Emmanuel & Celeste Landry
Emmanuel and Celeste Landry’s tombs are in the St. John the Baptist Catholic Cemetery in Brusly, Louisiana.
Sometimes I tend to overlook some ancestors who I don’t have photos of. That’s not good. Everybody deserves a mention. When I do mention Emmanuel Landry, many times it is only in reference to his father Joseph Ignatius Landry. I descend from Joseph Ignatius (or as the French would have said the name – Ignace. And this family was definitely French.) five different ways. And two of those ways are through Emmanuel Landry and Clarice Celeste Bruneteau Landry.
Both Emmanuel and Celeste were born in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Emmanuel was born in 1781 and he was in the first generation of Landrys in my line born in the United States. All of his ancestors were Acadians. And though he married someone with a French name – not Acadian, he was related to her. That’s because Celeste’s mother was Anne Marie Hebert. Anne Marie was born in Acadie and as a girl, she and her family and fellow Acadians were Exiled from their homeland. The Hebert family spent their time of Exile in Georgetown, Maryland, while the Landry family spent their time in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
But Celeste’s father was not an Acadian. His name was Pierre Bruneteau and he was born in Ardennes, France. He was the second husband of Anne Marie Hebert. Her first husband was fellow Acadian Joseph Dupuis. Anne Marie and Joseph had six children together. I descend from their fourth child – Magloire Dupuy. Anne Marie and Pierre married after the death of Joseph. They only had two children together. Celeste was born in 1790, and she was the baby of the whole bunch.
And like I said earlier, she would grow up and marry her cousin Emmanuel Landry. I really shouldn’t call them cousins. They were only 4th cousins. Their common great great great grandparents were Rene Landry and Marie Bernard, some of the founders of Acadie. Celeste and Emmanuel were probably not even aware of their common ancestors. They probably just considered themselves husband and wife. They were married February 5, 1808, in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. The only surviving parent of the two was Anne Marie Hebert. Yet two of their grandparents were still alive. Anne Marie’s 89-year-old mother Marguerite Melanson was alive, as was Joseph Ignace’s 82-year-old mother Marie Magdeleine Babin. They both lived in St. Gabriel at the time, so they likely were at the celebration. Laissez les bons temps rouler.
1844 map of Brusly, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River.
Celeste and Emmanuel continued to live in St. Gabriel as their family grew. Their first child was Manuel Dorville Landry in 1809. Next came Rosalia and Jean Baptiste in 1811. Then Clarissa Doralise was born in 1812, Anna Adele in 1817, and Marguerite Basalite in 1821. I descend from Anna Adele (and her husband Amedee Bujol) and Marguerite Basalite (and her husband Joseph Auguste Leveque). (See family tree below.) Jean Baptiste died in 1823 at the age of 11. A few years later the family relocated to Brusly in West Baton Rouge Parish, as did other Landry family members.
By 1844 Emmanuel and his brothers Elie and Narcisse had plantations along the Mississippi River. You can see their names on this map of the river and some of the landowners of the area. If you look at the names, you’ll see a lot of Acadian names that are familiar – Hebert, Babin, Dupuis, Daigre, and Forest. They were all first-generation Acadians born in the US, after their parents had everything taken away from them when they were Exiled from Acadie. From that perspective, they were making progress in their new home.
Here is my dad’s tree showing the connections to Emmanuel and Celeste. Along his maternal line, you can see Anna Adele. His paternal grandmother was Marie Celeste Leveque, who was the daughter of Marguerite Basalite.