♀Priscilla (surname unknown)

Priscilla (born about 1602), whose maiden name is unknown, was an Englishwoman, the wife of the French Protestant Pierre Melancon dit Laverdure and, on the reconstruction of historians, the mother of the Melansons of Acadia; as a widow in Boston she was fined five pounds in 1677 for selling wine without a license, and three years later she married a tavern keeper. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by nine separate lines of descent, all through her son Pierre Melancon (born about 1632), a filiation that rests on that reconstruction, and one of those lines, through Philippe Melancon (born about 1666), the son of her son Pierre, is most likely rather than certain.

Life

Priscilla married Pierre Melancon, a Frenchman living in London, and their children were baptized in the parish of St Martin in the Fields^W, Westminster, between 1637 and 1642, recorded as children of “Petrus and Priscilla Meranson”. In 1657 the family went out to Acadia with Sir Thomas Temple^W, then governing the colony for England. On Paul Delaney’s identification of the Acadian Melansons with the London family, her sons Pierre and Charles stayed in Acadia when it returned to France; she and her husband went to New England.

By May 1677 she was a widow. On 3 May 1677 she petitioned the General Court^W at Boston as “the desolate Relict & Widdow of the Late Peter Leverdure”, writing that she was “an Englishwoman, though the relict of the said Peter Laverdure a Frenchman & Protestant”. That summer the county court fined her five pounds for selling wine without a license. The historian Paul Delaney suggests she carried on the trade of her husband, who may be the “Peter Meranton, vintner” granted denization^W in Westminster in 1655. On 18 April 1680 she married Captain William Wright at Boston, a man licensed to sell wine and spirits. An inventory of her goods made at that marriage lists four silver spoons, three feather beds, a large “turkey” carpet, two dozen trenchers and a dozen pewter plates: comfortable belongings for the time, and enough tableware to suggest that the household had served food and drink to customers.

According to the historian Clarence d’Entremont, she died in New England early in 1692.

Lines of descent

All nine lines run through her 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 her; in Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc (1794–1837), whose parents Joseph Leblanc and Julie Trahan both descend from her; and finally at Floyd’s own parents, Ida Serrette and Jeffrey Delahorne, where the lines end because both of them descend from her. One of the nine, through Judith Landry (born 1728), rests on an identification that is probable rather than proved.

Notes

Her birth year rests on her age at death as reported by historians, not on a record of her birth. Her place as the Acadian Pierre’s mother is the reconstruction of Clarence d’Entremont, Stephen White and Paul Delaney; no single record names him as her son.