♀Marie Virginia Cottrelle

Marie Virginia Cottrelle (8 November 1858 – 3 March 1937) was a Louisiana woman born in Iberville Parish and baptized at Plaquemine, who became the mother of Jeffrey Delahorne by Augustin Delahunt, a man who already had a wife and eight children in Avoyelles Parish. She was the grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929).

Early life

She was the daughter of John Cotreall, a Virginia-born laborer, and Emilie Croker, who had married at St. Gabriel in Iberville Parish on 15 May 1851. Through her mother she descended from Raphael Croquer, a native of Guatemala who served as a captain of grenadiers in the Spanish Regiment of Louisiana and as commandant at Baton Rouge. The register of St. John the Evangelist at Plaquemine records her birth on 8 November 1858 and her baptism there on 26 February 1859, with Antoine Brigliano and Marie Louise Ansard as godparents; it names her parents as Jean Cotterelle and Amelie Crocked. The priests spelled the family name in several ways (Cotreall, Cutrell, Cottrille), and her older sisters Marie Melinga and Mary Ida were baptized in the same parishes in 1852 and 1856.

In the census of June 1870 the family was living in the Sixth Ward of Iberville Parish, near Plaquemine. Her father, aged 50, was a swamp laborer born in Virginia; Virginia, aged 12, was at home with her mother and a toddler listed as “Clarence”, a boy of one. This was most probably her sister Marie Clorinne, born on 7 December 1868, whom the census taker took for a boy. A brother, Joseph Posey, followed on 10 May 1871. A Clorine Cottrel who married Emile Serrette in St. Martin Parish on 19 January 1884, three years after Virginia’s own wedding there, and was living in its second ward in 1900, is very probably the same sister.

First marriage

On 30 September 1881, in St. Martin Parish, Virginia Cottrell married Denis Gédéon Talley; the parish marriage index also carries the couple under 13 October 1881. Their children included Isabelle, born in 1881, and Taylor, born at Breaux Bridge on 2 February 1882, followed by Thomas, Jefferson and Zacharie, known as Zack. Denis Talley’s death has not been found; the youngest of these children, Zack, was born in 1892, and the family account of her next marriage, in 1894, calls her a widow.

Augustin Delahunt

Her later life was spent in St. Martin Parish, where she is buried. According to a family history written by a descendant of Augustin Delahunt’s first family, Augustin left his wife, Mary Christoffel, whom he had married at Mansura in 1865, and disappeared from Avoyelles Parish around 1894. He reappeared at Butte La Rose in St. Martin Parish, where he married “Mary Cottrell”, described as a widow, in 1894, although his first wife was still living. When rumours began that he was a bigamist, he disappeared again. The tree dates the marriage 14 July 1894, in St. Martin Parish. No divorce from his first wife is known; Mary Christoffel outlived him, dying in 1924. The same account says that Virginia’s son was named Jeffrey and that errors in spelling his father’s surname led to his children becoming known as Delhorne, the origin of the family name Delahorne. The wedding and its circumstances rest on that family account; the marriage record itself has not been found.

Jeffrey married Ida Serrette and died in 1929, eight years before his mother. In the mid-1930s Taylor Talley, Jeffrey’s elder half-brother, took in Jeffrey’s son Floyd for a time at Krotz Springs, and Zack Talley married Ida’s sister, Ozea Serrette.

Marriage to Myrtile Boudreaux

A compiled index of the 1910 census lists a Virginie Boudreaux in the second ward of St. Martin Parish as the wife of Myrtile Boudreaux (born about 1864), married seven years, which points to a marriage about 1903. No children of this marriage are recorded. It is most likely the origin of the surname Boudreaux that she bore in 1930 and on her death record. No marriage record has been found.

Death

Marie Virginia Cottrelle died on 3 March 1937 at Krotz Springs in St. Landry Parish and was buried at Cecilia in St. Martin Parish, under a stone inscribed “Mother”. In the 1900 census, taken in the second ward of St. Martin Parish under the name “Mrs. Justin Dillion”, she was a widow of 42, the mother of eleven children of whom six were living, and heading a household of five Talley children aged 10 to 20 and her two-year-old son, Jeffrey. In 1910 she appears under the name Boudreaux, as described above. In 1920 she was living in the second ward of St. Martin Parish with her son Taylor Talley, recorded as “Virginia Tally”, aged 60. In 1930 she was living at Krotz Springs, St. Landry Parish, in the household of her son Jefferson Talley, recorded as his mother, aged 72, under the surname Boudreaux. Her Louisiana death certificate of 1937 also names her Boudreaux (indexed as “Bondeaux”), but it records her as a widow and names her husband as J. D. Tally, Denis Gédéon Talley. The certificate does not mention Myrtile Boudreaux. Jefferson’s first wife, Euphemie, was also a Boudreaux.

Notes

Her gravestone gives her birth as 8 November 1859; the baptismal register, written three and a half months after the birth, gives 1858, and her age of 12 in the 1870 census agrees better with the register. The family account says Jeffrey was born some months after Augustin’s departure in 1894, but his recorded birth is in 1899; the records do not explain the gap. Cottrelle was her maiden name; her first husband was Denis Gédéon Talley. Some compiled records have dated her marriage to Augustin to 21 December 1865, when she would have been seven; that date belongs to his marriage to Mary Christoffel. The register of St. John the Evangelist at Plaquemine, as abstracted in the Catholic church records of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, records “Marie Clorinne (John Caterall and Emilie Croquaire) bn. 7 Dec. 1868 bt. 23 July 1869” (volume 11) and “Joseph Posey (John Cantrelle and Emilie Croquaire) bn. 10 May 1871 bt. 1 June 1873” (volume 12). The 1870 census gives the child as “Clarence, 1, m”; at eighteen months, and otherwise absent from the household, she is almost certainly the baptized Marie Clorinne, since a separate son born so close to her is not possible. The identification with the Clorine Cottrel who married Emile Serrette rests on the name, the parish and the dates, and no record states the link.