♂Joseph Jason Joffrion

Joseph Jason Joffrion (26 February 1759 – between 1836 and 1840) was a landholder and slaveholder of Pointe Coupée, Louisiana, who in 1809 held two tracts of land and fifteen enslaved people there; two of his daughters married two Gremillon brothers on consecutive days in May 1811, and a third married another Gremillon ten years later.

Early life

He was born on 26 February 1759 at Pointe Coupée, then in French Louisiana, and baptized there on 18 March 1759, with Joseph Rabalais and Catherine Desmaret as his godparents. He was a son of Joseph Joffrion and Marie Jeanne Rabalais. His father had come from Canada: at his marriage to Jeanne Rabalais at Pointe Coupée in 1752 the register describes him as a native of Quebec and a widower, and her as the widow of François Laserre. The same register records an elder brother, born in 1753, who was also named Joseph, several younger sisters, and a younger brother, also Joseph, born on 28 December 1770 and baptized on 31 March 1771. It also records a Joseph, son of Joseph and Jeanne Rabalais, marrying Françoise Bouchard on 6 July 1773. Three sons of one couple therefore bore the name, and the identification of the child born in 1759 with the man described below rests on a 1980 column in the Avoyelles Journal, a local newspaper (see Notes).

The parish register calls him by more than one name. On that identification, he is Joseph at his baptism and his marriage, but “Jason” in his daughter Eriphile’s marriage act of 1821 and in a burial entry of 1824, and in the 1830s he appears as “Zozon” or “Zojon” Joffrillon, a Louisiana pet form of the name. The census clerk of 1809 wrote “Joson”.

Marriage and family

On 26 November 1789, at Pointe Coupée, a Joseph, son of Joseph Joffrion and Jeanne Rabalais, married Juliana Guerin (1767–1840), daughter of Guillaume Guerin, known as St. Aubin, and Marie Anne Olivo; the witnesses were Simon Croiset and Etienne Major. The entry does not say which Joseph the groom was, and his younger brother Joseph was then eighteen; a 1980 column in the Avoyelles Journal makes him the son born in 1759, and that is the identification followed here. The brother born in December 1770 is given as the Joseph who married Magdelaine Bizet at Opelousas in 1795, which probably rules him out as Juliana Guerin’s husband. The Pointe Coupée register records nine children of the marriage, born between 1790 and 1810. The eldest, Paulin, was born in 1790. When a son Joseph was baptized in 1796, his godfather was the child’s own grandfather, Guillaume Guerin.

On 7 May 1811 his daughter Helene married Maximilien Gremillon, and on the next day her sister Hypolite, who also appears in the register as Pauline, married Maximilien’s brother Cyprien Gremillon; the grooms were sons of Charles Gremillon and Marguerite Recuron. Ten years later, on 7 August 1821, a third daughter, Eriphile, still a minor, was married at home to Trenee Gremillon, son of the late Charles Gremillon, with Charles, Cyprien and Maximilien Gremillon among the witnesses. Paulin married Hélène Picard in December 1812.

A daughter, Celeste, was born on 25 August 1799 and baptized on 11 May 1800, with Paulin and Helene Joffrion, the couple’s two eldest children, as sponsors; nothing further is known of her. She is not the Celeste Joffrion who married Augustin Marcotte in 1816 (see Notes).

Land and the people he enslaved

A census of land and slave ownership taken in Pointe Coupée in 1809, published by a modern editor in 2006, lists “Joson Jofrion” with two tracts: one of 7 2/3 by 40 arpents^W, appraised with its improvements at $2,108, and one of 14 by 40 arpents, appraised at $420. Fifteen enslaved people were counted against him. His son Paulin, then nineteen, followed him on the list with one enslaved person and no land of his own. The census gives numbers only.

The Catholic register names some of the people he held. Alexandre, aged one, was buried on 10 September 1824 as a slave of Jason Jeoffrion. A girl named Françoise was born on 18 May 1834 to a woman of the same name whom he held, and on 23 May a Françoise of about thirty, enslaved by him, died and was buried. In July 1835 Louis, the nine-month-old son of Marie, was baptized with Martin and Victoire, also enslaved by him, as godparents. Gustine, aged eighteen or nineteen, was buried on 19 March 1836.

Death

The burial of Gustine in March 1836 is the last record of him alive. When his wife was buried at Pointe Coupée on 7 August 1840 she was described as the widow of Joseph Joffrion. If that Joseph was this man, he died between March 1836 and August 1840; the entry does not say which Joseph Joffrion is meant. The Joseph born in 1770 is probably not the man, since he is given as Magdelaine Bizet’s husband. No record of his own death or burial has been found.

Notes

Which Joseph married Juliana Guerin is not settled by the register itself. The 1789 entry names only “Joseph”, son of Joseph and Jeanne Rabalais, and on its face it fits the son born in 1759 and the son born in December 1770 equally. The 1980 Avoyelles Journal column, a compiled source, makes him the 1759 son. The 1770 son is probably the Joseph who married Magdelaine Bizet in 1795 and lived at Avoyelles, on the evidence of the 1810 census (the Opelousas act of that marriage survives, but its line naming the groom’s parents cannot be read); if that is right, Juliana Guerin’s husband was the 1759 son. This is a probable identification, not a proof, and the adult life described above (the 1809 census, the Gremillon marriages, the death bracket) is joined to the 1759 baptism through the column and that reasoning. A burial age for the husband, who died between 1836 and 1840, would settle it.

An earlier account took the Celeste Joffrion who married Augustin Marcotte at Avoyelles on 19 September 1816 to be his daughter, the Celeste baptized at Pointe Coupée in 1800, and carried the Marcotte descendants as his. That was a mistake. The three civil marriage acts of 1816, drawn up before the parish judge of Avoyelles, call the bride “Céleste Joffrion jeune”, daughter of “Joseph Joffrion junr.” and of his wife, born Magdelaine Bizet, who gave her consent in person alongside her husband. She was a cousin of the same name, a daughter of another Joseph Joffrion and Magdelaine Bizet, and not a daughter of Juliana Guerin. A family history written by a descendant records a Joseph Joffrion who married Marie Magdeleine Bizet in 1795, and the census of 1810 shows three Joseph Joffrion households on one page in Avoyelles, told apart as “Joseph”, “Joseph fils” and “Joseph Jun.” The bride’s father was probably the brother born in December 1770, whose household, entered as “Jun.”, was the only one with daughters old enough to marry by 1816; this is not proved. The Celeste born in 1799 was this couple’s own daughter; nothing further is known of her.

He is placed in Avoyelles Parish in the census of 1810, in a household of twenty that included fifteen enslaved people. With three Joseph Joffrions on the same page, which household was his is not known.

Some compiled family trees give him his father’s birth, 18 March 1708 at Varennes in Canada. An online memorial gives him a birth of 12 April 1753, which is his elder brother’s, and a death on 20 June 1827, which the register entries of 1834 to 1836 rule out.