♂Jean Träger

Jean Träger (died before 14 August 1720) was an inhabitant of Wernstein in Bavaria^W whose son André set out for the colony of Louisiana in 1720 and was married on the way at Phalsbourg, in what is now the Moselle department of France, on 14 August 1720, one of about forty-five couples bound for Louisiana who were married there that day. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Andre Dreger (born about 1687).

The wedding on the way to Louisiana

What is known of Jean Träger and his wife, Anne Marie Ulrich, comes from the marriage of their son. By then Jean was dead: the register calls him the late Jean Träger, an inhabitant of Wernstein in Bavaria in his lifetime, and names the groom’s mother as Anne Marie Ulrich. André married Anne Barbe Brendel at the request of Jean Hesler, the commissary charged with conducting the couple to the colony of Louisiana. He was probably the Andre Dreger who settled on the German Coast^W, the settlements on the Mississippi above New Orleans.

Notes

The marriage of 1720

The act is in the Phalsbourg marriage register for 1712–1734, kept by the Archives départementales de la Moselle. It names the groom as “André Träger, fils de deffunt Jean Träger vivant habitant de Wernstein en Bavière, et d’Anne Marie Ulrich”, the son of the late Jean Träger, in his lifetime an inhabitant of Wernstein in Bavaria, and of Anne Marie Ulrich. The act gives no date or place for Jean’s death, only that he had died before his son’s wedding. It does not say which Wernstein is meant.

His son Andre

The groom of 1720 is taken to be Andre Dreger of the German Coast on the strength of the name, the date and the convoy’s destination; no record made in Louisiana names Andre’s parents, so the link is probable rather than proven. A history of the German Coast published in 1909 gives the origin of Andreas Traeger, as it calls him, as Donauwoerth, also in Bavaria; the marriage act gives Wernstein as his father’s home. The surname is written Träger in the Phalsbourg register; in Louisiana it appears as Dreger, Tregle and Tregre, among other forms.