King in Acadia, and of Marie Denis. The 1682 godmother was of that commandant’s family.

Parentage

The census households of 1686, 1693 and 1698 list him with Thomas Cormier and Madeleine Girouard. The compiled history gives the same parents.

The 1715 roll

The roll of 28 March 1715 lists the Beaubassin inhabitants present at the proclamation of the King of England. It lists men only. Pierre, Alexis and Germain Cormier stand in one column and François in the next.