Birth of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born on September 4, 1981, at the Park Plaza Hospital in Houston, Texas, to Tina Knowles (née Beyoncé), a hairdresser and salon owner, and Mathew Knowles, a Xerox sales manager. Tina is Louisiana Creole and Mathew is African American. Beyoncé's younger sister, Solange Knowles, is also a singer and a former backup dancer for Destiny's Child. Solange and Beyoncé are the first sisters both to have had number one solo albums. Beyoncé's maternal grandparents, Lumis Albert Beyincé and Agnéz Deréon, were French-speaking Louisiana Creoles, with roots in New Iberia. She is a descendant of Acadian militia officer Joseph Broussard, who was exiled to French Louisiana after the expulsion of the Acadians, and of the French military officer and Abenaki chief Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie, Baron de Saint-Castin. She has additional Breton heritage. Beyoncé's fourth great-grandmother, Marie-Françoise Trahan, was born in 1774 in Bangor, located on Belle Île, France. Trahan was a daughter of Acadians who had taken refuge on Belle Île after the Acadian expulsion. The Estates of Brittany had divided the lands of Belle Île to distribute them among 78 other Acadian families and the already settled inhabitants. The Trahan family lived on Belle Île for over ten years before migrating to Louisiana, where she married a Broussard descendant. Beyoncé researched her ancestry and discovered that she is descended from a slave owner who married his slave. Her mother is also of distant Irish and Jewish ancestry. Beyoncé also has Belgian ancestry from Hainaut Province, Wallonia and is related to a former mayor of Froidchapelle, Belgium.