The Boudreaux Matriarch Was Michelle Aucoin

The topic of my post tonight was decided early this morning when I looked at my Facebook feed.  You probably aren’t surprised that I am a member of many genealogy groups on FB.  It’s what I do.  There are old photo groups, DNA groups, blogging groups, and different heritage groups.  Being a Landry, I am a member of a few Acadian groups.  They’re my people!  So I was really excited to see that the birth certificate of one of the founders of Acadie has been discovered.

Everybody knows that the Acadians originated in France.  But there haven’t been that many original documents found for those original immigrants who came to the New World about four hundred years ago.  They were some of the earliest Europeans that chose to uproot their lives and start anew in the Americas.  Many researchers through the years have been looking to find documents that can give us more information about these people.

I know my dad spent more than forty years researching our family.  He knew who Michelle Aucoin was.  She showed up in his family tree twice.  In his information, he had her parents listed as Martin Aucoin and Marie Salle.  Marie Salle was married to Martin Aucoin, but she was his second wife.  He had Michelle’s birth listed as 1618 probably in France.  But he had a few people listed as having an estimated birth year of 1618.  Both Rene l’Aine Landry and his sister Antoinette Landry were shown in his records with that year.  I remember asking him if they were twins.  He kind of chuckled and said that the dates were just estimates.  They didn’t know who was older, but they were close to the same age.  Or maybe they were twins.  It wasn’t known.

So it’s exciting when one of those old documents is discovered.  I would have been super excited if I had been the one to find that old baptismal record.  Though if I had run across it, I would have had difficulty telling what it was.  It was in cursive French, and it was written over 400 years ago!  

I don’t know what the first two lines say.  I don’t think it shows the date as most baptismal records do.  (8/2/2025 – Yes! It does!  It says the twenty-ninth day of the month of January!)  The third line starts with the word for baptism or baptize.  The third line has the good stuff.  It says, “Michelle fille de (daughter of) Martin Aucoin/et du (and of) Barbe Minguet…”  It goes on to list the parrain and marraine (godparents).

So Barbe Minguet was definitely the mother of Michelle.  Not Marie Salle or an earlier wife of Martin Aucoin.  Michelle’s younger sister Jeanne’s baptismal record had been found previously, and she has the same parents.  She was ten years younger, so there had been speculation that Michelle might have been the product of an earlier marriage.  The date for Michelle’s baptism was January 29, 1620, and it took place near LaRochelle, France.  It was found by fellow Acadian and researcher Jim Cyr.

Michelle Aucoin was married to Michel Boudrot (1601-1690).  His exact birth date is not known, but he was a bit older than Michelle.  They had ten children together and all of the Acadian and Cajun Boudreaux families descend from these children.  One of them was a daughter named Marguerite (1648-1718) who married Francois Bourg (1644-1684), a son of Antoinette Landry and Antoine Bourg.  Marguerite and Francois had a son named Alexandre Bourg (1671-1760).  I’m sure when little Alexandre was a child, Michelle would remind him that she was the younger grandmother.  She might have said something like, “Your other grandmother was born in 1618.  I wasn’t born until two years later!”  It’s funny how two years can seem like a lot at certain ages in your life.

Alexandre probably wasn’t too concerned with the ages of his grandmothers.  He grew up and married Marguerite Melanson (1676-1744).  They had fifteen children together.  He was a judge and a notary, so he was educated.  Just being able to write his name was enough to put him a step ahead of many of his fellow citizens of Acadie.  He was well-respected and worked with both the English and the French during the turmoils that occurred between the countries during his life.  That didn’t protect him during the Grand Derangement when he had to flee his home when he was in his eighties.

I descend from Alexandre and Marguerite’s daughter Marie Marguerite Bourg (1701-1767) and her husband Jean Babin (1689-1755 or so).  They were the parents of Marie Magdelena Babin (1725-1814).   These two generations were also greatly affected by the Grand Derangement.  Marguerite and Jean were sent out in Exile somewhere.  Jean died at some point, but Marguerite ended up eventually in Louisiana.  She was reunited with daughter Magdelena Babin and her family, which included her husband Augustin Landry (1719-1781) and son Joseph Ignatius Landry (1753-1806).  They were the ones that brought our Landry line to Louisiana in 1767.

Joseph Ignatius Landry married Scholastique Breaux (1751-1785) in 1776.  Joseph and Scholastique had one daughter and four sons.  I descend from their son Joseph Emmanuel Landry (1781-1854).   His daughters are ancestors of my Leveque and Bujol cousins.  After Scholastique died in 1785, Joseph Ignatius remarried to Olive Elizabeth Braud (1769-1819).  They had six sons together.  I also descend from two of these – Narcisse (1796-1876) and Elie Onezime (1800-1837).  Elie Onezime’s daughter Marie Emma brought about all of the Patureau cousins I have out there.

I descend from Narcisse the most directly through his youngest son Simon Alcide Joseph Landry (1845-1917).  Alcide was the father of Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  He was married to Germaine Erie Patureau and they were the parents of my dad Bob Landry.  So there you have it.  The connection to me all the way down from Michelle Aucoin born around January 29, 1620 in LaRochelle, France.  My what a long 405-year journey that was!