♀Catherine Babin

Catherine Babin (born about 1672) was an Acadian of Port-Royal and later of Les Mines^W, the wife of Jean Comeau and the mother of a large family that settled at Rivière-aux-Canards on the Minas Basin. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through two of her daughters.

Port-Royal

Catherine’s age of 22 in the census of 1693 places her birth about 1672. Jean Comeau and Catherine Babin married between 1686 and 1693; Bona Arsenault’s and Steven A. Cormier’s compiled genealogies both give Port-Royal and about 1686, but the surviving Port-Royal registers begin only in 1702. Both compilers make her a daughter of Antoine Babin and Marie Mercier, and Arsenault’s abstract of the 1686 census lists a Catherine, aged 14, in their household. Her husband, Jean Comeau (born about 1665), was the youngest son of the cooper Pierre Comeau and is not to be confused with his elder brother of the same name.

By the census of 1693, taken at Les Mines, when he was 28 and she 22, they had three daughters: Marie, Geneviève and Isabelle, aged six, four and two. By those ages she was about sixteen when her eldest daughter was born.

Les Mines

The census of 1701 places the household at Rivière-aux-Canards, on the Minas Basin: Jean, his wife and six daughters, with four arpents, ten cattle, eight sheep, eight hogs and one gun. The census of 1707 at Les Mines lists the household as “Jean Commeau sa femme”: two sons and five daughters, with two arpents, ten cattle, ten sheep and eight hogs. The register of Saint-Charles-des-Mines at Grand-Pré, which opens in 1707, records the baptisms of three more of their children between 1708 and 1712; at the last, in December 1712, the godfather was Jean Mouton, the surgeon of Les Mines. The census of 1714 at Rivière-aux-Canards counts Jean, his wife, four sons and six daughters.

Between 1712 and 1728 the same register records the marriages of five of their children, each named as a child of Jean Comeau and Catherine Babin. Three of the five married Landrys: Marguerite and Claude married a son and a daughter of Claude Landry and Catherine Thibodeau in 1718 and 1721, and Étienne married Claude’s granddaughter Marie Joseph Landry in 1728. By then the couple were living in the parish of Saint-Joseph at Rivière-aux-Canards. The registers and Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy together name thirteen children, born between about 1687 and 1712, and Steven A. Cormier’s compilation records that Comeau Village at Les Mines consisted mainly of their large family. When Jean and Catherine died is not known.

Lines of descent

Catherine Babin reaches Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both on Floyd’s mother’s side through Ida Serrette (1903–1990). The nearer line, nine generations up, runs through her daughter Marie Josèphe Comeau (born about 1705); the longer, ten generations up, runs through her daughter Marie Comeau. Marie Josèphe’s place as the couple’s daughter rests on probable evidence: the record of her marriage to Joseph Landry at Grand-Pré in 1727 names Jean and Étienne Comeau among the witnesses, and a compiled genealogy by Bona Arsenault names her as their daughter.

The two lines meet again in Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906), whose parents, Melia Thibodeaux (born 1850) and Jean Baptiste Daigle (born 1847), both descend from Jean Comeau and Catherine Babin.

Notes

Her parents were Antoine Babin (born about 1626) and Marie Mercier (born about 1646), a link that rests on the 1686 Port-Royal census transcription, which lists them with a daughter Catherine, aged 14, in their household, and on Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy. The 1693 transcription and one Grand-Pré entry write her name Caterine. The Grand-Pré entries are known here from a printed abstract of the registers published by the Diocese of Baton Rouge. Steven A. Cormier’s compilation gives fifteen children; the registers and Arsenault name thirteen.

Daughter Marie

Marie Comeau, the wife of François Breau and the daughter through whom the line descends, is not named in any record as their child; the identification rests on the compiled genealogies. Arsenault lists a daughter Marie, born in 1687, among the couple’s children, which fits the Marie aged six in the 1693 household, and Cormier names François Breau’s wife as the daughter of Jean Comeau le jeune and Catherine Babin and dates the marriage to about 1703. The censuses of Port-Royal count several other girls named Marie Comeau of about her age, among them daughters of Jean’s brothers Jean, Étienne and Pierre. In favor of the identification, the 1714 list sets the households of Jean Comeau and François Breau side by side.