DU PONT DE RENON, MICHEL (sometimes called Du Pont de Saint-Pierre), officer of the garrison in Acadia and on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island); b. at Sérignac, Saintonge; drowned 4 Sept. 1719 at Port-Dauphin, Île Royale (Englishtown, N.S.).

Renon was the son of Hugues Du Pont and Marie Hérauld de Gourville, and the brother of François Du Pont Duvivier and Louis Du Pont* Duchambon. On 26 Feb. 1710 he married at Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.) Anne de Goutin, the daughter of the highest-ranking officer of the civil establishment of Acadia, Mathieu de Goutin, and Jeanne Tibaudeau. Renon and his wife had five children.

Renon came to Acadia from France in 1702 as a lieutenant in the company of his brother Duvivier. In 1705 he was acting assistant town major. On the surrender of Port-Royal to the English under Nicholson in 1710, he returned to France where he remained until his appointment as adjutant in the new colony of Île Royale in 1714. In June 1715 he succeeded to the captaincy of his late brother, François. Governor Pastour de Costebelle had occasion to write favourably in 1715 of Renon’s devotion in the king’s service.

Following her husband’s death in 1719, Renon’s widow married in 1724 the subdelegate of the intendant for Port-Dauphin, Michel Hertel de Cournoyer.

Bernard Pothier