Joseph Marie & Maud Marion Le Bras
| First name | Joseph Marie & Maud Marion |
|---|---|
| Last name | Le Bras |
| Country of Origin | France & Ireland |
| Date of Birth | C1850 & C1867 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | C1877 & C1 |
| Submitted by | Joan Wickham |
Story
JOSEPH MARIE LE BRAS C1850-1938
and
MAUD MARION (CONLAN) LE BRAS C1867-1949
Joseph Marie was a Frenchman from St. Brieuc in Brittany who emigrated to Australia about 1877. His parents, had a lace making business which was quite profitable and begrudgingly gave him his inheritance to begin a new life in Queensland. They did not want him to leave.
Maud Marion, later called ‘Minnie Maud\’ by her family was an Irish lass from Mohill in Leitrim aged only about seventeen when she left. Her parents Thomas and Maud Marion (nee Bohan) Conlan were farmers.
Joseph Marie and Maud Marion were married in Brisbane on 12th June 1888 in the Brisbane Registry Office when he was about thirty six & she was about twenty two.
The family fortune had apparently been used up by this time as Joseph was earning his living as a gold miner.
Four sons were born in Queensland Ernest Wilfred in 1887 before they married, Jean Joseph Leon in 1889, Hubert in 1891 who died the next year and Ludovic Francis in 1894. The family moved south to New South Wales in the late 1890s and eventually settled in the Blayney Shire. The brothers were all redheads with piercing ice-blue eyes, reasonably tall, particularly Ludovic and fairly slim. Joseph Marie & Minnie Maud adopted a fifth son in the early part of the new century and called him Yvon Vivian. He later changed the name to Ivan.
They lived on a small twenty acre property called ‘Rob Roy’ near Carcoar until the 1940s and later moved into the tiny town of Newbridge. Only one of their sons, Ernest Wilfred produced a child, Edith, who did not get to know her grandparents because of family friction with in-laws caused by bitter religious differences. The only surviving descendants of this Le Bras family in Australia is Edith\’s daughter Joan Wickham and grandson Ben.
Joseph Marie died on 20th July 1938 and Maud Marion died on 11th January 1949. Both were buried in the Roman Catholic section of the Newbridge Cemetery.