Cajuns By the Dozens

Last week I wrote about my maternal great grandmother Addie May who gave birth to a dozen children.  When I think about that, I remember enjoying the story “Cheaper by the Dozen” when I was young. That’s what inspired the title for today’s blog. But what inspired the post itself was a notice I got in an email.   Over the weekend I got a notice about a Marguerite Babin.  That would be a name from my dad’s side of the family.  His heritage is Cajun and French, and Babin is one of the surnames that came from Acadie.

The link led to Marguerite Babin (born 1690), who was married to Antoine Dupuis (born 1688).  When I looked at information on Marguerite, I saw that she was one of a dozen children born to Charles Babin and Madeleine Elizabeth Richard.  I descend from Charles and Madeleine, who were from families of a dozen children as well.  So she must have had a lot of cousins.  I’m not going to count them.  That’s too much trouble.  Once I get an AI assistant, I may have that information at my fingertips.

When I look at Antoine Dupuis’ family, I see that he was from a family of thirteen children.  His parents were Martin Dupuis and Marie Landry.  They were both from families with more than a dozen children.  Big families were very common in Acadie back then.  And what is surprising is that the survival rate was pretty high.  Most of the time.  (As you read that last sentence, imagine somber music beginning to play.)

Marguerite Babin and Antoine Dupuis were married on July 4, 1712, in Grand Pre, Acadie.  As you can see from this 1895 transcript of a rare document from that time, it names Antoine and Marguerite and both sets of parents that I talked about earlier.  So Marguerite and Antoine were married in 1712 and started their married life.  But unlike the two generations before them, no children came.  One year, then two years.  People must have started to wonder.  Most couples back then had a child almost every year for the first few years.

Maybe they wanted to have children, but things went wrong.  They were together for seven years, and there is no record of any birth.  Then around 1718 or so, Marguerite died.  Perhaps she was finally able to carry a child to term, yet they both died during childbirth.  No records are available.  We just know that Antoine remarried around 1719 to Marie Josephe Dugas.  She, too, was from a family of a dozen children.  Cajuns by the Dozen!  Antoine and Marie Josephe had their first (of a dozen) child in 1720.

So I didn’t descend from that Marguerite Babin who was born in 1690.  But I did descend from her aunt that she was named for.  Her father Charles had a younger sister named Marguerite who was born in 1670.  I descend from her and her husband Antoine Breau.  Guess how many children they had!  If you guessed a dozen, you’re wrong.  They only had eleven.  How shameful!

The photo I’m sharing is of the most recent Dupuis ancestor that I have – Jeanne Zerbine Dupuis.  Let me tell you how she connects to Antoine Dupuis and Marie Josephe Dugas.  They had a son named Joseph whose life was greatly affected by the Grand Derangement.  After a dozen years of struggle with family members dying around him, he made his way to Louisiana.  He ended up serving in the militia out of St. Gabriel with Bernardo de Galvez.  This was an effort that aided the newly independent United States during the Revolutionary War.  We descend from a Revolutionary War hero!  Joseph married Anne Marie Hebert.  They had a son named Magloire Dupuy, who was married to Henriette Serrette.  Magloire and Henriette had Zerbine in 1807.  

Zerbine was married to Elie Onesime Landry and their daughter Emma Landry married Ferdinand Pierre Patureau, a French immigrant.  They had more than a dozen children and many of those families continued that tradition.  So, to suffice it to say, I have hundreds of dozens of cousins.  That’s a lot.