♂Anaclet Melancon

Anaclet Melancon (27 August 1792 – 8 September 1827), baptized Alexandre Anaclet, was an Acadian of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, who at his own father’s death in 1818 was named under-tutor to three young half-siblings while standing as an heir himself. He was the third great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marcelite Ida Melancon (died before 1856).

Early life

Anaclet was born on the family land near St. James on the Mississippi River, a son of Charles Melancon and his first wife, Marie Claire Braud, and was baptized there about seven weeks later, with Pablo Melanzon and Adelayda Leblanc standing as sponsors. Charles remarried after Marie Claire’s death, to Scholastique Bourgeois, and moved the family west to the Pointe quarter of St. Martin Parish on Bayou Teche, probably the later Grande Pointe. During the War of 1812 Anaclet served as a private in De Clouet’s Regiment of Louisiana militia. When Charles died there in December 1818, his succession was opened at the St. Martinville courthouse: Anaclet appeared among the heirs of the first marriage, acting “in his own name,” and was also appointed under-tutor to Alexandre, Victorin and Marie Eliza, his three young half-siblings from the second marriage — a family meeting in February 1819 named him alongside his brother Eugene and Baptiste Semere, the husband of his sister Marie.

Marriage and family

Anaclet married Anne Doralie Thibodeau at the St. Martinville church on 21 January 1820. Her parents were Nicolas Thibodeaux and Éléonore Prejean, and the 1820 marriage entry itself calls her the minor daughter of the late Nicolas and Éléonore, though that entry is known only from a published transcription. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana names Anne Doralise as their daughter, and an index of Louisiana births gives an Ana Thibodeaux born to that couple on 8 April 1799. Indexed baptism records place the family at St. Martinville in 1820 to 1822 and at Grand Coteau, in St. Landry Parish, in 1823 and 1827. Their son Thelesphore was born on 20 December 1820, and no record of his death has been found; the index gives a second child, an unnamed son, as born in February 1825 and dead on 24 February 1825; two daughters survived, Arthémise, who married Olivier Thibodeau, and Marcelite Ida, who married Maximilien Daigle. A third daughter, Claire Céleste, was born on 19 January 1827 at Grand Coteau.

Death

Anaclet died on the morning of 8 September 1827 at his home on Bayou Teche. He was buried the next day in the parish cemetery at Saint Martinville. His succession was opened in October 1827 at the courthouse in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, and named three children, the youngest nine months old.

A court paper of February 1856, the inventory of his widow’s estate, still calls him “feu Anaclet Melançon,” the late Anaclet Melançon. Anne Doralie herself died on 12 December 1855, and the inventory of her estate was drawn up in February 1856, about two months after her death. Cormier’s compilation adds that his male line ended with him, since no son of his survived infancy and only his daughters carried his descent forward.

Notes

Cormier’s compilation gives Anaclet’s birth as about 1797; the register cited above, a baptismal entry, gives 27 August 1792, and the register is followed here. The death date of 8 September 1827 and the burial on 9 September come from a published abstract of the St. Martinville church register (Donald J. Hebert, Southwest Louisiana Records, St. Martin volume 4, entry 1870). That abstract is quoted here second-hand: he “died 8 Sept. 1827 at age about 30 years in the morning at his home on Bayou Teche; buried 9 Sept. 1827 in the parish cemetery.” The age runs low against the 1792 baptism, which would make him about thirty-five at death; the baptism date is followed for his birth, and the printed age is given as the record’s own figure. The wording has not been confirmed against the register itself.

Cormier’s compiled history gives the same burial and the same October succession. The succession, No. 451 at the Opelousas courthouse, is known from the same abstract, which names three children: Pauline, aged six, Eady, aged five, and Celeste, nine months. The names of the two elder children are not the tree’s names for his daughters, and the tree’s entries are kept. The February 1856 inventory of his widow’s estate is Estate No. 1515 in St. Martin Parish.

The War of 1812 service comes from a printed roster, Marion John Bennett Pierson’s Louisiana Soldiers in the War of 1812 (1963), which lists him as “Anaclette Melenson, Private, De Clouet’s Reg’t., La. Militia.” The roster does not give the service dates; the range of 1812 to 1815 is the one the tree holds.

The marriage is dated 21 January 1820 above, from an online index of Louisiana marriages. The abstract in Hebert’s Southwest Louisiana Records gives 31 January 1820 for the same entry, and the two dates are not reconciled.