♂Michel Cormier

Michel Cormier (19 January 1741 – December 1790) was an Acadian exile who settled at the Opelousas post in Spanish Louisiana, served in its militia, and married three times, his second wife coming not from the Acadian community but from the German Coast of the Mississippi. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his probable son Michel Cormier (born 1772).

Acadia and Opelousas

He was born on 19 January 1741 at Beaubassin, the son of Pierre Cormier and Cécile Thibodeau, privately baptized at birth, with the ceremonies supplied there on 12 March. He was fourteen at the expulsion of 1755. About 1769, at Opelousas, he married Anne Saunier, also of Acadia, the widow of Basile Babin with two children. Their son Amant was born there on 13 October 1770 and Michel on 29 September 1772; Anne died there in 1772.

He is said to have received land on Bayou Bourbeaux in 1771, to have marched with the Opelousas militia on Gálvez^W’s 1779 campaign against the British at Baton Rouge^W, and to have prospered as a cattleman: by 1788 his vacherie at Prairie des Femmes held 130 cattle, and he held seven people in slavery.

Later marriages

About 1774 he married Catherine Stelly, daughter of Jean George Stelly and Christine Edelmayer of the German Coast. The couple and three children were counted in the Opelousas census of 4 May 1777; their children Pierre, Louis, Marie Victoire and François were recorded there between 1776 and 1783.

On 10 February 1789 at Saint Martinville he married Marguerite Breaux, also called Madeleine, daughter of Charles Breaux and Claire Trahan and widow of Étienne Benoit; they had no children. Michel died at Opelousas in December 1790, reportedly at his home at Prairie des Femmes and without the sacraments, and was probably buried there on 30 December.

Notes

Sources

His and his sons’ baptisms, his second family’s christenings and the 1789 marriage come from registers and indexes. The rest is compiled: Earl E. Vallot’s genealogy in the Attakapas Gazette (1967), which calls him a native of Acadia born about 1741, places him on the Opelousas militia list of 1770 and gives the 1777 census, citing records not seen directly; Steven A. Cormier’s history of the Acadians of Louisiana, for the land, the herd, the campaign and his death at home.

His baptism

The Beaubassin register (a copy at Library and Archives Canada) gives his mother as Cécile Thibaudaut. The missionary F. Poncy de Lavernède supplied the ceremonies; the godparents were Jean Cormier and Madeleine Cormier, residents of the parish.

Parentage

A Joseph Cormier, son of Pierre Cormier and Cécile Thibodeau of Acadia and widower of Marguerite Saunier, remarried in Louisiana in 1771 and stood godfather to Michel’s son in 1773: with the same parents, he was Michel’s brother.

The second and third wives

Bona Arsenault’s genealogy of the Acadians dates the second marriage about 1774, Stephen A. White’s about 1775; the indexes write the bride as Chetly or Chetely. A Louisiana marriage index and Arsenault’s sixth volume call the third bride Marguerite (Braud); Cormier, Arsenault’s fourth volume and other trees call her Madeleine. Cormier has her daughter Marie-Angèle Benoit marry his son Amant, her stepbrother, at Opelousas in October 1790.

Date of death

Vallot gives 30 December 1791 at Opelousas, kept as a variant. White gives burial at Opelousas on 30 December 1790 and Cormier death in December 1790, aged 49; this article follows them.