♂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 of land and thirty-one cattle, in a colony where most households owned a single gun and a few arpents. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Pierre Melancon (born about 1671).

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 size of the holding set it apart: in the same roll most families at Les Mines had one gun and a handful of cattle. Seven years later, in 1693, he was recorded as sixty, still at the head of a household of nine children with twenty-five arpents, twenty-five cattle and twenty-five sheep.

His family remained close. His son Pierre’s children were baptised and married at Grand-Pré in the 1700s and 1710s with Pierre’s brothers and sisters, Paul, Philippe, Marguerite and Jean, standing as godparents and witnesses.

Notes

A compiled online family tree dates his marriage to 1665 and his death to 1723, and styles him “Sieur de Laverdure”; none of this has been checked against a record. The rolls give his wife’s name as Marie in 1686 and Marguerite in 1693.