♂Francois Mollere

Francois Mollere (died between December 1786 and February 1787) was a Frenchman from Gascony who married in Canada in 1756, had children there, and later lived at Ascension on the Mississippi, in Spanish Louisiana, by the early 1780s. In 1782 he was one of the two witnesses at the wedding of Jean Serrette, a man of Bordeaux, who was also an ancestor of Floyd Amatus Delahorne; the two men’s lines of descent did not meet again until Floyd’s parents married, well over a century later. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Joseph François Mollere (1764–1811).

Marriage and family

He was the son of Guillaume Molaire and Jeanne Labenère. On 9 February 1756, at Les Cèdres (St-Joseph-de-Soulanges) in Canada, he married Marguerite Perrodeaux, daughter of Jean Perodeau and Angélique Gallien. The marriage act calls him François Molère “dit Lasonde”, a bachelor, and names his origin as a parish “of Auch diocese”, with the parish’s name written “?avant” in the register, its first letter unclear; the Drouin Institute’s database of the act gives it as Lavant. Witnesses included Jacques Milot, Antoine Dosques, François Gambe and Jean Perodo, and the priest was the Récollet Joseph Carpentier. Louisiana gives a different origin. At the baptism of his grandson Guillermo at St. Gabriel on 21 April 1796, the paternal grandparents were written as “Francisco Moler, of Burdeas & Margarita Perideaux, of Canada”, that is, of Bordeaux. The two statements do not agree, since Auch, in Gascony, lies in a different diocese from Bordeaux; the marriage act is his own, and the baptism entry was made forty years later by a priest recording a grandchild. The unclear parish name is Barran, in Gers (Gascony), in the diocese of Auch, as Fichier Origine, the Quebec genealogical societies’ database of immigrants to New France, compiled from the parish registers, identifies him. He had come to Canada in 1755 as a soldier of the Guyenne regiment^W, among the troops of Montcalm^W. The Barran registers have gaps, and his own baptism is not among the surviving entries, though four brothers and sisters were baptized there between 1727 and 1732.

On 4 October 1756 Francois stood witness at Lachine when his wife’s brother Joseph Perodo married, and signed the act “Francois Mollere”. The register calls him a soldier of the Béarn regiment^W and the groom’s brother-in-law; his wife Marguerite witnessed as the groom’s sister. The register’s Béarn is not the Guyenne regiment that the Fichier Origine entry names for his arrival in 1755.

Four children of a François Mollere and a Marguerite are recorded in Canada. A son François was baptized at Les Cèdres on 8 May 1758, and a François, aged fifteen months, was buried at Montréal on 2 August 1759. A son Paul was baptized at Québec on 8 August 1762, where the register calls the father “Moller Lasonde, merchant”, and the mother Marguerite “Lafleur”, a name the Perodeaus also used. On 14 October 1764 a son Joseph was baptized at Montréal. The couple of Les Cèdres is identified with the couple of Louisiana on the strength of this last baptism: Joseph was later described as “of Canada” in the Louisiana registers, and the birth date of Joseph François Mollere matches. The evidence points strongly to the identification, but it rests on that one child.

Louisiana and death

He was still alive on 13 December 1786, when he made a purchase at Ascension, and he died between that date and February 1787. He was probably buried at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans on 14 February 1787. His wife’s burial at Ascension on 28 April 1800 calls her his widow, so he died before that date. Most of what is known of Francois in Louisiana comes from the church registers of Ascension, at what is now Donaldsonville, and of St. Gabriel in Iberville Parish, as abstracted in the diocesan records of Baton Rouge, and in almost every case he appears in them only as a parent.

Sidney Marchand’s history of the parish names him among the residents of Ascension in 1770, in a list taken from the clerk of court’s archives. A daughter, Marguerite, married Pierre Lacroix, “of Quebec”, at St. James on 26 January 1778. On 14 October 1781, at the adjudication for building a larger church at Ascension, he bid two thousand dollars to build it. On 17 September 1782 he witnessed the marriage of Jean Serrette and Anne Sigur at Ascension. On 20 April 1783 his son Joseph married Ozite Barbe Blanchard there, and the register names the groom’s parents as “Francisco & Margarita Perodot”. Three weeks later, on 14 May 1783, another son, Francisco, was buried at Ascension, aged twenty. Marguerite, by then Lacroix’s widow, married Antoine Maxent, “of Burdes”, that is, of Bordeaux, at Ascension on 15 May 1788. A third son, Louis, married Anne Apolonia Landry at Ascension on 12 April 1789; at the baptism of their daughter Alexandrina at Ascension in 1794, Marguerite stood as godmother and was entered as the child’s paternal grandmother. When Joseph married for the second time, at St. James on 28 October 1800, the register again named his parents, as “Francisco & Margarita Perrodeaux, of LaFourche”. That entry falls six months after her burial and so does not show the couple living.

Notes

The registers do not say when or how Francois came to Louisiana. His surname appears in them as Mollere, Molère, Molaire and Moler, and his wife’s as Perrodeaux, Perodo, Perodot, Perodau and Perideaux.

Death and burial

The Ascension record of 13 December 1786 names him as a purchaser, which places him alive on that date (the Louisiana Slave Database, document 4501). The estate was partitioned on 8 July 1788 among the widow, Joseph, Louis and Marguerite, as an abstract of the Ascension records gives it; that abstract names no date of death. The St. Louis Cathedral funeral register for 14 February 1787 records a “MOLER”, fifty years old, and gives no given name. The identification with Francois rests on the widow’s petition of 6 June 1788, which Behrman’s Ascension Parish civil records print as saying he died at New Orleans fifteen months before, and on the Sons of the American Revolution patriot biography for him, which gives the same date and place.