♀Marie Josephe Godin

Marie Josephe Godin (about 1744 – before 23 September 1822) was an Acadian exile on the Acadian Coast^W of the Mississippi who was widowed with two small sons in the 1760s and then married Basile Prejean, with whom she raised a family on the river above New Orleans. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Éléonore Prejean (born 1770).

Early life and first marriage

Marie Josephe was born about 1744, to judge by her ages in the censuses of 1766 and 1769. She came of the Godin family, branches of which, by Bona Arsenault’s compiled genealogy of the Acadians, also went by the names Lincour and Bellefontaine; the records of her life use all three. In 1766 she was living at St. James, and the census of the Acadian settlers on the Mississippi between there and the site of Donaldsonville lists her as Marie Licourt, aged 22, the wife of Pierre Arceneaux, aged 31, with two sons, Usebe, aged 4, and Pierre, aged 1. Pierre Arceneaux died within the next three years, leaving her a widow in her twenties with two small boys.

Marriage and family

Basile Prejean and Marie Josephe Godin, the widow of Pierre Arceneaux, were married between 1766 and 14 September 1769, most likely at St. James; no record of the wedding is known. The census taken along the river at St. James in September 1769 lists Bazille Prejean, aged 24, his wife Marie Lincourt, aged 25, and her sons Usebe and Pierre Arceneaux, aged 7 and 5. The registers name four children of the marriage: Éléonore, Antoine Celestin, Emilie and Constance. Éléonore married Nicolas Thibodeaux of the Attakapas District^W at Ascension on 21 October 1793 and made her home with him far to the west; her sisters married at Ascension too, Emilie to Charles Himel in 1803 and Constance to an Englishman, Alexandre Rinton, in 1812.

Later life

From the 1780s at the latest the family lived in the district of Lafourche des Chetimaches, now Donaldsonville, where Basile held land on the east bank of the river. She was most likely still living in 1812: the records of the marriages of Antoine Celestin in April and of Constance in July name her without calling her dead. She had died before 23 September 1822, when Antoine Celestin was buried at St. James and the record named his mother as dead. No record of her own death or burial is known; Basile outlived her and was buried at Ascension in January 1823.

Notes

Her names

She is written Marie Josephe Godin at Éléonore’s baptism in 1770, Marie Joseph Bellefontaine at Antoine Celestin’s in 1777, Marie Joseph Gaudin at the baptism of Milienne, most likely Emilie, in 1780, Marie Josepha Gaudain at Éléonore’s marriage in 1793, Marie Josephe Gaudin at Emilie’s in 1803 and Constance’s in 1812, and Marie Gaudin at Antoine Celestin’s in 1812; the censuses of 1766 and 1769 write Marie Licourt and Marie Lincourt. Arsenault lists Lincour and Bellefontaine among the names used by the Godin family, and identifies the wife of Pierre Arceneaux, Marie Godin dit Lincour, born in 1744, as the widow who married Basile Prejean. The registers point the same way: the census of 1769 lists Basile’s wife with two Arceneaux stepsons, a year before Éléonore was baptized as the daughter of Basile and Marie Josephe Godin. Her parents are not known.