♀Renée Desloges

Renée Desloges (died before September 1632) was a Frenchwoman of the parish of Saint-Pierre at Montreuil-Bellay, in Anjou^W, the wife of Nicolas Trahan and the mother of Guillaume Trahan, who took his own family to Acadia in 1636. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by 16 separate lines of descent, all through her son Guillaume Trahan (born about 1601).

Family

Nicolas Trahan and Renée Desloges belonged to the parish of Saint-Pierre at Montreuil-Bellay; Léopold Lanctôt’s compiled genealogy of the Acadian families says that they are believed to have married there about 1596. Their daughter Renée was baptized in the parish on 28 February 1612 and their daughter Lucrèce on 14 November 1614. A family study printed in the Attakapas Gazette in 1989 adds an elder daughter, Anne, baptized there on 4 February 1605, who was probably the wife of Pierre Mollay. The baptisms of their sons Guillaume and François were not found in the registers of Montreuil-Bellay, which are incomplete.

On 13 July 1627 their son Guillaume married Françoise Corbineau in the parish of Saint-Étienne at Chinon, in Touraine^W; the register names him as the son of Nicolas Trahan and Renée Desloges, and Nicolas stood first among the witnesses. On 5 September 1632, at Bourgueil, their son François was betrothed to Renée Pinsonneau of that town; the act calls him the son of Nicolas Trahan and of the late Renée Desloges, “de la paroisse de St Pierre de Montreuilbellay”, and names Nicolas first among those present, as “pere du contractant”, followed by Pierre Mollay and Mathurin Pinsonneau. Renée had died by then, and Nicolas was still living. The date and place of her death are not known.

Lines of descent

There are 16 separate lines of descent from Nicolas Trahan and Renée Desloges to Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), all of them through their son Guillaume Trahan (born about 1601). One runs up Floyd’s father’s side, through Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929), and 15 up his mother’s side, through Ida Serrette (1903–1990); the nearest is ten generations above Floyd. The lines join again at Pierre Anatole Serrett (1853–1926) and Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents both descend from the couple, and finally at Floyd himself, both of whose parents descended from them. One of the mother’s-side lines, through Judith Landry (born 1728), rests on an identification that is probable rather than proved.

Notes

Guillaume’s marriage is in the register of Saint-Étienne at Chinon (Archives d’Indre-et-Loire, 6NUM7/072/018, image 180), and François’s betrothal in the marriage register of Saint-Germain at Bourgueil (6NUM7/031/005, image 57); both acts write the father’s name Nicollas. The day of the month in the Chinon act is hard to read and could be the 17th, the date Lanctôt gives. In the betrothal the end of the mother’s surname is hard to read.

The baptisms of Renée and Lucrèce were found in the registers of Montreuil-Bellay by Geneviève Massignon, whose study “The Trahans of Acadia” was printed in translation in the Attakapas Gazette in 1988; she gives Lucrèce’s as November 1614. The day, and Anne’s baptism, come from Betty Pourciaux’s Trahan genealogy in the same journal in 1989. Pourciaux and Lanctôt both list Anne among the couple’s children, Lanctôt with a marriage in 1623 to Pierre Mollay (written Molnay). Massignon names an Anne Trahan, the wife of Pierre Mollay (written Molay), who had four children baptized at Montreuil-Bellay between 1624 and 1633, but does not say whose daughter she was. Massignon did not find the baptisms of Guillaume or François there, and calls the registers old but incomplete. These dates rest on the printed studies, not on a reading of the registers.

Lanctôt instead places the baptisms of Renée (written René) and Lucrèce at Saint-Germain de Bourgueil, on 28 February 1613 and 14 November 1614, and says that Nicolas seems to have made his home at Bourgueil, where at least two of his children were baptized; Massignon, who read the registers of both parishes, found the two baptisms at Montreuil-Bellay. The betrothal shows Nicolas at Bourgueil in 1632, but gives the family’s parish as Saint-Pierre at Montreuil-Bellay.

Guillaume’s birth is given here as about 1601; Massignon and Pourciaux give 1611, and Lanctôt about 1606. Guillaume’s daughter Jeanne Trahan is placed in his family by the historians Archange Godbout and Stephen White, from the roll of the Saint-Jehan and the Acadian censuses, and his daughter Marie Trahan by compiled genealogies and a declaration made at Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1767; neither identification rests on an act naming her parents.