♀Marguerite Tregle

Marguerite Tregle (baptized 13 June 1754 – died before 19 September 1816) was a Louisiana colonist of the German Coast^W, the settlements on the Mississippi above New Orleans, who lived with her husband, Jean Baptiste Marcotte, at Bayou Rapides in 1796. She was the third great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Augustin Marcotte (1796–1839).

Family and marriage

Marguerite was the second daughter of Simon Tregle and Marguerite Foltz, who had married at St. Charles Borromeo on the German Coast on 19 May 1750. She is said to have been baptized in that church on 13 June 1754.

No record of her marriage to Jean Baptiste Marcotte is known, though it is thought to date from before 1770. The first record of the couple is the baptism of a daughter, Genevieve, at St. James church on the Mississippi on 26 May 1776, with Antoine Foltz, who bore her mother’s surname, as godfather. Two more daughters were baptized there: Marie in 1778 and Marie Meli in 1786.

Bayou Rapides

In 1796 the couple were living at Bayou Rapides, in what is now Rapides Parish, where their son Augustin was born on 17 November 1796. He was not baptized until 1802, at Mansura in Avoyelles Parish, when a Spanish register named his mother as Margarita Tregle and gave her parents as natives of the German Coast. The same entry gave his father’s parents as natives of Canada, so the marriage had joined a German Coast family to one from French Canada.

Death

Her husband was dead by 16 June 1808, when his succession was opened in Avoyelles Parish, and his land in Rapides Parish sold for $1,090. She was already dead by 19 September 1816, when her son Augustin married at Avoyelles. No record of her death or burial is known.

Notes

Baptism and parents

The baptism comes from a printed abstract of the St. Charles Borromeo register in Woods, Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, volume 2: “Margueritte (Simon and Margueritte FOLTZ), b. June 13, 1754, s. Antoine DREGER the infant’s paternal uncle, and Catherine DREGER, the infant’s paternal aunt.” The abstract is not the register page itself. Her godparents were her father’s brother and sister.

Her parents’ marriage is in the same register, printed in Woods volume 1, page 84: “Jean Simon ([o] and Catherine COLENDER), native of this parish, m. Marguerite FOLTZ, May 19, 1750”. That entry leaves her father’s own father unnamed.

Her elder sister, Marie Julianne, was baptized on 19 January 1753 and buried on 30 March 1753, as Woods volume 2 records. Her father later married Catherine Michel, and the children of that marriage were her half-siblings.

Birthplace

No birth record is known. The 1802 clause “naturales de la Costa de Alemanes” gives her parents’ origin, not her birthplace. Her baptism at St. Charles Borromeo is the first record that places her on the German Coast.

Spellings

On a degraded photostat, the 1802 Mansura entry calls Augustin the “hijo legítimo de Juan Marcotte y de Margarita Tregle” and her parents as “Maternos [Simon] Fregle y Margarita Folkes, naturales de la Costa de Alemanes”. A 1980 diocesan certificate of the same entry reads “Fregle” and “Falkes”, and the 1816 marriage act spells her “Tregue”. The church entries file her father’s family under Dreger. Deiler’s 1909 history of the German Coast lists “Tregle” among the spellings of the family name, with “now Tregre” as the modern form. Folkes and Falkes are most likely forms of Foltz, the surname the Woods entries give for her mother.

The children’s baptisms

The Diocese of Baton Rouge records, volume 2 (printed page 572), give the St. James baptisms: “Genevieuve (Jean & Margueritte Dreger) bt. 26 May 1776 … spo. Antoine Foltz & Genevieuve Albert”, Marie on 1 November 1778, and “Maria Meli (Baptista & Margarita Tregle) bt. 10 May 1786 bn. 16 Nov 1785”. The entries do not mention Bayou Rapides. They are taken as the children of the Bayou Rapides couple because the mother’s name and German Coast family match.

The marriage and the 1770 abstract

No record of the marriage is known. A lineage compilation, citing Glenn R. Conrad’s Saint-Jean-Baptiste des Allemands (1972), abstracts of the civil records of St. John the Baptist Parish, says Jean Baptiste Marcotte was mentioned in a civil document of 15 October 1770 as “the brother-in-law of the minor children of the late Simon ‘Tregle’”, which would put the marriage before that date. The 1770 document is known only through the compilation’s wording.

The 1808 succession

The succession papers record that “the said Pierre Normand [was] named Tutor for Catherine Marcot, John Lacomb under-Tutor”, and Jean Baptiste and Alexis Marcot made their marks on the act. The leaves that survive name the late Jean Baptiste Marcot and a minor daughter, Catherine, but do not name their mother, and they do not legibly name Augustin.

The 1816 act and her death

The civil marriage act of 19 September 1816 describes the groom as the son of “feu JEAN BAPTISTE MARCOT et de feue MARGUERITE TREGUE”, the late Jean Baptiste Marcot and the late Marguerite Tregue. The records do not show whether she outlived her husband, and no record of her death or burial is known.