♂Pierre Vincent

Pierre Vincent (about 1631 – about 1687) was a French-born farmer at Port-Royal in Acadia and the husband of Anne Gaudet. Some eighty years after his death, his descendants in exile still remembered him as the man “who came from France and married at Port Royal Anne Gaudet”. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), most likely through his youngest son, Clément Vincent (about 1676 – before 1752).

Coming to Acadia

Pierre was born in France about 1631; where is not known. He is said to have sailed from La Rochelle on 25 March 1654 as one of a few new settlers aboard the Châteaufort, the armed ship of the merchant Emmanuel Le Borgne^W, which reached Port-Royal in the middle of May. By the same account, he was there when an English force under Robert Sedgwick^W took Port-Royal that summer, and the colony stayed in English hands until 1670.

Marriage and family

Pierre Vincent and Anne Gaudet were probably married at Port-Royal about 1662. Anne was a daughter of Denis Gaudet and Martine Gauthier, farmers of Port-Royal. In the census of 1671 Pierre was a farmer of forty and Anne was twenty-seven, with four children: Huguette, seven, Thomas, six, Michel, three, and Pierre, two. The household kept eighteen cattle and nine sheep and had sixteen arpents^W of plowed land. Two more children are said to have followed, Madeleine and Clément, the youngest, born about 1676.

Neither Pierre nor Anne appears in the census of 1686. Huguette was by then the wife of Jean Bastarache, Thomas and Michel, twenty and eighteen, were living together as two unmarried brothers, and the younger Pierre was listed on his own. No record of either death survives; the registers of Port-Royal before 1702 are lost. Michel and the younger Pierre later settled at Pisiguit^W.

In 1767, on Belle-Île-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany, Pierre Trahan, the husband of their granddaughter Magdelaine Vincent, declared that her father Michel was the son of “Pierre Vincent who came from France and married at Port Royal Anne Gaudet, both of them dying there”.

Notes

Birth, arrival and death

His birth about 1631 rests on his age of forty in the census of 1671. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens (vol. 2, p. 819) gives “né en 1631, arrivé en Acadie vers 1654”. The voyage of the Châteaufort and his presence at the capture of Port-Royal come from Father Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (vol. 2, p. 311), which names Pierre Vincent among the settlers on board with Michel Richard and Pierre Thibodeau and writes that he saw the capture a few days after he arrived. The death about 1687 comes from a member tree and no record supports it. Lanctôt reads the census of 1686 as showing that both Pierre and Anne were already dead.

Marriage and the census of 1671

Arsenault gives the marriage as “vers 1662”. Lanctôt gives 1662 at Port-Royal and calls the bride Anne-Marie Gaudet. The census of 1671 is given from Lanctôt’s printing of it, which calls Pierre “Laboureur” and gives “Leurs bestiaux a cornes 18 pièces et neuf brebis, leurs terres en Labour 16 arpans”. In her parents’ household in the same census Anne is “La premiere Anne Gaudet aagée de vingt cinq ans”, the first of their two married children.

The children

Arsenault lists six children: Huguette, 1664, Thomas, 1665, Michel, 1667, Madeleine, 1668, Pierre, 1669, and Clément, 1676. Lanctôt gives Madeleine’s birth as 1671, after the census, and Clément’s as 1675. The entries of 1686 (“Thomas Vincent et Michel Vincent, deux frères, garçons, âgés de 20 et 18”, and a Pierre Vincent of twenty, whom Lanctôt takes to be seventeen) are given from Lanctôt’s printing of that census (vol. 2, p. 312).

Clément Vincent

No record names Clément’s parents, and he is not in the census of 1686. Arsenault (vol. 2, p. 819 and p. 665; vol. 4, p. 1454) and Lanctôt (vol. 2, p. 312) both make him the youngest son of Pierre Vincent and Anne Gaudet. Lanctôt also names “Pierre Vincent, le Vieux” and “Clément Vincent” as the brothers who stood with Michel Vincent among the heads of families of Beaubassin and the Minas Basin who met at Grand-Pré in April 1730 and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to the King of England.

The declaration of 1767

Pierre Trahan’s declaration, made at Bangor on Belle-Île, is given from the English translation printed in the Attakapas Gazette, volume 18 (1983). It names Magdelaine Vincent, born at Pisiguit in August 1714, as the daughter of Michel Vincent and Anne-Marie Douaron.