Beyoncé

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 to have both had number one solo albums. Beyoncé's maternal grandparents, Lumis Albert Beyincé and Agnéz Deréon (daughter of Odilia Broussard and Eugène DeRouen), 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. Beyoncé was raised Methodist and attended St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston. As her mother's family was Catholic, her family attended Midnight Mass at St. Mary of the Purification Catholic Church on Christmas Eve. She went to St. Mary's Catholic Montessori School in Houston and enrolled in dance classes there. Her singing ability was discovered when dance instructor Darlette Johnson began humming a song and Beyoncé finished it, able to hit the high-pitched notes. Beyoncé's interest in music and performing continued after winning a school talent show at age seven, singing John Lennon's "Imagine" to beat 15/16-year-olds. In the fall of 1990, Beyoncé enrolled in Parker Elementary School, a music magnet school in Houston, where she performed with the school's choir. She also attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later Alief Elsik High School. Beyoncé was also a member of the choir at St. John's United Methodist Church where she sang her first solo and was a soloist for two years.