♂Jean Baptiste Marcotte

Jean Baptiste Marcotte (died before 16 June 1808) was a settler in Spanish Louisiana, the son of parents described as natives of Canada, who lived at Bayou Rapides by 1796 and held land on a bayou in Rapides Parish. When his estate was settled in 1809, its largest debt, $316, went to Julien Poydras^W, the Pointe Coupée merchant. He was the third great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Augustin Marcotte (1796–1839).

Family

His parents appear in the Spanish baptismal register of St. Paul the Apostle at Mansura, Avoyelles, in the entry Father Juan Brady wrote on 20 April 1802 for his son Augustin. It gives them as Juan Bautista Marcotte and Maria Chatillon, natives of Canada, and says nothing more about where in Canada they came from.

A Jean Baptiste baptized at Cap-Santé, Québec, on 24 July 1738, son of Jean Baptiste Marcotte and Marie Marguerite Hardy, is probably him, but no record ties that child to the man in Louisiana, and the identification is not proven. No record of his birth or of his arrival in Louisiana is known.

He married Marguerite Tregle, whose parents, the same register records, were natives of the German Coast^W, the settlements on the Mississippi above New Orleans. No record of the marriage is known.

On the Mississippi, at Avoyelles and at Bayou Rapides

Between 1776 and 1786 three daughters, Genevieve, Marie and Marie Meli, were baptized at St. James church on the Mississippi, with Marguerite Tregle, whose name the register also writes as Dreger, as their mother.

In the 1777 census of the Acadian Coast he is thought to be 37, with his wife and a son, Francois, aged five.

In November 1792 Michel Pampalon petitioned against him at the Spanish post at Avoyelles, and the petition implicated his son Francois. He answered twice, on 6 and 8 November. In May 1793 Pampalon sued father and son together for a debt.

By 1796 the family was at Bayou Rapides, where Augustin was born on 17 November 1796.

Death and estate

He was dead by 16 June 1808, the date of the administration bond given by John Lacomb in Avoyelles Parish. On 26 June the household goods sold for $59.50. A tract on a bayou in Rapides Parish, which appears to be Bayou Lamourie, brought $1,090, payable in two halves in March 1809 and March 1810.

The account, approved on 27 July 1809, paid the costs of the sale and the debts, and the balance went to the heirs. A family meeting named Pierre Normand tutor of a minor, Catherine Marcot, and Jean Baptiste and Alexis Marcot made their marks on the act. On 28 February 1822 the heirs receipted six equal shares of $77.17, “in full of all [demands] that is due to us from the Estate of our Father J B Marcotte”. The 1816 marriage act of his son Augustin calls him the late Jean Baptiste Marcot.

Notes

Names

The records spell the name Marcot, Marcote and Marcotte, and his wife’s Tregle as Tregre, Tregue, Fregle or Dreger; this page uses Marcotte and Tregle. Deiler’s list of German Coast spellings (1909, p.122) treats Dreger as Tregle. The St. James entries give the father as Jean, and once as Baptista. They do not mention Bayou Rapides, and they do not by themselves tie him to the 1738 child.

The Cap-Santé baptism

Nine children of Jean Baptiste Marcotte and Marie Marguerite Hardy were baptized at Cap-Santé between 1726 and 1740, and only one was named Jean Baptiste: the child of 24 July 1738. A lineage compilation for Avoyelles families gives the same date and parish. Cyprien Tanguay^W’s dictionary gives the same couple and the same child. Chatillon was the Hardy family’s dit name: a daughter’s marriage at Cap-Santé in 1760 names her mother Marie Hardy, and a son’s marriage at Montréal in 1761 names his mother Marie Chatillon, which ties the Maria Chatillon of the 1802 register to this couple, though not to the 1738 child. Cap-Santé was a Marcotte stronghold: seven boys named Jean Baptiste were baptized there in 1761 alone, of more than one couple, so the name and the parish identify no one. In the PRDH and LAFRANCE indexes for 1738 to 1799 the child has no later burial or marriage under his name. That fits a man who left Canada, but it does not confirm it.

Two difficulties weigh on the identification. A man baptized in 1738 would have been 58 when Augustin was born in 1796, and Marguerite Tregle, baptized in 1754, would have been 42. A Jean Baptiste baptized at Cap-Santé in 1761 would have been about 35 at Augustin’s birth and would fit the age better, but the St. James baptisms set him aside. A boy baptized in 1761 would have been fifteen at Genevieve’s baptism in 1776, and a lineage compilation quotes a civil abstract of 15 October 1770 that makes Jean Baptiste Marcotte the brother-in-law of the minor children of the late Simon Tregle, which puts his marriage before that date. The abstract is known only through that compilation. Unless the father of the St. James children was a different Jean Marcotte married to a Marguerite Tregle, the 1761 candidate is ruled out. A Jean Marcotte who married at Yamachiche in 1760 is also set aside: the PRDH index lists neither Hardy nor Chatillon as that groom’s mother.

The 1802 register

The Mansura entry (St. Paul the Apostle, page 223, no. 395, in the hand of Father Juan Brady) survives as a degraded photostat. It names the paternal grandparents as Juan Bautista Marcotte and María Chatillon, naturales del Canadá, and the maternal grandparents as Simon Tregle and Margarita Folkes, naturales de la Costa de Alemanes. A 1980 diocesan certificate of the same entry repeats the names; the register, not the certificate, is the record that carries them. A lineage compilation gives Augustin as one of four children of the family baptized together that day.

The Avoyelles calendar, 1792 to 1799

De Ville’s Calendar of Louisiana Colonial Documents, volume I (Avoyelles Parish, 1961), gives the 1792 and 1793 papers by document number: Av1792-63 (4 November, the petition implicating Francois), Av1792-64 (6 November, Jean Marcotte’s answer), Av1792-66 (8 November, the response) and Av1793-112 (11 May 1793, the suit). The calendar also lists three related entries: a 1792 letter demanding payment from “Marquote”, a list of debts owed to Marcote by Pampalon, and a 1799 recognizance bond by Jean Marcot to Peytavin. The 1809 account pays “the agent of Pitevin”; the spelling may name the same creditor, but nothing says so. Francois appears in Avoyelles disputes again in 1798, 1799 and 1806 (the St. Landry civil records calendar, p.77, for the 1806 petition).

The 1777 census

The figures are quoted in Some Early Families of Avoyelles Parish, volume 2, chapter XXVIII, as reproduced on a WikiTree profile. The figures are known only from that compilation. The entry reads Jean Marcotte 37, Marguerite Traigle 24, Francois 5, Gennevieve 1. Read as given, age 37 puts his birth about 1740, two years after the 1738 baptism. On the same reckoning Francois was born about 1772. The wife’s age of 24 is a year or so high for her 1754 baptism.

Earlier residence

A lineage compilation places a Jean Baptiste Marcotte on the German Coast from 1770 to 1782 and at Rapides Post by February 1794. Neither claim is confirmed by a record.

The succession

The known succession papers are the bond, the sale, the account, the heirs’ receipt and a tutorship leaf. The account credits $1,149.50, the household goods and the $1,090 land price, and pays the creditors: $316 to Julien Poydras, $111 to the agent of Pitevin, who had sued the estate, and $17 to John Bontant, with the costs and the judges’ fees. The account was approved on 27 July 1809 by Thomas F. Oliver, judge of Avoyelles. The balance was $462.85½. Six shares of $77.17 come to $463.02, about 17 cents more than that balance; the receipt’s figure is the one written. Its signatures cannot be read with certainty beyond the marks of Alexis Marcotte and Pierre Normand. In the family-meeting act John Lacomb is under-tutor, and the act’s opening leaf is missing, so its date is unknown. Augustin’s name is not legible on any of the leaves; his parentage rests on the 1802 register and the 1816 marriage act.