♀Anne Roche

Anne Roche was a native of Bordeaux, in France, and the wife of Pierre Serrette; their son Jean settled at St. Gabriel on the Mississippi, in Spanish Louisiana, and began the Serrette line there. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Jean Serrette (born about 1748).

The 1791 record

Anne is known from a single entry, written in New Orleans, far from her own city. On 19 September 1791 Antoine, the twenty-one-month-old son of Jean Serrette and Anne Sigur, was baptized at St. Louis Cathedral^W, and the priest named all four of the child’s grandparents. Jean was “natural de Burdeos”, a native of Bordeaux, and his parents, Pierre Serrette and Anne Roche, were “naturales del mismo Burdeos expresado”, natives of that same Bordeaux. The priest wrote Pierre’s name in its Spanish form, Pedro, and Anne’s as Ana. Her surname is the one uncertain word in the entry: the priest first wrote something else, erased it and wrote “Roche” above the line, and the child’s other grandmother, Anne Sigur’s mother, was also named Anne Roche.

Notes

The record

The entry is in the baptism register of St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, for 1786–1796, page 160, number 870. It is printed in Earl C. Woods and Charles E. Nolan, Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, volume 5, page 94. It is the only record that names Jean Serrette’s parents; his marriage in 1782 calls him “of Bordeaux” but does not name them. The entry does not say whether Pierre and Anne were still living in 1791, or whether either of them ever left France.

Her surname

A note at the foot of the entry confirms the correction: “entre rs = Roche = vale = lo borrado no vale” (“between the lines, Roche, is valid; the erased word is not valid”). The child’s maternal grandmother was a different woman, Anne Roche of Lay-Saint-Christophe in Lorraine, the wife of Laurent Sigur, and the printed abstract gives both grandmothers as “Ana ROCHE”. The same surname twice in one entry may be a slip, the priest carrying one grandmother’s name over to the other. Jean Serrette had also been married before, to an Anna Laroque, a name close enough to add to the doubt. Her surname is therefore probable rather than certain.

Other names given for her

Several family trees published online name Jean’s mother as Anne Bourgeois or Anne Bourgada, and one as Françoise Glode. None of them cites a record.