♀Anne Doralie Thibodeau

Anne Doralie Thibodeau (died 12 December 1855) was a woman of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, the wife of Anaclet Melancon. At her death nearly all of her small estate was the value set on one enslaved man, Remond. She was the third great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marcelite Ida Melancon (died before 1856).

Family and marriage

An index of Louisiana births gives her birth as 8 April 1799, written as Ana Thibodeaux; the identification is probable, not proven. She married Anaclet Melancon at Saint Martinville on 21 January 1820. Her parents were Nicolas Thibodeaux and Éléonore Prejean. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana names Anne Doralise as the daughter of those two, and says that her daughters married into the Daigle and Thibodeaux families. Cormier does list “Anaclet Melançon and Anne Doralise Thibodeaux” as the parents of Arthémise.

Indexed baptism records give the couple five children. Thelesphore was born at Saint Martinville on 20 December 1820 and Arthémise on 9 February 1822. An unnamed son was recorded in February 1825 and Claire Céleste was born in January 1827; the index places Claire Céleste’s birth at Grand Coteau, in St. Landry Parish, not at Saint Martinville. Two daughters lived to marry: Arthémise, wife of Olivier Thibodeau, and Marcelite Ida, wife of Maximilien Daigle. Marcelite Ida was dead by 2 February 1856, when her husband petitioned the court to open her succession.

Widowhood and death

Anaclet was already dead when her estate was taken up: the inventory of 19 February 1856 calls her “épouse de feu Anaclet Melançon”. Anne Doralie herself died on 12 December 1855. On 14 February 1856 the 14th Judicial District Court at St. Martinville ordered an inventory of “all the Estate of Anne Doralie Thibodeau”. The inventory was made on 19 February 1856 before the notary Siméon Valery Martin, with Antoine Broussard and Henry Rees as appraisers. Its preamble describes her as “grand-mère des susdits mineurs et mère de la dame Arthémise Melançon”, the minors being her four Daigle grandsons. Her only heirs were named as Arthémise and, by representation of their dead mother, the four sons of Marcelite Ida and Maximilien Daigle.

The inventory listed a bed set, a kettle, a jar, an armoire and a corner cabinet, worth in all only about $26, and one further article: “un negre nomme Remond, age d’environ quarante ans, estime huit cents piastres”, ninety-seven percent of her $826.50 estate. Remond was sold at a sheriff’s sale on 10 May 1856, adjudicated to Maximilien Daigle, her own son-in-law and the tutor of her Daigle grandsons, for $1,300 against his $800 appraisal, “sans garantie des vices et maladies”. The clerk of the sale gave his age as about forty-four, four years more than in February. No further record of Remond is known.

Notes

Her given name is spelled variously across the surviving papers: “Doraline” in the French notarial acts, “Doralie” in the English court papers (the spelling used on this page), “Doralice” in at least one source title, and “Doralise” in Cormier’s compilation. No burial record of her own is known.

Her birth date of 8 April 1799 comes from an index of Louisiana births, which gives Ana Thibodeaux as the daughter of Nicolas Thibodeaux and Éléonore Prejean. Her place in this family rests on that index, on a baptism transcription of 1 November 1799 that names the same parents, on her 1820 marriage entry, on Cormier, who names Anne Doralise, the wife of Anaclet Melançon, as their daughter, and on Arsenault, who lists an Anne born in 1799 among their children. The parent link is on record rather than proven, because both church entries are known only from a published transcription. Her father’s estate papers, in a tutorship act dated 5 December 1817, name Doralie Thibodeau among the legitimate minor children of Nicolas Thibodeaux and Éléonore Prejean, the court record that ties her to these parents. The 1820 entry calls her the minor daughter of the late Nicolas and Éléonore, with the father’s surname written Thibaudot. A different Anne Thibodeau, born on 27 April 1800 to Joseph Thibodeau and Pelagie Broussard, appears in a St. Martin family list printed in the Attakapas Gazette in 1972; a burial entry of 12 May 1800 for that child rules her out.

The date of death rests on a single transcription of a St. Martin parish church record, printed in Hébert’s Southwest Louisiana Records. The same transcription gives her age as 59 years. That does not fit the birth date of 8 April 1799, which would make her 56 at her death, so the age is given only as the record has it. A FamilySearch profile repeats the date but cites no death or burial record of its own. The court’s order of 14 February 1856 for an inventory of her estate followed about two months after that date. The marriage is dated 21 January 1820 above; the transcription of the marriage entry gives 31 January, and the two dates are not reconciled.