♂Rene LeBlanc

Rene LeBlanc (born about 1657, died 3 January 1734) was an Acadian of Port-Royal and later Grand-Pré, a son of Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet and the husband of Anne Bourgeois. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), by two separate lines of descent, through his sons Jacques LeBlanc (born about 1679) and Rene LeBlanc.

Life

He was born at Port-Royal about 1657. He first appears in the Port-Royal census of 1671, aged fourteen, one of the six sons at home in the household of Daniel LeBlanc and Francoise Gaudet. About 1678 he married Anne Bourgeois at Port-Royal, and the Port-Royal census of 1678 lists the couple there with no children yet. By 1686, aged 29, he had his own household with his wife Anne Bourgeois, listed next to his parents’. In 1693 the family was listed at Les Mines, where the couple had seven children at home, among them Rene, eleven, and twin sons, Joseph and Estienne, aged five.

The census of 1701 lists the household at Grand-Pré, with his wife Anne Bourgeois, seven sons and two daughters, ten arpents of land and eighteen cattle. The censuses of 1703 and 1707 list the couple at Les Mines. When their son Rene married Elisabeth Melancon at Grand-Pré on 30 July 1709, the act named his parents as Rene LeBlanc and Anne Bourgeois, “habitants de la Grand Prée”. The Grand-Pré register records the death on 3 January 1734 and the burial the next day of a Rene LeBlanc aged about eighty; the identification with him is probable rather than certain (see Notes). Anne Bourgeois was buried as his widow in December 1747.

Lines of descent

One line runs through Rene LeBlanc the younger, who married Elisabeth Melancon in 1709, and Desire LeBlanc (born about 1717), to Floyd Amatus Delahorne’s father, Jeffrey Delahorne; a compiled genealogy (White’s dictionary, quoted online) and a 1736 godparent entry make Desire LeBlanc their son. A second runs through Jacques LeBlanc, another brother, who married Catherine Landry, and their daughter Marie Josèphe LeBlanc, who married Charles Gautrot at Grand-Pré in 1725; it continues through their son Amand Godreau (born 1732) to Ida Serrette’s father, Pierre Anatole Serrett. That this Jacques, the husband of Catherine Landry, was a son of Rene LeBlanc and Anne Bourgeois rests on a 1767 declaration made at Belle-Île-en-Mer rather than on an act; the censuses of 1686 and 1693 show a son Jacques at home. The two lines meet only in Floyd himself, whose father descends from Rene LeBlanc and Anne Bourgeois by the first and whose mother, Ida Serrette, by the second.

Notes

His parentage rests on the censuses rather than an act: he is the only Rene LeBlanc of his age on the 1671 roll, and his household sits beside Daniel’s in 1686. Honoré LeBlanc’s 1767 declaration gives Rene LeBlanc’s own death as 1732 at Port-Royal, and his wife’s as 1735; neither date matches the Grand-Pré register’s 1734 death or the December 1747 burial of Anne Bourgeois.

Birth, marriage and the later rolls

The birth at Port-Royal rests on the 1767 declaration of Honoré LeBlanc, a grandson, printed in Casgrain’s Collection de documents inédits, which says Rene LeBlanc was born and married at Port-Royal; the census ages (14 in 1671, 29 in 1686, 38 in 1693) put the year about 1657, and Placide Gaudet (1895) also gives 1657. The marriage year of about 1678 comes from the Port-Royal census of 1678, which lists the couple with no children and no stock; a compiled genealogy (White’s dictionary, quoted online) also gives 1678. The rolls of 1701, 1703 and 1707 list the couple at Grand-Pré and at Les Mines; two transcriptions of the 1703 roll count the children differently, and the 1707 children rest on one transcription, so no counts are given for those years.

Identification of the 1734 burial

The Grand-Pré (Saint-Charles-des-Mines) register, as transcribed in the Diocese of Baton Rouge’s Catholic Church Records, volume 1a (1707–1748), gives the death on 3 January 1734 and the burial the next day, in the parish cemetery, with his age given as about eighty. The burial entry names no parents and no wife. Its witnesses were Jacques and Pierre LeBlanc, his sons as the 1767 declaration lists them, and Jacques Teriot, his son-in-law, who had married his daughter Marie in 1713. The burial is therefore most likely his. The register’s other Rene LeBlancs are a generation younger. A compiled synthesis, Steven A. Cormier’s The Acadians of Louisiana, gives January 1734 at age eighty for the same man.