♂Pierre Melancon

Pierre Melancon (died before 3 May 1677), known as Laverdure, was a French Protestant who lived in Westminster, then a town beside London, and married an Englishwoman named Priscilla. His widow’s petition to the Massachusetts General Court^W shows that he was dead by 3 May 1677. The historians Clarence d’Entremont, Stephen White and Paul Delaney identify his family with the one that sailed for Acadia in 1657 with Sir Thomas Temple^W, and hold that his sons Pierre and Charles stayed on there as the ancestors of the Melansons of Acadia. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by nine separate lines of descent, all through his son Pierre Melancon (born about 1632), a filiation that rests on that reconstruction (see Notes), and one of those lines, through Philippe Melancon (born about 1666), the son of his son Pierre, is most likely rather than certain.

London

No record names his birthplace in France. D’Entremont supposed that he was one of the many Huguenot refugees who reached England after the fall of La Rochelle^W in 1628, but Delaney notes that no document supports this. Delaney found the family in the parish of St Martin in the Fields^W, Westminster, where children of “Petri & Priscillae” were baptized in 1637 (two sons named Petrus, on 15 August and 29 October, the surname written Meranson and Meronzo), in 1640 (a daughter, Katherina Meranzo) and in 1642 (Caroly Meranzon, a son). Delaney identifies the last as the Charles Melanson of Acadia. He also identifies with the father a “Mounsr Morysan” in the parish’s street-cleaning rate of 1638, and a “Mr Morranson” of Bow Street, Covent Garden, who in 1645 paid more than all but three of the fourteen ratepayers in the street. On 28 June 1655 a “Peter Meranton, vintner” of Westminster was granted letters of denization^W, a status that lifted some of the legal disabilities of foreigners in England, such as the bar on leaving property to children born abroad. Delaney takes him to be the same man, the “t” a misreading of the old long s^W.

Acadia and New England

Delaney places the family among those recruited by Sir Thomas Temple, whose expedition sailed in 1657 to establish the English colony of Nova Scotia. Acadia was returned to France in 1670, and Delaney reports that Pierre and Charles then settled there permanently and married into well-placed Acadian families. A reconstruction by White, quoted by Delaney, places the father’s death in New England in the winter of 1676–77. The one record of it is his widow’s petition to the General Court at Boston on 3 May 1677, in which she styles herself “the desolate Relict & Widdow of the Late Peter Leverdure”, an Englishwoman and “the relict of the said Peter Laverdure a Frenchman & Protestant”.

Lines of descent

All nine lines run through his son Pierre Melancon (born about 1632). Seven come through Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette (1903–1990), and two through Floyd’s father, Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929); the nearest are ten generations up. The lines meet again in Ida Serrette, whose parents Pierre Anatole Serrett and Amelia Pennison Daigle both descend from him; in Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc (1794–1837), whose parents Joseph Leblanc and Julie Trahan both descend from him; and finally at Floyd’s own parents, Ida Serrette and Jeffrey Delahorne, where the lines end because both of them descend from him. One of the nine, through Judith Landry (born 1728), rests on an identification that is probable rather than proved.

Notes

The link between the London family and the Acadian Melansons is the reconstruction of the historians Clarence d’Entremont, Stephen White and Paul Delaney, resting on the Boston petition, the London registers and the Acadian censuses; no single record names the Acadian Pierre as his son. Delaney reasons that the petition makes the mother English and the father French, so that the children were almost certainly born in England, and he discusses whether one of the two Petrus baptisms of 1637 is the Acadian Pierre, whose age in the Acadian censuses implies a birth about 1632, before either. The name Laverdure appears on the Acadian son as well: the census of 1686 lists him as “dit LaVerdure”, and the Grand-Pré register of his daughter Elisabeth’s marriage in 1709 styles him “Sieur de la Verdure”.

Identifications in the lines

White’s dictionary of Acadian families gives Pierre as marrying, about 1665, Marguerite Mius d’Entremont.

Two of the lines run as follows. One goes by way of Pierre’s son Pierre Melancon (born about 1671) and his daughter Françoise Melancon to Floyd’s mother, Ida Serrette; the other by way of Pierre’s daughter Elisabeth Melancon and her son Desire LeBlanc (born about 1717) to Floyd’s father, Jeffrey Delahorne.

Judith Landry (born 1728) is the open link. Her identification with the Judith who was the mother of Joseph Leblanc is probable rather than proven, so this line is most likely rather than certain; from Joseph it runs down the Leblanc and Serrett families to Floyd’s mother.