♂Maximilien Daigle

Maximilien Daigle (about 1816 – before 3 December 1875) was a planter of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. He held enslaved people in the 1850s, and by his death the family had so little that the court found nothing to inventory. He was the great-great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Jean Baptiste Daigle (born about 1847), Jean Baptiste’s daughter Amelia Pennison Daigle (1869–1906) and her daughter Ida Serrette (1903–1990).

Early life

He was the son of Joseph Beloni Daigle and Adelaide Martin, who married at St. Gabriel on 27 May 1816, according to the Diocese of Baton Rouge’s published abstracts of church records. The father appears in the abstracts as Beloni, as André Joseph and as Joseph Audre. A brother, Lucien, was born on 23 May 1818. No record of Maximilien’s baptism has been found. His birth year of about 1816 rests on his census ages, 35 in 1850 and 42 in 1860, which do not quite agree with each other. His 1857 marriage record describes him as “of W. Baton Rouge”, and that is the basis for placing his birth in West Baton Rouge.

Marriages and family

The same abstracts record that Maximilien, son of Beloni and Adelaide Martin, married Marie Aurore Henri at St. Joseph’s church in Baton Rouge on 8 May 1837. No children of that marriage are known, and no record of her death has been found.

His second wife was Marcelite Ida Melancon, the daughter of Anaclet Melancon and Anne Doralie Thibodeau. 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. The couple had four sons, born between about 1845 and 1851: Joseph, Jean Baptiste, François Numa and Ovide. The census of 1850 found the family in St. Martin Parish, where “Maxime D’Aigle”, aged 35, was listed as a planter with real estate worth $520.

Marcelite Ida died between the autumn of 1851 and early 1856. On 2 February 1856 the parish court confirmed Maximilien as natural tutor of his four sons. A printed certificate of the Fourteenth District Court records them as “born of the marriage of” Maximilien Daigle and Marcelite Ida Melançon, deceased. Her mother, Anne Doralie Thibodeau, had also died, and both estates were inventoried on 19 February 1856 at Maximilien’s request. The couple’s community property was valued at $1,192.25. It held no land: the clerk certified that its only real property was an enslaved woman named Josette, about 27, and her children Virginie, about 3, and Marie, about 1, valued together at $1,000. Under Louisiana law^W at the time, enslaved people counted as real property. A family council that day awarded the community to Maximilien at its appraised value. It sent his mother-in-law’s estate to public auction instead, and at the sheriff’s sale of 10 May 1856 he bought Rémond, an enslaved man of about forty who had been appraised at $800, for $1,300.

A published abstract of southwest Louisiana church records, quoted on a Geneanet family tree, dates his marriage to Olivia Caillier to 14 April 1857 in St. Martin Parish. She is described as the widow of Demosthene Bijeau, which the 1875 petition below supports, and she brought three sons of her own into the marriage. The census of 1860 lists him as “Maxile Daigle”, a planter aged 42, with his wife, her Bijeau sons, his sons Joseph and Numa, and a newborn son, St. Cyr. Jean Baptiste was not in the household; the census also lists a boy of nine whose name is illegible, who may be Ovide. The family tree credits Maximilien and Olivia with five children, born between 1860 and 1867. The petition described below names four minors of the marriage: St. Cyr, Olive, Henry and Anicet. A transcription of the tutor’s and under-tutor’s oaths of 20 December 1875 lists five minors in each, and the names in them do not all match the petition’s.

The 1860 federal slave schedule^W for St. Martin Parish, as transcribed online, lists a “Maxil Daigle” as holding five enslaved people, who are not named: a man of 45, a woman of 30, and girls of 10, 7 and 3. The ages of the man, the woman and the girl of seven fit Rémond, Josette and Virginie four years on.

Death

Maximilien and Olivia had both died in St. Martin Parish by 3 December 1875, when his eldest son Joseph asked the court to open their succession. The petition said they had died “barely leaving enough to cover the expenses of their burial and last illness”. The court dispensed with an inventory because there was no property to list. A family meeting on 17 December recorded what they had left: a mare and her colt, a small lot of carpenter’s tools, ten hogs, a little furniture, a lamp and kettles, an old plow, an iron brand, a grinding stone and a scale. Joseph was made tutor of his young half-siblings.

Notes

Some family trees give his death as 30 December 1875. That cannot be right, because his son’s petition of 3 December already calls him deceased. The first-marriage identification rests on the parents’ names in the 1837 abstract, which match those in his 1857 marriage record. Both the 1837 and the 1845 marriages are dated 8 May, and the records do not explain the coincidence.

The minors named in 1875

The petition of 3 December 1875 lists four minors of the second marriage: St. Cyr, Olive, Henry and Anicet. The tutor’s oath and the under-tutor’s oath, both dated 20 December 1875, each list five. The tutor’s oath names St. Cyr, Delair, Henri, Olivia and Ernest; the under-tutor’s names St. Cyr, Delme, Henri, Olivia and Louis, so the fifth name differs between them. The name Delair (or Delme) is taken to be Deslua, the sixteen-year-old whom the 1880 census gives as the brother of Jean Baptiste Daigle, which would make Deslua a son of this marriage. Both the count and the names come from a transcription of the oaths, and the identification with Deslua rests on that transcription alone.