♀Marie Josèphe LeBlanc

Marie Josèphe LeBlanc was an Acadian of Grand-Pré, in the district of Les Mines^W, who married Charles Gautrot there on 8 October 1725, the same day her sister Marguerite married Joseph Grange, and with him had at least eight children baptized there. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Amand Godreau (born 1732).

Marriage

The couple are known from the Grand-Pré parish register, as printed in the published abstracts of the Diocese of Baton Rouge church registers. On 8 October 1725 Charles, entered as Charle Gotrot, married Marie Josèphe, entered as Marie Leblanc, at Grand-Pré, and the groom signed the entry as Charle Gautreaut. The bride’s sister Marguerite married Joseph Grange on the same day. The entry names the groom’s parents as Claude Gotrot and Marie Terriot and the bride’s as Jaque Leblanc and Catherine Landry, but a note in the printed abstract says the entry itself reads “Charle son of Charle son of Claude”, so the register leaves open whether the groom’s father was Claude or a Charles. A marriage on 18 August 1734 at which a Charle Gautraut and a Jean Gautrot signed as brothers of a daughter of Claude Gautrot and Marie Terriot, both of them described there as deceased, most likely makes this Charles the groom of 1725. No baptism survives for Charles, since the surviving registers begin in 1707; the census counts of his father Claude’s household point to a birth between about 1697 and 1714. The register gives no age for either spouse. Other Charles Gautrots in the Mines district are not shown to be this one.

Children at Grand-Pré

Between 1730 and 1747 the register records eight children baptized at Grand-Pré to Charles Gautreaut and Marie Joseph Leblanc, and the father signed most of the entries. The first, Paul Honoré, was born on 21 April 1730 and baptized the next day. Their son Amand, entered as Amans Paul Gautrot, was born on 24 January 1732 and baptized the next day, with Charles Gourdon and Françoise Leblanc as godparents, and Charles signed the entry. Charles, Simon, Pierre, Jean, Marie Magdeleine and Jean Marin followed, the last born on 8 March 1747. Simon, born on 12 March 1736 and baptized the next day, had as sponsor a Joseph Leblanc, entered as his maternal uncle. A ninth child, Joseph, has no baptism in the register; he is named only in a 1767 declaration made by Claire Boudrot, which calls her husband Joseph Gautrot a son of Charles Gautrot and Marie Leblanc and says the English transported the family to Philadelphia.

Maryland and the deportation of 1755

A census of the Acadians held at Newtown in Maryland, dated 7 July 1763 and sent to the duc de Nivernois, the French ambassador in London, was printed by J.-Edmond Roy in 1911. It lists a household of three as “Marie veuve de Charles Gautrot, Jean Gautrot, Marin Gautrot”, entered beside a household of four headed by “Amant Gautrot”. The sons’ names match Jean and Jean Marin, and the household is probably that of Marie Josèphe and her sons Jean and Marin, with Amand’s household next to hers. A compiled genealogy of the Gautreaux family by Cormier likewise says that the family was sent to Maryland in the deportation from Minas in 1755, identifies Newtown as Chestertown in Kent County, and says that Amand married Marie Landry in Maryland about 1758 and reached Louisiana in 1766, where his surname was written Godreau, Gautreaux and other ways. The same compilation says that Simon escaped the roundup and reached Louisiana in 1765.

A declaration made in 1767 on Belle-Île-en-Mer by Marie Josèphe’s brothers Charles and Simon LeBlanc listed her as married to Charles Gautrot and both as “transportés aux Virgines”, that is, carried to Virginia, while her sister Anne and Jean Gautrot were listed as carried to Maryland. The 1763 census and Cormier agree in placing the family in Maryland; the declaration is the exception, and the records do not explain the difference.

After 1763

Charles had died by 7 July 1763, when Marie Josèphe was entered as his widow; the place and date of his death are not known. She was entered at Newtown that summer with her sons Jean and Marin. Her own death is not known, and no later record of her is known. The rolls of Acadians at Saint-Malo printed by Rieder name no Charles Gautrot of the right age and no widow Marie LeBlanc of a Charles Gautrot.