♂René Landry

René Landry (about 1688 – before November 1733) was an Acadian of Pisiguit^W, on the Minas Basin, who married Marie Dugas at Grand-Pré on 16 November 1711 in a double wedding, at which his brother Jean-Baptiste Landry married Marguerite Gautrot. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Joseph Landry (about 1713 – before February 1777).

Marriage at Grand-Pré

René was probably born in 1688, a son of Jean Landry and Cécile Melancon, whose home was at Pisiguit. René and Marie Dugas, the daughter of Abraham Dugast and Jeanne Guilbeau, were married at Grand-Pré on 16 November 1711, together with his brother Jean-Baptiste Landry and Marguerite Gautrot, whose family lived on the Gaspereau River. Witnesses at both weddings included Abraham Dugast and Claude Gautrot, probably the brides’ fathers. None of the four could write, and each made a mark in the register.

The wedding came a year after the British capture of Port-Royal^W, and in 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht^W gave Acadia to Britain, so the couple’s married life passed under British rule.

Family and death

Their one known child, Joseph, was born about 1713. René died before 3 November 1733, when Joseph married his cousin Marie-Josèphe Richard at Grand-Pré. The register of that marriage named René as dead, and gave the couple’s home as the parish of the Assomption at Pisiguit. The 1714 census counted René at Pisiguit with his wife and one son. A compiled genealogical dictionary of Acadian families gives his widow, Marie Dugas, as the wife of Alexandre Breau from about 1716. Set beside that marriage date, the census suggests his death fell between 1714 and about 1716; this is an inference, not a record of his death.

Notes

Sources

Both marriages, of 1711 and of 1733, are known from the published abstracts of the Grand-Pré register (Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1a). The 1711 entry names the parents of René and of Marie, notes the double wedding with Jean-Baptiste Landry and Marguerite Gautrot, and gives the witnesses and the marks of the four. The 1733 entry names Joseph’s parents as “Rene Landry, decd. and Marie Dugas, of the parish of la tres vierge de la Assomption de Pigiguit”. The birth year of 1688 is from Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians, which names Joseph, born 1713, as the couple’s only child.

Which René Landry

The Minas registers of these years name several men called René Landry. This one is fixed by his parents’ names in the 1711 entry and by his son’s marriage in 1733, which names him with Marie Dugas.

The line to Floyd

The line runs from Joseph through his daughter Osite Landry (born about 1738), whose place in Joseph’s family rests on a compiled genealogy rather than a record that names her parents; Joseph Landry’s page sets out the reasons.

The widow’s second marriage

White’s Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, page 273, gives Marie Dugas, daughter of Abraham Dugast and Jeanne Guilbeau, as the widow of René Landry when she married Alexandre Breau, about 1716. That marriage date is the compiled dictionary’s. The window for his death in the family section is drawn from it together with the 1714 census, which counts René at Pisiguit with his wife and one son.

The register abstract of Joseph Landry’s marriage, 3 November 1733 (Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1a, SGA-2,204), names the groom’s parents as “Rene Landry, decd. and Marie Dugas”. Its first witness is written “Alexandre {+} Bro”, the cross being his mark. The abstract does not give that witness’s full surname, so the link of that witness to Alexandre Breau rests on the compiled dictionary’s marriage entry.