♀Marie-Josèphe Babin

Marie-Josèphe Babin (about 1691 – 14 March 1738) was an Acadian woman of the Minas district^W who, with her husband René Richard, raised six children in the parish of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré and saw her eldest daughter and eldest son married there before she died at about forty-seven. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marie-Josèphe Richard (1713–1777).

Early life

She was most likely the daughter of Vincent Babin and Anne Thériot, settlers at Pisiguit^W, and grew up there with an elder brother, Jean, and younger brothers and sisters. The census of 1693 counted her in their household, a year old.

Marriage and children

René Richard and Marie-Josèphe Babin were probably married about 1711, and over the next thirteen years they had six children: Pierre, Marie-Josèphe, Claude, Joseph, Jean-Baptiste and Armand. Their children were baptized in the parish church of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré, Pierre, the eldest, in September 1712, and the three youngest sons between 1718 and 1724.

In November 1733 their daughter Marie-Josèphe married her cousin Joseph Landry at Grand-Pré, and two years later, in November 1735, Pierre married Marguerite Granger there.

Death

Marie-Josèphe Babin died on 14 March 1738, aged about forty-seven, and was buried the next day in the cemetery of the parish of Saint-Charles at Grand-Pré. René outlived her by at least nine years, and lived to see their sons Claude and Joseph married at Grand-Pré in 1740 and 1745.

Notes

Sources

Her death and burial, and the age of about forty-seven given there, are from the published abstracts of the Grand-Pré register (Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, vol. 1a), which also hold the baptisms of Pierre (1712), Joseph (1718), Jean-Baptiste (1721) and Armand (1724) and the marriages of Marie-Josèphe (1733), Pierre (1735), Claude (1740) and Joseph (1745). The marriage about 1711 and the birth years of Marie-Josèphe (1713) and Claude (1716) are from Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens. The marriage itself is not in the Grand-Pré register.

Her parents

No surviving act names her parents. Arsenault gives them as Vincent Babin and Anne Thériot of Pisiguit, and his extracts of the Pisiguit censuses list a daughter Marie-Josèphe in their household, aged one in 1693 and born in 1692 by the roll of 1704; the age at her burial points to about 1691. Two of Vincent and Anne’s daughters, Madeleine and Anne, married at Grand-Pré in 1718 with their father among the witnesses, and a René Richard was a witness at Anne’s wedding. When her son Joseph married in 1745 the register named her Marie Joseph Vincent Babin, most likely adding her father’s forename to her own.

Names

The register writes her Marie Joseph Babin or Marie Babin. Armand’s baptism of 1724 writes him Amand and gives his mother as Marie Robin, a slip for Babin.