♀Barbe Osite Mollere

Barbe Osite Mollere (8 January 1784 – buried 25 December 1823) was a Louisiana woman of Acadian and French-Canadian descent, born at Ascension in Spanish Louisiana, whose godfather at her baptism was her maternal grandfather, Anselme Blanchard, then commandant of the Acadian post of Valenzuela on Bayou Lafourche, and who married Raphael Croquer, a Guatemala-born officer who served as commandant at Baton Rouge. She was the third great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Joseph Croquer (1811–1862).

Early life

She was born on 8 January 1784 and baptized on 23 February 1784 in the church of Ascension, at what is now Donaldsonville, the daughter of Joseph François Mollere and Ozite Barbe Blanchard, who had married there in April 1783. Her father is called “of Canada” in the registers, and compiled family trees place his birth at Montreal; he was later a lieutenant in the militia, and a baptism of 1796 records his father as “of Burdeas”, that is, Bordeaux. Her mother came of an Acadian family that had gone through the exile. The baptism names her godparents as “Anselmo Blanchard, Commandante of Valenzuela, mat. grandfather” and Maria Margarita Perendu.

She grew up in a large family; at least nine children of her parents are known, the later ones baptized at St. Gabriel in Iberville Parish. In 1796, aged twelve, she stood as godmother to her infant brother Guillaume, whose baptism records her father as “of Canada” and her mother as “of New England”. The godfather beside her was entered as “Manuel Gayosa Brigdelos”, very probably Brigadier Manuel Gayoso de Lemos^W, then governor of the Natchez district^W, who is recorded as a sponsor at other baptisms in the district in those years. Her mother died at New Orleans on 15 October 1799, and her grandfather Anselme Blanchard died six weeks later, on 25 November 1799. On 28 October 1800 her father married again, to Magdalena Braux, the widow of Jean Baptiste Landry; one of the two witnesses was Raphael Croquer, her future husband.

Marriage and family

On 12 September 1803, at St. Gabriel, she married Raphael Croquer. The marriage register of St. Gabriel calls him “Don Raphael Croker”, a native of Guatemala and a lieutenant in the Louisiana infantry regiment, who was political and military commandant of the Fort of La Fourche des Chetimachas; it names him as the legitimate son of the late Stanilas Croker and Maria Anna Muñoz. It calls her “Dona Ozita Barbara Mollere et Blanchard”, the legitimate daughter of Joseph Mollere, sub-lieutenant of militia, and Ozita Barbara Blanchard, and it also gives her as “of Iberville”. The witnesses were Josef Landry and Luis Mollere.

A local history of the Acadian exiles gives her husband’s command of La Fourche des Chetimachas as running from October 1798 until November 1803, when, the history says, the American governor replaced him with Joseph Landry because he was in Spanish military service, so the wedding fell in the last months of that command. Her husband appears in the registers of those years as commandant of the parish, and later as a captain of grenadiers in the Regiment of Louisiana and commandant of the fort at Baton Rouge.

The couple had at least three children: two sons, Raphael, born on 19 June 1809, and Joseph, born on 7 June 1811, whose godparents were her brother Raphael and Maria Enrrieta Blanchard, entered as the child’s aunt, and a daughter, Mary Gertrude, who married Abraham Billings, of Nashville, Tennessee, at St. Gabriel in 1834.

Death

She was buried on 25 December 1823 at St. Joseph’s church in Baton Rouge. The burial register files the entry under her maiden name and calls her “Ozite, wife of Druker”, a misreading of Croker, the form her husband’s name took in other registers. She died on or before the day of her burial, and no record gives the date of her death.

Notes

Her name is written in many forms across the registers, among them Osita Barbara, Ozita Barbara and Barbe Ozitte, with the surname as Mollere, Moller or Moler. Her brother Guillaume’s baptism of 1796 calls their mother “of New England”, while a New Orleans cemetery record gives the mother’s birthplace as Baltimore, Maryland; both describe the family’s exile in the English colonies.

Her baptism was recorded at Ascension, now Donaldsonville, but the marriage register calls her a native of the parish of l’Assomption, the neighboring parish in the same district of La Fourche des Chetimachas. The register also spells the groom’s name Croker and his father’s name Stanilas Croker, where other registers have Croquer and Estanislas. The local history cited above is Marchand, Acadian Exiles in the Golden Coast of Louisiana. A dated inventory of the district’s archives, signed by her husband on 20 March 1804, is the last record of his command there, some four months after the November 1803 date the local history gives.