It’s now time for my great-grandmother Philomène Leblanc to be featured in this Challenge on my Acadian ancestors.

Her parents, Pierre Leblanc and Émilie Gaudet, were married on October 15, 1833, in Saint-Jacques-de-l’Achigan, Québec, where the family resided until at least 1849 and where Philomène was born on July 8, 1847.

In 1855, the family was living near Joliette, in Saint-Alphonse-de-Rodriguez, Québec. By 1871, the family returned to Montcalm County, in Saint-Liguori this time, where Émilie Gaudet died in July 1873. We are led to believe that the family move to Montréal shortly after her death since her husband Pierre died in the city in 1879.

In any event by 1881, Philomène, a seamstress, was living with her sister and brother-in-law in Montréal. She was almost 36 years old when she married my great-grandfather Joseph Tourville, 36 years old, in April 1883. It was not Joseph’s first marriage. He actually married Philomène six months following his first wife’s passing away providing, in turn, his six children a new family.

Philomène gave birth to six children. Only the first-born, grandpa Ovila, survived to adulthood. All the others died before the age of one, including the twins (a boy and girl).

My great-grandmother passed away on May 5, 1915, at age 67. She was buried in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montréal.