Ella Marie Richard, a Canadian from St. Antoine, New Brunswick, was born August 28th, 1943. She is the 2nd child and the oldest daughter of 14 children, 3 boys and 11 girls. They lived is a 2 story house with 3 bedrooms upstairs with bunk beds in the hallway. Her mother Doris Richard was a house wife and her father Joseph Richard was a lumberjack,
owner of a sawmill and an alcoholic. After the 9th child was born, Doris at 35 years old had a near fatal miscarriage and almost died. She was hospitalized and Ella at 13 years old who was in 7th Grade at the time had to quit school to help her mother and with the kids at home. Ella started working at 15 as a nanny which was 2 hours away from home so she would stay overnight for 2-3 weeks at a time and would go home to visit her family for one weekend and then go back. In 1959, at 15 ½ years old, Ella met Walter LeBlanc and they were married when she was 17 ½ years old. After six months of being married, there was no work for anyone so Ella and Walter took out the papers (green card/Visa) so they could move to the US for work. It took 8 months to get their green cards/visa. Shortly after she was married they moved to the United States. It took them 24 hour or more because of the old back roads and traveled in a snow storm. They lived in Waltham Massachusetts, with her brother Normand, sisters Bernice and Rita, and her father who had also moved to the US just months earlier, to start a new life. They all started saving their change to help her mom, Doris, and her 7 other siblings that were left behind in Canada, to have enough money so they could also get their green card/visa paperwork completed so the rest of the family could move and join them in the US. The entire family was reunited in July 1962.
