Delilah Bourassa Nourie

Biography

Delilah Bourassa was born at Maple Hill, in northeastern Kansas near Topeka, on December 1, 1868. Her parents were Eugene, also recorded as Ugane, Bourassa and Herline or Ellen Gagnon. According to the family account published in the Hownikan, she moved to what is now Beaverville, in Iroquois County in eastern Illinois, near the Indiana border, at four years old.

She married Alfred Nourie on January 2, 1888. Their eleven children were remembered as Alphie, Arline, Leonie, Marie Louise, Eugene, Antillie, Sherman, Elmer, Eustelle, Alfred and Opal.

The couple's marriage lasted forty-five years. Alfred died on March 31, 1933; Delilah survived him by just over nine years, dying on May 4, 1942. The Iroquois County Genealogical Society's obituary index independently lists those death dates and gives Delilah's birth date as December 1, 1868. She was buried at Saint Mary Cemetery in Beaverville.

A photograph of Delilah remained in the family. Her granddaughter supplied it, together with the account of her Kansas childhood and Illinois family, for publication in 1986. That contribution preserved both her appearance and details that a cemetery entry alone would not contain.

Her mother’s name also appears as Adeline in the family record. The child Alfred in the list is Alfred Nourie, son of Alfred and Delilah, distinct from his father.