♀Marcelite Ida Melancon

Marcelite Ida Melancon (about 1822 – before 2 February 1856) was a planter’s wife of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, and the mother of four sons named in her succession; at her death, an enslaved woman and her two small daughters were worth more than everything else the couple owned put together. She was the great-great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847), his daughter Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) and her daughter Ida Serrette (1903–1990).

Early life

She was a daughter of Anaclet Melancon and Anne Doralie Thibodeau. A compiled abstract of southwest Louisiana church records gives her birth as about 1822. A christening at Grand Coteau, St. Landry Parish, on 10 September 1823, indexed for a child of that couple as “Marcellitide Melancon”, is probably hers, although the index records the child as a boy. Her age in the 1850 census, 27, agrees with a birth about 1823. Her sister Arthémise married Olivier Thibodeau.

Marriage and family

She married Maximilien Daigle, a son of Joseph Beloni Daigle and Adelaide Martin. A published abstract of southwest Louisiana church records dates their marriage to 8 May 1845 at Iberia, then in St. Martin Parish. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana places the marriage at the New Iberia church. In 1850 the couple were living in St. Martin Parish, where the census lists Maximilien as a planter, with Marcelite, 27, and three young children. Four sons survived her: Joseph, Jean Baptiste, François Numa (born 19 March 1849 at Breaux Bridge) and Ovide (born 13 September 1851). A child named Idomée, aged three, also appears in the household in 1850, but was not among the minors named in 1856. An index of the 1870 census lists an Idomée Daigle, a woman of twenty-one, in another Daigle household in St. Martin Parish, so she was apparently a daughter who lived, and the records do not explain why she was left out of the petition.

Death and succession

She was alive at the birth of Ovide in September 1851 and dead by 2 February 1856, when her husband petitioned the parish court to open her succession, saying that his wife “died lately in said parish.” The court on 2 February 1856 named her sister’s husband, Olivier Thibodeau, under-tutor of the four boys. The inventory of the couple’s joint property, appraised at $1,192.25, listed three enslaved people: Josette, aged about twenty-seven, and her daughters Virginie, three, and Marie, one. They were valued together at $1,000, most of the household’s worth, and were adjudicated to Maximilien. The clerk’s certificate named this enslaved family as the couple’s real property, the estate having included no land. He remarried in April 1857.

Notes

The place of her death is not stated in the succession papers; the parish is where the succession was opened.

Birth

Hébert’s compiled abstracts of southwest Louisiana church records give her birth as about 1822, and her age as about one year at her christening on 10 September 1823 at Grand Coteau. The christening entry is indexed for a child of that couple, and the index reads the child as a boy, so the identification with her is probable, as the Early life section says. The 1850 census gives her age as 27, which agrees with a birth about 1823.