Pierre  THIBODEAU

" Pierre Thibodeau, born in c1631 perhaps in the Poitou region of France, was a young lieutenant of Emmanuel Le Borgne de Bélisle when he came to Acadia in 1654. He settled into the life of a farmer and in c1660 married 17-year-old Jeanne, older daughter of Jean Thériot, at Port-Royal. In the late 1680s, Pierre was briefly imprisoned by Acadian governor Louis-Alexandre des Friches de Meneval and had to pay a small fine for trading brandy to the Indians. Despite these troubles, in 1695 the governor of New France, Louis de Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, granted Pierre land between Mount Desert and Machias in present-day Maine "with a league on either side of the said river [then called K8askag8she] by two leagues depth, to be measured from its mouth, with the islands and islets if any be found there." But Pierre and his sons probably never settled there. Instead, in the late 1690s, under orders from Acadian governor Joseph Robinau de Villebon, Pierre explored and founded the Acadian settlement of Chepoudy on the estuary of a wide river in the upper Grand Baie Française, now the Bay of Fundy. In 1702, Pierre, along with fellow Acadian Pierre Gaudet l'aîné, refused to recognize the authority of the seigneur of nearby Chignecto, former Acadian governor Michel Le Neuf de la Valliere et de Beaubassin, who claimed that the Chepoudy and Petitcoudiac settlements were in his fiefdom. After months of wrangling, Pierre won his case against the seigneur. The King's representative in Port-Royal, Mathieu de Goutin, one of Pierre's sons-in-law, noted in a report to the King's ministers in October 1702 that Pierre "had 'equipped and borne the expedition of the first exploration there [at Chepoudy] under the late M. de Villebon's orders. There are presently seven hundred toises of ditch made. He has made a trial planting of wheat, which grew well. He now has six grown boys, as well as one already settled, and eight married daughters who have children in a condition to develop the settlement. There are in addition a grist-mill and a sawmill ready to run. ...'" In March 1703, a decree from the Council of State at Port-Royal granted the settlers of Chepoudy, Petitcoudiac, and even Chignecto "possession of the settlements they had made ...." Pierre Thibodeau's defiance of a powerful Acadian seigneur helped weaken the hold of the local nobility on these sturdy Acadian habitants. Pierre died probably at Chepoudy in December 1704, in his early 70s.

Pierre and Jeanne had 16 children, all born at Port-Royal. Amazingly, all of their children--including seven sons--survived childhood, married, and created families of their own. Their nine daughters married into the Landry, Lejeune dit Briard, Robichaud dit Cadet, Boudrot, de Goutin, Le Borgne de Bélisle, D'Amours de Louvières, and Bourgeois families. "

Source: acadiansingray.com