♀Celeste Aimee Joffrion

Celeste Aimee Joffrion (died after 1850) was a woman of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, who married Augustin Marcotte in 1816 and, as his widow, was farming land of her own by 1850; in March 1840, within sixteen days of each other, her daughter Delphine and her son Sallust married a brother and a sister of the Dillahunt family. She was the great-great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Delphine Marcotte (1824–1900).

Early life

Celeste was born in Louisiana about 1800, the daughter of Joseph Joffrion and Magdelaine Bizet, who had married at the post of Opelousas in 1795. By 1810 the family was living at Avoyelles, where her father’s household on that year’s census included four girls, two of them aged between 10 and 15. Celeste, then about ten, was most likely one of those two.

Marriage and family

On 19 September 1816, at about sixteen, Celeste married Augustin Marcotte (1796–1839) in a civil ceremony at Avoyelles before Alexandre Plauché, the parish judge. Three acts were drawn up that day: the act of marriage, her parents’ consent and a permission. They call her “Céleste Joffrion jeune”, the younger, the legitimate daughter of Joseph Joffrion “junr.” and Magdelaine Bizet, and her father and mother came before the judge in person to give their consent. Augustin signed his name; Celeste made her mark.

The couple made their home in Avoyelles Parish, where their son Sallust was born about 1822 and their daughter Delphine in January 1824. The records and a family history written by a descendant name five children of the couple: Sallust, Delphine, Fernelius, Odile and Felix. A sixth, Lucien, is probably theirs too. In 1830 Augustin headed a household in the parish, entered on the census two places away from that of Célestin Joffrion, a man of Celeste’s own surname.

Augustin died before 1850; a family history written by a descendant puts his death about 1839. In March 1840 two of their children married into a single family: Delphine married Samuel Dillahunt on 3 March, and sixteen days later Sallust married Samuel’s sister Elizabeth, with Samuel as a witness.

Widowhood

When the census taker reached her house in 1850 she was entered as “Wid. Aug. Marcotte”, aged 50, born in Louisiana, a farmer with real estate worth $2,000. Two young people lived with her, Meline, 15, and Fernelus, 13. The census gives no relationships, but Fernelus was most likely her son Fernelius Marcotte: when he married Marceline Dufour at Avoyelles on 20 November 1855, his parents were recorded as Augustin Marcotte and Celeste Joffrion. Meline, born about 1835, may have been a daughter; no record says so.

The family record gives 1850 as the year of her death, in Avoyelles Parish. No record of it has been found, and she was still living when the census was taken that year.

Notes

A second Celeste Joffrion, some seven years older, lived at Avoyelles at the same time and also married into the Marcotte family. Family trees, indexes and a newspaper series have merged the two women, giving this Celeste the older woman’s birth in 1792 and her two earlier marriages. In the census of 1850 the two appear as separate widows, in separate households.

An earlier version of the family record gave her a birth on 25 August 1799 and a baptism at Pointe Coupée on 11 May 1800. That baptism is of a cousin of the same name, a daughter of Joseph Joffrion and Julie Guerin; Celeste’s marriage acts name her mother as Magdelaine Bizet. An online family tree gives her birth as 8 May 1799 and her baptism as 7 September 1799 at St. Paul the Apostle in Mansura, citing a printed abstract of that church’s baptisms; no record of that baptism has been found, though the date is close to her age of 50 in 1850.

The 1816 acts call her father only “Joseph Joffrion junr.” and do not name his parents. Three men named Joseph Joffrion headed households at Avoyelles in 1810; he is identified with the Joseph born at Pointe Coupée on 28 December 1770 because the household entered as “Jun.” was the only one of the three with daughters of her age.

The 1850 census family is written under the surname “Mascolli” in a published transcription of that census.

A marriage index of St. Paul’s at Mansura lists a Céleste Joffrion who married Vallery Bordelon on 8 October 1840, and an online family tree, citing a published genealogy of Avoyelles families, gives that marriage to this Celeste. In 1850, however, she was still recorded as Augustin Marcotte’s widow, so whether the bride was this Celeste or another woman of the name has not been established.

The family record places her burial in the St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Cemetery at Mansura, from a Find a Grave listing. A Find a Grave entry titled “Celeste Aimee Joffrion Mayeux Marcotte” carries the older Celeste’s first married name, so that burial may be hers rather than this Celeste’s.

Children of the marriage

The family history written by a descendant lists five children: Salluste, Delphine, Felix, Odile and Ferneleuse (Fernelius). It dates Salluste to 1815 and Delphine to 1825, where the usual dates are about 1822 and 1824.

A transcription of the St. Paul’s register at Mansura, made in 1978 by a certified genealogical records searcher, names Saluste as a son of Auguste Marcotte and Celeste Joffrion. The transcription is secondhand, not the register page itself.

The DNA evidence for Delphine’s line agrees with the family history, but it makes her place among the children probable rather than documented.

The 1855 marriage of Fernelius names his parents as Augustin Marcotte and Celeste Joffrion, written Celiste in that record, in the compiled Louisiana marriage records. The 1850 census gives no relationships, but a Fernelus, 13, lived in the widow’s household.

On 1 September 1855 a family council at Avoyelles, held for the minor children of Joseph Gaillard, deceased, and of Odile Marcotte, now the wife of Martin Dufour, named Felix, Saluste and Fernelius A. Marcotte as the minors’ maternal uncles. The council makes Felix, Saluste and Fernelius Odile’s brothers, and the family history gives both Odile and Felix as this couple’s children.

Lucien Marcotte’s death record of 20 May 1917 at Morrow, St. Landry Parish, gives his age as 97 and names his parents as Augustin Marcotte and Celistine Soredeau. The mother’s name is the one conflict: it is not Celeste Joffrion’s, and the records do not explain the difference. The birth year usually given for him, 1826, does not fit the age at death, which points to about 1820. He is placed with this couple on his father’s name and a DNA sibling-line test, so he is probable rather than documented.