Marie Madeleine  GIROUARD

"Marie-Madeleine Girouard was only fourteen when she married Thomas Cormier, who at thrity-two was more than twice her age; she bore ten children over the next twenty years, ending her reproductive years at the relatively young age of thirty-four."

Source: A Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher, page 65

" In 1668, at age 32, Thomas Cormier finally started a family of his own when he married Marie-Madeleine, called Madeleine, 14-year-old daughter of Francois Girouard, at Port-Royal. He and Madeleine had 10 children. Five of their daughters married into the Boudrot, Haché dit Gallant, Cyr, and Poirier families. Thomas and Madeleine's four sons married granddaughters of Daniel LeBlanc.

In the early 1670s, Thomas, with one of his brothers-in-law, helped pioneer the Acadian settlement at Chignecto. By any measure of material success in that place and time, he and his family fared very well along the Baie de Beaubassin. When the census taker came to Chignecto in 1686 and noted the settlers' land and animal holdings, only the seigneur of Beaubassin, Michel Le Neuf, Sieur de La Valliere, controlled more land than Thomas Cormier; La Valliere held 60 arpents; Thomas and three other heads of households in the settlement each held 40 arpents of land. Not even the seigneur had as many cattle as Thomas; the census taker counted 30 head for him. Only the seigneur and two other settlers had more sheep; Thomas had 10. Only four other settlers had as many or more hogs than Thomas, who owned 15.

A few years later, in c1690, Thomas died at Chignecto in his mid-50s. In the decades that followed, his four sons and their LeBlanc wives from Grand-Pré set down solid roots at Chignecto"

Source: www.acadiansingray.com