♂Jean Baptiste Daigle

Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847) was a farm laborer of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, who lost his mother as a boy and was living in the parish’s fifth ward from at least 1880 to 1910. He was the great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) and her daughter Ida Serrette (1903–1990).

Early life

He was one of the four sons of Maximilien Daigle and Marcelite Ida Melancon. No record of his baptism is known. His mother died before 2 February 1856, when he was about eight. That day the district court confirmed his father as natural tutor of the four boys, in a printed certificate that records them as “born of the marriage of” Maximilien Daigle and Marcelite Ida Melançon, the mother by then deceased. Later that month the family’s property, and that of his maternal grandmother, Anne Doralie Thibodeau, who had also died, was inventoried at his father’s request.

His father remarried in or about April 1857, to Olivia Caillier, the widow of Demosthene Bijeau. Jean Baptiste is not in his father’s household in the censuses of 1850 or 1860, and where he lived as a child is not known.

Marriage and family

He is recorded as marrying Melia Thibodeaux at Breaux Bridge on 22 April 1868. When her mother’s estate was settled in 1871, the couple appear together on its account of distribution, both making their marks. They had three daughters, born between 1869 and 1879: Amelia, Ida and Marie.

Later life

His father and stepmother had both died by 3 December 1875, leaving so little that the court dispensed with an inventory. Later that month Jean Baptiste and his three full brothers, all of age, renounced their share of the succession.

In 1880 he was a married farm laborer aged 31 in the fifth ward, with his wife, their three daughters and a sixteen-year-old named as his brother, Deslua. He was still in the fifth ward in 1900 and 1910. No record of his death is known.

Notes

Birth year

His birth year is uncertain. The 1880 census age points to about 1849 and the 1900 census gives September 1848, but both would put him within months of his brother François Numa, born 19 March 1849 at Breaux Bridge. The printed certificate and the 1856 petition list the four sons in the order Joseph, Jean Baptiste, François Numa and Ovide, which places him before Numa, at about 1847.

Parentage

The printed certificate comes from the Fourteenth District Court. It and the 1856 petition name Maximilien and Marcelite Ida Melancon as his parents. The 1868 marriage index names the same mother, and the 3 December 1875 petition of his brother Joseph names Jean Baptiste among the sons of Maximilien’s first marriage, to Ida Melancon, all of them of age.

The 1850 and 1860 households

In 1850 the household of Maximilien, written “Maxime D’Aigle” and listed as a planter, has Joseph aged five, a child “Idomée” aged three and Numa aged one. Idomée is not identified as him. A census index of 1870 lists an Idomée Daigle, a woman of twenty-one, in a household headed by a Joseph Daigle, so Idomée was probably a daughter who lived. The 1850 index gives her sex as male, but the sex column of the original appears blank. In 1860 the household’s entries are partly illegible, and those that can be made out do not include him.

The 1857 remarriage

Two dates are on record. Hébert’s Southwest Louisiana Records, volume 6, gives 14 April 1857, and index entries from the St. Martin parish marriage series give both 14 and 29 April 1857. Which was the church wedding is not known. The 1875 petition names Demosthene Bijeau as Olivia Caillier’s first husband, and her three children by him, Ursin, Marcel and Felix, as of age.

The marriage record

The marriage is known only from an index entry in Louisiana, Marriages, 1816–1906 (civil record book, volume 8). It names his parents as “Maxilien Daigle” and “Ida Melancon”, and hers as Leonard Thibodeaux and Ordalie Cormier.

The 1871 account and the 1875 signature

In 1871 both made their marks on the account of distribution of her mother’s estate. A transcription of the 1875 renunciation has him signing his own name while his three brothers made their marks. That does not square with his mark of 1871, and the question is open.

The 1875 succession

The petition of 3 December 1875 says the parents died “barely leaving enough to cover the expenses of their burial and last illness”, and the court dispensed with an inventory “for the reason that there is no property to be inventoried”. In a notarial act of 16 December 1875 the four adult sons renounced the succession, calling it plus onéreuse qu’avantageuse, more burdensome than advantageous. A transcript on a family tree dates the act 20 December and reads it as an acceptance; the two readings have not been reconciled.

Deslua

The 1880 census names the sixteen-year-old Deslua as his brother. A transcription of the tutorship oaths of 20 December 1875 names among the second-marriage minors a “Delair” (in the under-tutor’s oath “Delme”), taken to be Deslua, which would make him a half-brother. The 3 December petition’s list of four second-marriage minors leaves him out, and the point rests on that transcription alone.

Names and what is not known

The 1910 census writes him “John B. Daigle”. No death record or grave is known for him, and whether a succession was opened for him after 1910 is not known.