♂John Cotreall

John Cotreall (born about 1820) was a Virginia-born laborer in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, who married into the family of a Guatemalan-born officer of Spanish Louisiana. He was the great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Marie Virginia Cottrelle (1858–1937) and her son Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929).

Origins

The published abstract of his marriage at St. Gabriel^W in Iberville Parish calls him a “native of Mill County, Virginia”, and names his parents as John Cotreall and Eliza Steed. No Virginia county of that name is known, and the county word in the original register is hard to make out; in the register the phrase also follows his mother’s name, so it may describe her rather than him. The census of 1870 also gives Virginia as his birthplace, and his age there points to a birth about 1820. Nothing more is known of his parents or of when he came to Louisiana. The priests and clerks who recorded him spelled the name in several ways: Cotreall, Cutrell, Cottrille, Cotrell and Contrell, and the state marriage index gives it as Catrau.

Marriage and family

On 9 March 1851 he was at Plaquemine, standing godfather with Emilie Croker to Marie Luciana Housiaux, the daughter of Emilie’s sister Marie Euphrasie. On 15 May 1851 he married Emilie Croker at St. Gabriel, in a ceremony the curate, Em. Dupuy, recorded in English. The register describes her as a minor and the legitimate daughter of Joseph Croker and Cidalise Lambremont, of the parish; neither bride nor groom signed, both making their marks. Among the witnesses was Adolphe Housiaux, who had married Emilie’s sister Marie Euphrasie the year before. Emilie’s grandfather was Raphael Croquer, a native of Guatemala who had served as a captain of grenadiers in the Regiment of Louisiana in the service of the Spanish crown and as commandant at Baton Rouge.

The couple had five children, born between 1851 and 1871. Their daughters Marie Melinga and Mary Ida were baptized in 1852 at St. Gabriel and in 1856 at St. John the Evangelist in Plaquemine, and Marie Virginia, born in November 1858, was baptized at Plaquemine on 26 February 1859. A fourth daughter, Marie Clorinne, was born on 7 December 1868 and baptized at Plaquemine in July 1869, and a son, Joseph Posey, was born on 10 May 1871 and baptized there on 1 June 1873. Clorinne very probably became the Clorine Cottrel who married Emile Serrette in St. Martin Parish in January 1884, the parish to which her sister Marie Virginia also moved; she died before April 1910.

The 1860 census is known for him only through an index, which lists him at Plaquemine as an engineer. By June 1870 the family was in the Sixth Ward of Iberville Parish, near Plaquemine: John, aged 50, was a swamp laborer, recorded as unable to read or write, living with Emilie, their daughter Virginia, aged 12, and a child entered as Clarence, aged one and marked male. This is almost certainly Marie Clorinne, then eighteen months old and otherwise missing from the household, since a separate son born so close to her is impossible; the enumerator most likely wrote the name and the sex wrongly. The two elder daughters were no longer in the household.

Notes

The baptisms of the two youngest children are in the printed abstracts of the diocesan registers of St. John the Evangelist at Plaquemine. Marie Clorinne is entered as the daughter of “John Caterall and Emilie CROQUAIRE”, born 7 December 1868 and baptized 23 July 1869, with Charles Rilter and Lena Husiaux as sponsors. Joseph Posey is entered as the son of “John Cantrelle and Emilie CROQUAIRE”, born 10 May 1871 and baptized 1 June 1873, with Charles Biehler and Mary Eve Biehler as sponsors. The same printed abstracts give the sponsors at the baptism of Marie Luciana Housiaux at Plaquemine on 9 March 1851 as “John Cotrall and Emilie Braker”, the abstract’s spelling of Croker; the pairing with his bride, rather than his father, is what places this John at Plaquemine. The identification of the child “Clarence” of 1870 with Clorinne, and of Clorinne with the wife of Emile Serrette, is probable but not proved. The census of 1900 in the second ward of St. Martin Parish gives the latter’s birth as January 1870, a year after the baptism.

No record of his death or burial has been found; the diocesan burial registers hold no entry for him or for Emilie. Two Confederate soldiers from Louisiana bore his name, one in the Pelican Regiment and one who enrolled at New Orleans in May 1861, but nothing in their service records ties either man to Iberville Parish or to this family, so neither has been identified with him.