♀Marguerite Perrodeaux

Marguerite Perrodeaux (8 April 1736 – 28 April 1800) was born at Pointe-Claire, near Montréal in Canada, married Francois Mollere at Les Cèdres in 1756, and later lived at Ascension on the Mississippi in Spanish Louisiana. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Joseph François Mollere (1764–1811).

She was born and baptised on 8 April 1736 at Pointe-Claire (St-Joachim), and the register calls her Marguerite Amable Perodau, daughter of Jean Perodeau and Angélique Gallien. Her godparents were Guillaume Barbe and Marguerite Vinet. The family also used the name Lafleur. On 9 February 1756, at Les Cèdres (St-Joseph-de-Soulanges), she married François Molère “dit Lasonde”, son of Guillaume Molaire and Jeanne Labenère; the act names her Marguerite Perodo and her parents as Jean Perodo and Angélique Gallien, and Jean Perodo was one of the witnesses. Their son François was baptised at Les Cèdres on 8 May 1758, with Marie Jeanne Angélique Perodo among the godparents, and a François, aged fifteen months, was buried at Montréal on 2 August 1759. A son Paul was baptised at Québec on 8 August 1762, the register naming his mother Marguerite Lafleur, and a son Joseph was baptised at Montréal on 14 October 1764.

The couple of Les Cèdres is identified with the couple of Louisiana on the strength of that last baptism: Joseph was later described as “of Canada” in the Louisiana registers, and the birth date of Joseph François Mollere matches. The evidence points strongly to the identification, but it rests on that one child.

In Louisiana she was recorded as “of Canada”, and her surname is written Perrodeaux, Perodot, Perodau, Perideaux and Peridot. On 20 April 1783 her son Joseph married Ozite Barbe Blanchard at Ascension, and the register names his parents as “Francisco & Margarita Perodot”. Three weeks later, on 14 May 1783, another son, Francisco, was buried there, aged twenty. A third son, Louis, married Anne Landry, and at the baptism of their daughter Alexandrina at Ascension in 1794 Marguerite stood as godmother, entered as the child’s paternal grandmother. At the baptism of Joseph’s son Guillermo at St. Gabriel on 21 April 1796, the paternal grandparents were written as “Francisco Moler, of Burdeas & Margarita Perideaux, of Canada”. The registers of Ascension, at what is now Donaldsonville, and of St. Gabriel and St. James are known here through the diocesan records of Baton Rouge.

She was buried at Ascension on 28 April 1800. The burial entry reads “Marguerite, age 68 years of Canada, born Marguerite Peridot, widow of Francisco Mollere”, so her husband had died before her, although no record of his death has been found. The age of 68 is four years more than her baptism of 1736 implies.

Notes

When Joseph married for the second time, at St. James on 28 October 1800, six months after her burial, the register named his parents as “Francisco & Margarita Perrodeaux, of LaFourche” without marking either as dead; the burial shows that the entry cannot be taken to mean she was then living.