♂Joseph Croquer

Joseph Croquer (7 June 1811 – 13 February 1862) was a Louisiana man of Iberville Parish, the son of a Guatemala-born commandant of Spanish Louisiana, who married in church in 1834 a woman more than eleven years his senior, validating a civil marriage the couple had already contracted and recognising the two daughters born to them before it. He was the great-great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Emilie Croker (born 1834), her daughter Marie Virginia Cottrelle (1858–1937) and her son Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929).

Early life

He was born on 7 June 1811 and baptized at Plattenville, in Assumption Parish, on 29 June 1812, the son of Raphael Croquer and Barbe Osite Mollere. His godparents were his uncle Raphael Moller and his aunt Maria Enrrieta Blanchard. His father, a native of Guatemala, had married Osite Barbara Mollere of Iberville at St. Gabriel in 1803; the diocesan registers describe him as commandant of the parish, and later as a captain of the Regiment of Louisiana and commandant of the post at Baton Rouge. A biographical file on the family compiled by a historian of colonial Guatemala names the founder of the Guatemalan line as Estanislao Antonio Croquer, who came there from Puerto Real, near Cádiz, about 1748; the register of Raphael’s marriage names his parents as Estanislas and Maria Ana Muñoz. The family record gives his mother’s death as 1823, when he would have been twelve, though no register entry for it has been found; his father was dead by 1834.

Marriage and family

On 10 November 1834, at St. Gabriel in Iberville Parish, he married Marie Cidalise Lambremont, the daughter of Michel Lambremont and Marguerite Pelagie Braux. She had been born in December 1799 and had been married before, in 1818, to Jean Baptiste Meneghetti. The register notes that Joseph and Cidalise had already been married in a civil ceremony, and it recognizes two children born before the church wedding: Marie Euphrasie, born 19 February 1833, and Marguerite Emilie, born 21 October 1834, less than three weeks earlier. The church ceremony therefore validated the civil union and legitimized both daughters. When the civil marriage took place, and why the couple waited to marry in church, the records do not explain.

The couple had four daughters, born between 1833 and 1839. The third, Marie Inna, born in 1837, died in childhood. The family was living in Iberville Parish at the census of 1840. On 21 January 1850 Joseph witnessed the marriage of his daughter Euphrasie to Adolphe Housiaux at St. Gabriel, and in May 1851 his daughter Emilie married John Cotreall at the same church, described in the register as the legitimate daughter of Joseph Croker and Cidalise Lambremont.

Death

He died at Plaquemine on 13 February 1862 and was buried there the next day, entered in the burial register as Joseph Crocker, aged 49.

Notes

His surname is written variously as Croquer, Croker and Crocker across the registers. The burial entry’s age of 49 would place his birth about 1813; the baptism register gives 7 June 1811, which is to be preferred. Other women named Croker or Crocker appear in the registers of the same parishes, but none is recorded as a daughter of Joseph and Cidalise, and they are not counted among his children.