A FAMILY OF THIRTY-THREE CHILDREN,

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 266, 16 November 1878, Page 6

A FAMILY OF THIRTY-THREE CHILDREN,

(From the " Detroit Post.") Think of a father climbing out of bed at daylight and calling to each of his thirty or more children to get up, and then assigning them their several duties for the day. Such a man was Antoiue Louis Descompt Labadie. "With his father and two brothers, this somewhat remarkable son of Gaul emigrated from Erance and settled in Detroit in 1750. Nineteen years thereafter he married Angelique Campan, and the two went to housekeeping over the river. Labadie lived happily with his wife for five years, when she died, having borne him seven children during that time. He had traded extensively with the Indians, and had treated them with such uniform kindness and consideration that upon the death of his wife they entreated him to marry a maiden out of their tribe. This he did, choosing the daughter of a Sauteuse chief, as the records of the Catholic Church at Sandwich have it. Seventeen children his dusky bride presented him, and then her spirit fled to the happy hunting grounds. Aboriginal and JNortnan blood mingling in the veins of the seventeen descendants of this last union helped to build up a hardy and rather industrious community, and sti 1 Labadie faltered not. He was wedded to Miss Charlotte Barthe, and the fruits of this union were nine children, the oldest being the father ot Gregoire L. Labadie of this city, and of Captain Charles E. Labadie, of the firm of Labadie and Parent, Windsor. The latter still holds a portion of the old homestead in Walkerville. Old citizens tay that it was not ao

uncommon thing for the old French settlers to raise iamilies of eighteen and twenty children. An old resident says that Van Avery, who lived on the present site of the water works, was the father of twenty-three children, all by one wife.