♀Anne Saunier

Anne Saunier (about 1741 – 1772) was an Acadian exile at the Opelousas post in Spanish Louisiana, a widow who married again and died soon after the birth of her second son. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Michel Cormier (born 1772).

Acadia and exile

A native of Acadia, she was first married, about 1760 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Basile Babin, who died leaving her with two daughters, Marie-Josèphe and Marie. She was counted with them at Cabanocé on the Acadian Coast^W in 1766, a widow aged 25. Her parents were probably Jacques Saulnier and Anne Hébert of Petitcoudiac, though a genealogy published in 1967 names them Etienne Saunier and Marie Anne Darios.

Second marriage

About 1769 she married Michel Cormier, and is said to have brought into the marriage a written declaration of the goods from Babin’s estate, dated 27 March 1769. Under the Custom of Paris^W, the law of French Louisiana, such a declaration set apart what belonged to the children of a first marriage. Their son Amant was born on 13 October 1770 and baptized at Opelousas; his godparents were Olivier Saunier and Magdelene Babin. A second son, Michel, followed on 29 September 1772.

Death

She died at Opelousas before the year was out. Her estate, dated 7 January 1773, named Cormier as her surviving husband and, by one account, her two Babin daughters.

Notes

Sources

Her first husband, the declaration of goods, the estate and her death come from Earl E. Vallot’s genealogy of Michel Cormier in the Attakapas Gazette (1967), which calls her Marie Anne Saunier, a native of Acadia, and cites both documents in the Opelousas colonial records at the Louisiana State Archives; both are known only through his abstracts. A published calendar of those records lists the succession of Anne Saunier, deceased, wife of Michel Cormier, in 1773. Her sons’ births and baptisms come from the published abstract of the Pointe Coupée register, which prints her name Saunier; others write Saulnier or Sonnier. Vallot gives Amant’s birth as 3 October 1770. That the Michel born in 1772 is the Michel Cormier who married Ludivine Guillebaut in 1793 rests on Arsenault’s and Cormier’s genealogies and on Donald J. Hebert’s abstracts of the St. Martinville register, which give the groom’s parents in 1793 as Michel Cormier and Nanette Sonier of Opelousas.

Her parents

This page follows the declaration that Basile Babin’s mother, Marguerite Dupuis, made at Belle-Isle-en-Mer on 18 March 1767, which says that he married at Halifax a Marie Soigniev, daughter of Jacques and Anne Hébert of Petkoudiak (Petitcoudiac). Stephen A. White and Steven A. Cormier give the same parents, and so make her a sister of Marguerite, first wife of Michel’s brother Joseph Cormier; White calls her Marie-Anne and finds the proof of her parentage in a 1799 dispensation for the marriage of her granddaughter to a son of Joseph Saulnier, the brother with whom she was counted in 1766. Vallot’s pair, Etienne Saunier and Marie Anne Darios, comes from his abstract of the 1769 declaration of goods; Bona Arsenault names Pierre Saunier and Madeleine Haché-Gallant of Petitcoudiac. Arsenault, for his part, gives Basile Babin’s wife as Marie-Josèphe Saulnier, born in 1725 and married at Halifax about 1750; a Basile who married twice would reconcile the accounts, but no record shows it.

First marriage and Cabanocé

Cormier, citing an abstract of her succession, names the Babin daughters Lizette (born about 1761) and Marie-Josèphe (about 1764). He also gives the 1766 Cabanocé listing and census age, which would place her birth about 1741. Arsenault dates the Cormier marriage about 1760; Vallot and White about 1769. The Opelousas census of 1771 gives Michel an unnamed wife aged 20, which Cormier takes for Anne, with her age understated. The Halifax marriage comes from the same Belle-Isle declaration, printed by Casgrain and Rameau, which says the missionary Maillard married them there; the declaration calls the bride Marie, Vallot and White Marie Anne, and both call her the widow of Babin.