♂Joseph Braux

Joseph Braux (died before 30 June 1790) was an Acadian man who, with his wife Marie Josephe Landry, was recorded as being “of New England” when their daughter married at St. James, on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, in 1790. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Claire Braud (c. 1765–1802).

His mother, Marie Dugas, was the daughter of Abraham Dugast and Jeanne Guilbeau and the widow of René Landry, whom she had married at Grand-Pré on 16 November 1711; a compiled dictionary of Acadian families has her marrying Alexandre Breau about 1716.

Daughter and marriage

His daughter Marie Claire married Charles Melancon, son of Alexandre Melancon and Osite Hebert, at St. James on 25 January 1790. Louisiana was then a Spanish colony, and the register names her parents as Joseph Braux and Maria Josefa Landry, “of New England”. The same couple appear again, as Josef Braux and Maria Josefa Landry, as the maternal grandparents at the baptisms of two of Marie Claire’s daughters at St. James, in 1797 and 1799. The phrase “of New England” places the family among the Acadians whom the British removed from Nova Scotia in 1755 and sent to the English colonies along the Atlantic coast.

Exile and arrival in Louisiana

Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana most likely describes this same couple under the name Joseph-Charles Breau and Marie-Josèphe Landry. By that account he was born about 1734 at Pisiguit^W and married about 1755, and in 1755 the British deported the couple to Maryland. A roll of the Acadians in Maryland made in July 1763 lists a Joseph Braux and his wife Marie Josette at Port Tobacco, with a son Joseph Marie and a daughter Marguerite. Cormier has the family reaching New Orleans in February 1768 with four children, Marguerite aged 8, Joseph Marie 5, Claire 3 and an infant, Charles. The family was sent first to the Spanish post of San Luis de Natchez and, after the Spanish released the Acadians from it, settled at San Gabriel. On this reading Marie Claire was the Claire of the family, born in Maryland, and she married first, at San Gabriel on 10 January 1785, Pierre Como, son of Alexis Como and Marguerite Babin. Cormier adds that some in south Louisiana called Maryland “New England”, so that the St. James register’s phrase would refer to Maryland. He also states that Joseph died at San Gabriel, probably before March 1777, when his wife was listed there as a widow.

The Baton Rouge diocesan registers support the San Gabriel half of this: the marriage record of 1785 names Claire’s parents as Joseph and Marie Landry, and her brother Joseph Marie Braux stood as a witness. The two households were once taken for different families, partly because “of New England” was read as meaning New England itself, and partly because a record of 1807 names a Pierre and Claire Braux at San Gabriel as grandparents. Being named as a grandparent does not show that Claire was still living, so it does not conflict with her burial at St. James on 11 January 1802. The identification rests on Cormier’s compilation and is probable, not proved.

Notes

The family record once identified his wife with a Marie Josephe Landry born at Grand-Pré in 1730. That baptism belongs to another girl: his widow was buried at St. Gabriel on 25 October 1807 aged 70, which places her birth about 1737, and her parentage is not established.

Their mother

White’s dictionary of Acadian families (Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, p. 273) is a compiled work. It gives Marie as the daughter of Abraham and Jeanne Guilbeau, the widow of René Landry, and the wife of Alexandre Breau about 1716; Arsenault gives that marriage about 1720. The Grand-Pré register of 16 November 1711 records the marriage of René Landry and Marie Dugas, in a double wedding with his brother Jean-Baptiste Landry and Marguerite Gautrot (Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1a). The register writes her parents as Abraham Dugas and Jeanne Guillebaud. The register of 3 November 1733, for the marriage of her son Joseph Landry, names his parents as “Rene Landry, decd. and Marie Dugas”, and an Alexandre Bro is the first witness.

What is not known

Cormier names Joseph-Charles’s parents as Alexandre Breau and Marie Dugas, but no record naming Joseph’s parents has been found. No record of his birth or of his marriage has been found either; the dates above are Cormier’s. His death is recorded only indirectly, in a St. Gabriel entry that names him as deceased at a daughter’s marriage, and it came before 30 June 1790. The Catholic registers of the Baton Rouge diocese, which begin in 1770, name some eighteen men called Joseph Braud, Braux or Breau, and several of them with their parents, but none of those entries is his. The transcribed lists of Acadian exiles in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and the other colonies between 1756 and 1766 show no Joseph Braux with a wife named Marie Josephe Landry, and the name index of the Massachusetts papers on the Acadian exiles shows none either; the Maryland roll gives his wife only as Marie Josette. Massachusetts did hold Braux men of about the right age, among them a “Joseph Braux age 18” at Braintree in 1757, but none of them is tied to a Landry wife.