Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/207

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OUR FIRST FAMILIES.
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marriage with Germain Girouard, who was four years her junior. Three children of the first marriage and two of the second were living with her in 1686. The ages of these children would seem to show that the first husband died about the year 1679. Margaret Bourgeois, who was only 13 when the census of 1671 was taken, married Jean Boudrot about the year 1676 and became a widow two or three years later. She made a second marriage in 1680 to Manuel Miranda, a native of Portugal, and when the census of Chignecto was taken, in 1686, she had there living with her one child of her first marriage and four of her second. Charles Bourgeois was married to Anne Dugast, when the census of 1671 was taken and had one child, a girl. The census of 1686 shows that he had died about the year 1679, leaving three children, and that his widow had married Jean Aubin Mignault by whom she had, when the census was taken, three children. Now the deaths of three brothers-in-law in the same year could hardly have been brought about by ordinary means, for they were all young men when their lives ended. The circumstances suggest that they met a common fate and lost their lives as the result of an accident. This conjecture derives further support from the fact that there was another woman living at Chignecto in 1686 who had lost her husband in 1679. This was Andrée Martin, who when the census of 1671 was taken was married to François Pélerin and had three children. In 1686 François Pélerin was dead, but six of his children were living with her, and she had married Pierre Mercier by whom she then had four children. I have no doubt that François Pélerin shared the fate of Charles Bourgeois, Pierre Sire and Jean Boudrot, and the same accident, whatever it may have been, brought all their lives to an end. Perhaps some future historian of Westmorland county may be able to throw light on