♂Thomas Cormier

Thomas Cormier (died before 1693) was a carpenter of Port-Royal in Acadia who, as a boy, was named with his parents in a contract passed at La Rochelle in 1644 to sail to Cape Breton Island, and who later took his family to the young settlement of Beaubassin^W at Chignecto, where by 1686 no other household was counted with as many cattle. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Pierre Cormier (born about 1682).

Early life

Thomas was the son of Robert Cormier, a ship’s carpenter of La Rochelle, and Marie Péraud. On 8 January 1644 a contract of engagement^W bound all three, then living in the town, to sail to Cape Breton Island, where Robert was to work for three years at Fort Saint-Pierre. Thomas was still a boy: his later census ages place his birth between about 1631 and 1636, and the age of about fifty he gave in 1685 agrees with that range. By about 1660 he is thought to have settled at Port-Royal.

Port-Royal

Thomas Cormier and Madeleine Girouard were married by 1671, when the census of Port-Royal lists Thomas, a carpenter aged 35, with his wife Madeleine, 17, a daughter aged 2, seven cattle, seven sheep and 6 arpents^W of land. Madeleine was a daughter of Francois Girouard and Jeanne Aucoin, whose household is listed in the same census. The wedding is reckoned to have taken place about 1668, when she was about fourteen and he more than twice her age. On Sunday 18 June 1673 Thomas was among the inhabitants of Port-Royal named at their assembly on church funding; like most of those present, he declared that he could not sign his name.

Beaubassin

Some time after June 1673 and before 1686 the family moved to Beaubassin, and there they prospered. In 1686 the census found Thomas, 55, and Madeleine, 37, with nine children, Pierre among them, and four guns, 40 arpents of land, 30 cattle, 10 sheep and 15 hogs. Not even the seigneur of Beaubassin had as many cattle, and only he held more land; by one account Thomas had become Beaubassin’s most prosperous settler.

In 1685 Thomas and Madeleine gave evidence at the sorcery trial of Jean Campagna, a Beaubassin farmer tried at Quebec. At the trial, Thomas gave his age as about fifty and Madeleine as about thirty-one. Both told of a day in 1678 when Campagna, called Campagnard in the depositions, offered at their house to bet a pistole that Pierre Mercier would not marry François Pellerin’s daughter on his return from Port-Royal; Madeleine wanted to take the bet. Thomas added that Pellerin died before Mercier came back, and that Godin dit Chatillon had told him several times that Campagnard had bewitched him.

Thomas died between 1686 and 1693, most likely around 1690. In 1693 Madeleine, 39, was listed as his widow, still at Beaubassin with seven of the children, Pierre among them, and a herd down to 16 cattle. All four of their sons are said to have married women of the LeBlanc family of Minas.

Notes

Parentage and the contract of 1644

No baptism has been found, and no surviving register or census names Thomas’s parents; the contract does. Bona Arsenault^W quotes it in his genealogy of the Acadians as hiring “Robert Cormier, charpentier de navire”, his wife, written “Péraude (Perrault)”, and “Thomas Cormier, premier fils”, the first son. Guy Perron’s 2023 transcription of the notary’s minute reads instead “Marie Péraud, son épouse, et Thomas Cormier, leur fils”, their son. The minute itself has not been seen. Arsenault and J.-Hervé Beliveau both name Robert Cormier and Marie Péraud as his parents.

Port-Royal and Beaubassin

Arsenault’s 1955 book has Thomas settled at Port-Royal about 1660. A later compilation of the Acadian families of Louisiana suggests instead that the family went home to La Rochelle when the fort’s concession ended in 1645, and that Thomas came back as a grown man after the Treaty of Breda^W returned Acadia to France in 1667. No record of the marriage survives; a compiled genealogy dates it about 1668. Compiled accounts date the move to Beaubassin from about 1672 to about 1679; the Port-Royal assembly record of 18 June 1673 names him among the inhabitants there, which rules out a move in 1672. That record survives in the French colonial archives (série E); his name is in the list of inhabitants, not among the signers. The comparisons with the other households of 1686 rest on published transcriptions of the census and on the Louisiana compilation; Arsenault makes him, within a few years of his arrival, Beaubassin’s most prosperous settler.

Death and children

A compiled genealogy places his death about 1690. No record of a death or burial is known; no parish register survives for Chignecto from those years. Compiled accounts count ten children; the censuses of 1686 and 1693 name eleven between them, with ages that do not agree from roll to roll.

The 1685 sorcery trial

The account of the 1678 wager comes from the depositions in the trial file of Jean Campagna, held by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The year 1685 comes from that file, and the depositions call him Campagnard.