♂Pierre Melancon

Pierre Melancon (born about 1632), known as La Verdure, was one of the leading settlers of Les Mines, the Acadian farming district on the Minas Basin, where the census of 1686 found him with twelve guns, fifty arpents^W of land and thirty-one cattle, on a roll that counted only twenty guns, eighty-three cultivated arpents and ninety cattle for the whole settlement. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by nine separate lines of descent, through six of his children; one of these, through his son Philippe Melancon (born about 1666), is most likely rather than certain.

Origins

Depositions made at Belle-Île in 1767 say that he “came from England”, and the reconstruction published by Stephen White and by Paul Delaney holds that he was the son of Pierre Melancon, a French Protestant, and Priscilla, an Englishwoman, but no record names him as their son. On that reconstruction the family came to Acadia in 1657 with Sir Thomas Temple^W, during the years when the colony was in English hands. On 3 May 1677 a Priscilla, whom the reconstruction takes to be his mother, petitioned the court at Boston as the widow of “Peter Laverdure”, and described herself as “an Englishwoman, though the relict of the said Peter Laverdure a Frenchman & Protestant”. Pierre and, on the same reconstruction, his brother Charles stayed in Acadia, married into French Catholic families and raised their children there. In 1720 John Adams of Annapolis Royal, who knew him, still described him as “an aged English Gentleman who came into this Country with Sr. Thomas Temple … still living in Minis”. The registers of St Martin in the Fields^W, London, record the baptisms of children of “Petrus and Priscilla Meranson” between 1637 and 1642, among them a Petrus and a Carolus. Paul Delaney’s article of 2012 identifies this as the same family, the name having changed from Meranson to Melanson, and suggests that the Acadian Pierre is one of the two sons named Petrus baptized in 1637, the first on 15 August as the son of “Petri & Prisce”. The Acadian censuses, however, put Pierre’s birth about 1632, five years earlier, and no record names him as a child of that couple.

In the census of 1671 at Port-Royal he was listed as a tailor, and he refused to answer the census-taker, who noted that he had a wife and seven children. A transcription of the roll adds that he would not give his age or the number of his animals, and that his wife’s answers about their possessions were “just as crazy”. At least two neighbors, Estienne Robichaud and the cooper Pierre Lanoue, also declined to give their livestock, land or age.

Les Mines

In 1686 the census of Acadia listed “Pierre MELANCON, dit LaVerdure, 54” at Les Mines with his wife Marie Mius d’Autremont, 36, and nine children: Philippe, 20, Cecile, 18, Pierre, 16, Marie, 13, Marguerite, 10, Isabelle, 7, Jean, 5, Magdeleine, 2, and a child one day old. The roll’s own summary for Baye des Mines totals 57 persons, 20 guns, 83 cultivated arpents and 90 cattle, so his household held most of the settlement’s guns and more than half of its cultivated land. Seven years later, in 1693, he was recorded as sixty, at the head of a household of nine children with twenty-five arpents, twenty-five cattle, twenty-five sheep and two guns.

His family remained close. The censuses of 1686 and 1693 together name ten of his children: Philippe, Cécile, Pierre, Marie, Marguerite, Isabelle, Jean, Madeleine, Anne and Paul, the last of whom was two in 1693.

In 1701 he was still at Les Mines, in the part of the settlement the census-taker called “Dans la grande prée”, Grand-Pré. He was entered as “Pierre Melanson père”, living with his wife, and his son was entered as “Pierre Melanson fils” in the household that followed. His son Pierre’s children were baptized and married at Grand-Pré in the 1700s and 1710s with Pierre’s brothers Paul and Philippe standing as godfather and witnesses. Another son, Paul, married Marie Terriot, daughter of Germain Terriot and Anne Richard, at St-Charles-des-Mines, Grand-Pré, on 8 November 1712; the register names the groom’s father as Sieur Pierre Melanson and his mother as Marguerite Mius.

Two of his daughters married at Port-Royal in the next years. On 29 November 1702 Madeleine married Louis Simon Le Poupet de Saint-Aubin, chevalier de La Boularderie, an ensign of the king’s ships and captain of a company, who was the son of Antoine Le Poupet, sieur de Saint-Aubin, and Jacqueline Arnoulet of Paris. The act calls the bride the “daughter of Sieur Pierre Melançon and of demoiselle Marguerite Mius, of the parish of Les Mines”, and his wife signed it. On 15 October 1705 Anne married Thomas Jacob, son of Samuel Jacob and Judith Fillieu of Saint-Martin in the diocese of Saintes. The act names her parents as “sieur Pierre Melansson and damoiselle Marguerite Mius” and does not call either of them deceased, which suggests that he was still living that October. The act carries a signature, “P. Mellanson”, most likely his own.

Lines of descent

Nine lines run to Floyd through six of their children: two through Jean Melancon, two through Philippe Melancon, two through Pierre Melancon, and one each through Elisabeth, Cécile and Marguerite Melancon. Seven come by Floyd’s mother’s side and two by his father’s side, the nearest nine generations up. One of the two lines through Philippe, the nearer, runs through his daughter Marie Melançon and her daughter Judith Landry (born 1728), and is most likely rather than certain (see Notes). The lines meet again in three marriages: Ida Serrette’s parents, Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle; Pierre Anatole’s parents, Firmin Serrette and Euphemie Dupuis; and finally Floyd’s own parents, Ida Serrette and Jeffrey Delahorne.

Notes

A compiled online family tree dates his marriage to 1665 and his death to 1723; neither date rests on a record. The Grand-Pré register of his daughter Elisabeth’s marriage in 1709 names him “Pierre Melanson, Sieur de la Verdure”. The rolls give his wife’s name as Marie in 1686 and Marguerite in 1693, and the 1702 and 1705 marriage acts of his daughters name her Marguerite Mius. The 1701 census copy gives neither ages nor the wives’ names for the two households. His parentage rests on the reconstruction published by the historians Clarence d’Entremont, Stephen White and Paul Delaney from the Boston petition, the London baptisms and the Acadian censuses; no single record names him as the son of Pierre and Priscilla, and his census ages, which put his birth about 1632, sit awkwardly with the London baptisms of 1637.

Identifications in the lines

Marie Melançon (1699–1756), who married Antoine Landry at Grand-Pré in 1717, was the mother of Judith Landry (born 1728). Judith’s baptism at Grand-Pré names Antoine and Marie as her parents, but her identification with the Judith who was the wife of Charles Leblanc, the mother of Joseph Leblanc, is probable rather than proven, so the line is most likely rather than certain. From Joseph it runs down the Leblanc and Serrett families to Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette.

Two of the lines are named here. One runs through their son Pierre Melancon (born about 1671) and his daughter Francoise Melancon to Floyd’s mother; another runs through their daughter Elisabeth Melancon and her son Desire LeBlanc (born about 1717) to Floyd’s father, Jeffrey Delahorne. The son Pierre’s place in the family rests on census and witness evidence rather than an act naming his parents.

The two nearest meeting marriages are these. Ida Serrette’s parents, Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), both descend from the couple, and so do Floyd Amatus Delahorne’s parents: his father, Jeffrey Delahorne, descends by way of Elisabeth and his mother, Ida Serrette, by way of Pierre.

The census households and the godparents and witnesses at the family’s baptisms, marriages and burials make Francois LeBlanc a brother of Elisabeth’s husband, Rene LeBlanc, although no act says so outright; if that is right, the Melanson and LeBlanc families were joined twice in twenty years, since Francois’s daughter Anne LeBlanc married Marie Melanson’s son Germain Landry at Grand-Pré in 1729.