♂René Bernard

René Bernard was one of the early settlers of Beaubassin^W, at the head of the Bay of Fundy in Acadia. He and his wife, Madeleine Doucet, farmed and raised a family there from at least 1693, and he died between 1707 and 11 July 1713. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Bernard.

Origins

Where René Bernard came from is uncertain. He was presumably born in France about 1663, a year his ages in the censuses, thirty in 1693 and thirty-five in 1698, bear out. He is not in the census of Acadia taken in 1686, and seems to have reached Chignecto soon afterward. One genealogy makes him a mason from the Vendée; another, the son of an earlier Bernard of Port-Royal.

At Beaubassin

He and Madeleine Doucet are thought to have married about 1689 and made their home at Beaubassin, then a young settlement. At the census of 1693 he was thirty and she twenty-three; they had two sons, René, three, and Joseph, six months, with eight cattle, nine sheep, four hogs and a gun. Five years later the farm carried twelve cattle on thirteen arpents^W of land and kept a servant. Joseph, who may have died young, was gone from the roll, and the children were René, Marie and Jean-Baptiste. In 1700 René, thirty-seven, still headed the household, and by 1707 the farm had grown to fifteen cattle, twelve sheep and nine hogs, with more children at home.

Death and family

René was alive at the census of 1707 but dead by 11 July 1713, when the register of his son René’s marriage at Beaubassin called him deceased. No record of his death or burial is known. Madeleine married Pierre Doiron, perhaps about 1709, and in 1714 was his wife at Beaubassin, in a household of seven children of whom four, Jean-Baptiste, Anne, Marguerite and Michel, were probably René’s.

The couple is reckoned to have had seven or eight children, and their four sons who grew up are said to have all stayed at Chignecto. Marguerite, Anne and Jean-Baptiste married at Beaubassin in 1719, and Michel at Grand-Pré in 1729; each act names René as the father. Their daughter Marie, through whom the line runs, was most likely the Marie Bernard who married Guillaume Giroir about 1713 and raised her own family at Port-Royal.

Notes

Origins

Bona Arsenault’s genealogy gives his birth as 1663 and thinks him quite possibly the son of an earlier Bernard of Port-Royal. Léopold Lanctôt calls him a “Maçon de La Vandée”, a mason from the Vendée. Steven A. Cormier, following Stephen A. White, has him born probably in France about 1663, arriving at Chignecto soon after 1686, and no brother of the other Bernards of early Acadia; he suggests René came to work for the district’s seigneur, Michel Le Neuf de La Vallière, which no record seen bears out.

Marriages and children

The marriage about 1689 and the seven or eight children are the compilers’ reckoning; Cormier counts the four sons. Arsenault identifies Marie with Giroir’s wife, “fille de René et de Madeleine Doucet, de Beaubassin”; the census of 1700 counts a Marie, seven, in the household, but no record seen names the parents of Giroir’s wife. Michel’s entry at Saint-Charles-des-Mines, 20 June 1729, calls him the son of “Rene Bernard and Madelaine Doucet of the parish of Beaubassin”, without saying whether either was living. The register’s index calls René deceased in 1713 and at Marguerite’s and Anne’s marriages in 1719. The 1714 census of Beaubassin writes Doiron as Douaron, with “Magdelaine Doucet son espouse” and seven children, of whom Jean Baptiste, Anne, Marguerite and Michel are taken as René’s; Joseph, Paul and Pierre are not assigned to either marriage. The compilers call Madeleine René’s widow. Lanctôt dates her second marriage to 1700 in one place and 1703 in another; the census of 1707 rules out both, and Cormier’s about 1709 fits.

The censuses

The household is followed through the censuses of 1693 to 1707 in published transcriptions; those of 1701 and 1703 count the children without naming them. Lanctôt gives Madeleine’s age in 1693 as twenty-two. Five children have been counted at home in 1707; the transcription consulted gives six.