Henriette DeLille
American nun (1813–1862)
Henriette Díaz DeLille, SSF (March 11, 1813 – November 17, 1862) was a Louisiana Creole of color and Catholic religious sister from New Orleans. She founded the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1836 and served as their first Mother Superior. The sisters are the second-oldest surviving congregation of African-American religious.
In 1988, the congregation formally opened the beatification process for DeLille with the Holy See. She was of mixed race: her father was a white man from France, her mother was a quadroon, and her maternal grandfather was a white man from Spain.
Biography
Early life
Henriette DeLille was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 11, 1813. Her mother, Marie-Josèphe "Pouponne" Díaz, was a free woman of color of New Orleans. Her father Jean-Baptiste Lille Sarpy (var. de Lille) was born about 1758 in Fumel, Lot-et-Garonne, France. Their union was a common-law marriage typical of the contemporary plaçage system.
“Henriette DeLille” enters the record as american nun (1813–1862). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Henriette, DeLille and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5716083. VIAF identifies the subject as 20919059. The Library of Congress control number is n00084087. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1813, 1862, 1836 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henriette DeLille” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.