♀Judith Landry

Judith Landry (born 12 March 1728) was an Acadian woman who was counted among the exiles at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1763 and, with her husband and children, resettled at St. Gabriel d’Iberville in Spanish Louisiana in 1767. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Joseph Leblanc.

Early life

Judith Landry was baptized at St. Charles aux Mines, Grand-Pré, Acadie, on 29 May 1728. The register copy, made in 1895, records that on that day the priest, who signed as Ant. Gaulin, supplied the baptismal ceremonies for a girl born on 12 March 1728, the daughter of Antoine Landry and Marie Melançon; her godparents were François Landry and Anne Melançon. The identification with the Judith of this page is probable rather than proven: she is listed as 40 on both 1767 lists, and the only other Judith Landry of her generation in the same register married Claude Boudrot in 1747. That comparison covers only the Grand-Pré registers, however; those of Pisiquid, Cobequid and Beaubassin are lost, so another Judith of the same age cannot be ruled out.

Exile and resettlement

Judith Landry and her husband, Charles Leblanc, were counted as a household of six at Baltimore, Maryland, on 7 July 1763, where she is entered under her own maiden surname, as “judithe landry mon Epouse,” with four children — Jean Baptiste, Joseph, Simon and Marie. A fifth child, Anne, was baptized in Maryland on 21 February 1766; the register entry, as abstracted, gives her birthplace as Baltimore. The family reached Louisiana in July 1767 aboard the Jane, which had taken on 150 French Neutrals at Patuxent, Maryland, that March; the Spanish settlement report at Fort St. Gabriel that July lists her as “Judit,” aged 40, wife of the head of household. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana, which calls her an Acadian of Grand-Pré, adds that she and Charles had no more children in Louisiana.

Family in Louisiana

According to Cormier’s compilation, her children settled around St. Gabriel: her daughter Marie died there in December 1787, a year after her marriage, aged 24, and her sons Jean Baptiste and Joseph remained on the river while Simon moved on to the western prairies. Her son Joseph, called dit Agros, married Julie Trahan in 1787; their daughter Marguerite Eulalie Leblanc carried the family onward to Floyd Amatus Delahorne.

Notes

Judith’s name is also recorded as “Judith-Marguerite Landry” in a compiled Acadian genealogy, Steven A. Cormier’s history of the Acadians of Louisiana, which gives her age as 40 at the 1767 emigration; no record of her marriage or death survives, since the registers of that period end in 1748. Her husband’s name and paternity carry more uncertainty than hers; see his page for the unresolved points.