Jeremiah Babin (1837 - abt. 1913)

Born 19 Jul 1837 in Quebec, Canada [uncertain]

Husband of Catherine (Moore) Babin — married 17 Apr 1873 in Madison County Courthouse, Louisville, Jefferson, Kentucky, United States

Died about 28 Nov 1913 at about age 76 in Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio, United States

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Biography

"His mother had died in 1856 and his father moved to Illinois with a new wife... Jeremy and four siblings stayed behind in Quebec. They were his brothers Jean-Osias, Job, Joseph and they had a crippled sister, Marie-Aglae. Jeremy paid her medical bills and bought her clothing. He worked on is holidays to supplement the monthly allowance sent by their father... he was now charged with the murder of his sister." [His first child, Alice, was born while he was in jail awaiting trial.] "The exposure to the press was excruciatingly painful for Elizabeth... deeply in love with her husband... a full trial took place in January 1867... public feeling ran high against the Babins... Elizabeth arrived with six-month-old Alice in her arms to attend the hearings. Her mother Frances was at her side. But there was 'no room at the inn' for them: all the public inns refused them lodging. The Postmaster at Ayler took pity on them and found them a place to stay... sat beside her husband'a attorney, Mr. Devlin. ^[1] An unstoppable stream of tears poured continuously from her eyes. One alternative to the grim possibility that Jeremy had murdered his sister was the suggestion that [Moise] Ledoux might have violated the helpless young woman and then thrown her into the icy river... Many character witnesses for Jeremy came forward... all to no avail, and Babin's reputation was ruined. It was not long before he took his wife and baby Alice to the U.S.A.... Elizabeth now recognized the first dread symptoms of T.B... She knew she would have, perhaps, one year left. She moved back to St. Andrews to be cared for by her mother at the priory. Jeremy stayed in the U.S.A...." ^[2]

"In January 1867 Jeremie Babin, a minister of the Church of England in Buckingham (Gatineau), was tried for the murder of his crippled sister, Mary (Marie-Aglaé), who had come to live with his family a year earlier and had disappeared under mysterious circumstances the previous April. Babin was acquitted, and he went with his wife and daughter to live in St Andrews with his widowed mother-in-law, Frances Mary Abbott, née Smith. Probably in October 1868, shortly after his daughter Maude’s birth, he decamped for the United States, where he would establish a collegiate school that he directed for 14 years. Maude’s mother died of tuberculosis in October 1869, so Maude and her elder sister, Frances Alice Macdonald Babin, were raised by their maternal grandmother, and their last name was changed to Abbott." ^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia
2. ↑ "'An Inner Grace', by Elizabeth L. Abbott'; Elizabeth Abbott; 2009, Chapters 2 & 3."
3. ↑ "Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16: 'ABBOTT, MAUDE ELIZABETH SEYMOUR'; by Margaret Gillett; University of Toronto/Université Laval; 2016."

• "'A hundred years of Christ Church, St. Andrews, P.Q., an historical sketch of the pioneer church of the Ottawa Valley', by Edward Geoffrey May; The E.R. Smith Co. Limited; Quebec, Canada; 1919, p. 17."

• "'Ladies in the Laboratory III: South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Women in Science: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', by Mary R. S. Creese and Thomas M. Creese; Scarecrow Press; Toronto; 2010, p. 172."

• Grave