Letter from Stephen White

October 23, 1991

Dear Mrs. Cork:

I have before me your letter of the 5th.

Your grandmother was baptized as Domithilde LeBlanc, Sept. 6, 1863, at Saint-Anselme, N.B.  She was three weeks old when she was baptized.  Her parents were Simon LeBlanc and Obéline Gautreau.

The registers of Saint-Anselme show that Simon LeBlanc and Obéline Gautreau were married Oct. 4, 1859.  Besides your grandmother's, I have found the baptismal records of four more children who were born to this couple:

1. Honorine, baptized Aug. 23, 1860, at the age of five weeks.  She died Oct. 13, 1862, aged two and a half years, and was buried two days later at Saint-Anselme.
2. Emilie, baptized Jan. 12, 1862, aged twelve days.
3. Thomas, baptized Jan. 7, 1866, aged three months.
4. Noé, born Sept. 24, baptized Oct. 1, 1871.

After Noé's birth there doesn't seem to be any more mention of this family in the area.  It may be around this time that the family emigrated to the United States. The other sisters of your grandmother whom your cousin has mentioned may have been younger than the foregoing family members.

The record of the marriage of Simon LeBlanc and Obéline Gautreau does not name their respective parents.  It is quite easy, nonetheless, to identify Simon LeBlanc as the son of Laurent LeBlanc and Anne Porel through circumstantial evidence.  The eldest of Simon's children, the short-lived Honorine, was named for her godmother, Honorine LeBlanc.  This Honorine was a daughter of Laurent LeBlanc and Anne Porel.  One can be quite sure of this because Honorine was a rare name among these families.  In 1861 Honorine married Florian LeBlanc, another holder of a distinctive given name.  When his wife's little namesake was buried in 1862, Florian LeBlanc was a witness at the burial, along with Simon LeBlanc himself.  As close relatives normally served as godparents and witnesses at such events, it is safe to assume that Simon was very nearly related to Honorine, as her brother, in fact.

Obéline Gautreau was from Memramcook, according to her marriage record, but she does not appear there in the census of 1851.  She must consequently have belonged to a family that moved to Memramcook between 1851 and 1859.  There was one such family, that of Hilaire Gautrot and Domithilde LeBlanc, who moved from Cap-Pelé to Memramcook in the mid-1850's.  This seems quite likely to have been Obéline's family, for then your grandmother would have been named for her grandmother on her mother's side.  Hilaire Gautrot and Domithilde LeBlanc were a rather unusual Acadian couple for that time in that they moved frequently.  In fact, Hilaire Gautrot was originally from Tracadie, N.B., where he was born Jan. 14, 1809, to François Gautrot and Victoire Brideau.  Hilaire evidently spent a considerable amount of time in Cape Breton, however, for it was there, in the parish of Chéticamp, that he married Domithilde LeBlanc, daughter of Charles LeBlanc and Apolline Cormier, Nov. 28, 1833.  Domithilde was a native of the neighbouring parish of Margaree, where she was born, Jan. 26, 1815.  Only the eldest of Hilaire and Domithilde's children was born at Margaree, Victoire, in 1834.  Thereafter there is a period of over twelve years during which I have been unable to trace this family.  In 1847 Hilaire and Domithilde were at La Vernière, on the Magdalen Islands, where they had their daughter Julie baptized.  In 1849 they were at Cap-Pelé for the baptism of Philippe.  Marie-Blanche was probably also born at Cap-Pelé, although she was baptized at Barachois, the parish next to Cap-Pelé on the west side.  The three youngest children, Marguerite, Domithilde, and Hippolyte, were all born at Memramcook.  Curiously, there does not seem to be any mention of Hilaire and Domithilde in the 1851 census at all, although they do seem to have been living in Westmorland County, N.B., at that time, and normally should have been enumerated.  Perhaps they were considered as transients and were thus overlooked by the census-taker, or it may be that they lived elsewhere for part of the census year.

Your great-grandfather Simon LeBlanc is mentioned in an outline of the male line descendants of the LeBlancs of Saint-Anselme in Paul Surette's book Le Grand Petcoudiac (Dieppe, N.B.: Town of Dieppe, 1985).  I am enclosing a photocopy of this outline, along with several extracts from our forthcoming Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes, so that you will be able to follow your grandmother's line back to the first of the LeBlancs to come to Acadia in the mid-1600's.

...

Sincerely yours,

Stephen A. White
Genealogist
Centre d'études acadiennes