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| Blanche LeBlanc (1899-1968) |
My great-great grandmother was born on April 17, 1899 in New Iberia, Louisiana. She was the fourth child of Joseph Huval LeBlanc and Antonia Dartès. Joseph and Antonia had ten children. Joseph was a farmer and planted corn.
My memories of my great-grandmother were of her sitting in her chair with her rosary in her lap. She would religiously say her “rosary” in the mornings and in the evening without fail. I also remember those wonderful fried chicken dinners on Sunday's after church.
Some of my memories were also of her chasing us down with a freshly snapped switch from a nearby bush, we were way too fast for her to catch, but, we knew we wouldn’t get away with anything, because we always had to return home. I can look back and laugh, but at the time it wasn't very funny. Blanche raised my mother, Laura Jr. until she about 15 and she loved her granddaughter as if she were her own. My mother tells me Blanche’s favorite pastimes were dancing and playing bingo.
I asked my mother about Blanche’s mother, Antonia, and she mostly remembers how petit and quiet she was, and that she didn’t speak English, only French as most people did in those days in southern Louisiana, Cajun country.
Blanche was close to all of her brothers and sisters. Her older sister, Lucia, died relatively young at the age of thirty-eight. Lucia moved to Biloxi with her husband Dorcie Broussard and there, they had three children, Agnes, Joanne and Wesley.
Her older brother Huval Jr. and his wife, Anita lived on Avery Island, a short distance from New Iberia.
Her older sister Lucille, died in childhood.
Her younger sister Clamance never married.
Anne also died in childhood.
Jeanoria, who we lovingly call taunt Bea lived in New Iberia with her husband, Stanley Lancon and their two children.
Irma also lived in New Iberia with her husband Jules Egloff.
Alice also moved to Biloxi around 1930 with her husband Whitney Brown and their son, Allen. Alice married 2 more times to Wilson Dore and had daughter, Margaret, she married Freddie Premeaux in 1947 and they had a son, Donnie.
Clausel was the youngest, she lived in New Iberia with her husband Cleus Lopez. In photographs you can clearly see how Lucia, Blanche and Irma resembled each other.
Blanche was a nurse when she married Galbert Benoit of Lafayette, Louisiana. Galbert served in the Louisiana National Guard and owned a saloon in Youngsville, Louisiana. Blanche and Galbert married in 1926 and shortly thereafter moved to St. Martinville, about ten miles east. By 1940, they moved back to New Iberia, with their infant granddaughter, Laura Jr.
Galbert died in 1952 at the age of sixty-four. He was buried at St. John’s Catholic Church Cemetery, in Lafayette, with about 50 friends and relatives in attendance.
Six months before Blanche passed away, she moved in with her daughter, Laura Mae Hurlburt in Austin, Texas. Blanche was in poor health, primarily due to diabetes. She was sixty-nine when she died. She was buried next to her husband, Galbert at St. John’s Catholic Cemetery in Lafayette, Louisiana.
You can see more about my family at http://cemassie.tribalpages.com/
