♀Marie Landry

Marie Landry (died 1746) was an Acadian of Les Mines, in Acadia, the wife of Martin Dupuis and the mother of at least twelve children; two of their daughters married two Blanchard brothers of Cobequid, and a son and a daughter married a brother and sister of one Babin family. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Antoine Dupuis (died 1747).

Family and marriage

Marie Landry was the daughter of René Landry, who had come from France, and Marie Bernard, according to declarations that her daughter Marguerite Dupuis and her grandson Laurent Babin made in exile on Belle-Île-en-Mer, off the coast of Brittany, in 1767, printed in English translation in the Attakapas Gazette; the declarations say that her parents settled at Port-Royal and died there. Her granddaughter Marie-Josèphe Dupuis, the widow of Pierre Theriot, declared on the island in the same year that Antoine Dupuis was “the son of Martin Dupuis and Marie Landry of Port Royal”.

She probably married Martin Dupuis about 1686, at Port-Royal, shortly after the census of that year. The census of Les Mines in 1693 lists Martin, 27, with his wife Marie Landry, 22, four children and a servant, on five and a half arpents of land with eight cattle. The census of 1703 names Martin Dupuis and his wife, and the rolls of 1701 and 1707 list the household at Les Mines again. In 1701 it is on the Gaspareaux River, with his wife, three boys and four girls, six arpents and fifteen cattle; in 1707 the roll names his wife, with six arpents and ten cattle.

By the time the surviving register of the parish of Saint-Charles-des-Mines, at Grand-Pré, begins in 1707, the family was living at Les Mines. That register records the baptisms of three of their children, Joseph in 1708, Henriette in 1710 and Charles on 10 September 1712, two months after his elder brother Antoine’s wedding, and the marriages of nine, Henriette’s among them in 1731. Another son, Jean, married Marguerite Richard at Port-Royal on 1 August 1713, where the register calls his parents “habitants of the parish of Mines”. The daughter Marguerite, then the widow of Claude Babin and living in the parish of Sauzon on Belle-Île, declared in 1767 that she had been born at Mines, in the parish of Saint-Charles, in 1702. Cormier’s compilation counts thirteen children.

Her son Antoine married Marguerite Babin on 4 July 1712, and six years later, on 14 November 1718, her daughter Marguerite married Claude Babin, Margueritte’s brother; both were children of Charles Babin and Magdelaine Richard. Her daughter Isabelle married Martin Blanchard on 1 October 1714, and on 4 July 1718 her sister Anne married his brother, Joseph Blanchard, both sons of Martin Blanchard and Marguerite Guillebaud of Cobequid^W. The other marriages joined the family to Granger, Robichaud, Aucoin and LeBlanc households between 1717 and 1731.

Widowhood and death

Martin Dupuis died on 8 August 1713, eight days after their son Jean’s wedding, and was buried at Grand-Pré, leaving Marie with a son not yet a year old. At each of her children’s later marriages the register names her husband as deceased; at the last of them, Henriette’s on 18 June 1731, it still does not call her so. On 20 September 1746 a Marie Landry, aged about 78, the widow of a Dupuy whose given name the register omits, was buried in the cemetery of the parish of Saint-Charles. She was most likely this Marie Landry, which would place her birth about 1668.

Notes

The declarations of 1767 say that Martin Dupuis and Marie Landry both died at Port-Royal, but the Grand-Pré register records Martin’s burial at Les Mines and the 1746 burial of a widow Marie Landry there. The declarations were made long after both deaths.

Her parents

Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana also makes her a daughter of René Landry le jeune and Marie Bernard.

The marriage and the census rolls

No marriage act survives: the Port-Royal register has no years in the 1680s, so the date of about 1686 is compiled, not recorded. Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes, tome I, gives the marriage shortly after the census of 1686, and Cormier’s compilation gives it as about 1686, at Port-Royal. The four rolls for Les Mines, of 1693, 1701, 1703 and 1707, are the manuscript nominal censuses of Acadia (G1 vol. 466, partie I, for the later two). The transcriptions disagree on the children named in the 1707 roll.

Her age

The 1693 roll gives her age as 22, which would place her birth about 1671. The burial of 20 September 1746 gives an age of about 78, which would place it about 1668. The two figures do not agree, and the birth year in the body follows the burial.