♂Michel Cormier

Michel Cormier (11 March 1799 – 14 November 1853) was a resident of Grand Pointe on the Bayou Teche, in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. He was the third great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Madeleine Ordalie Cormier (1827–1867).

Early life

Michel Cormier, called Michel-Onésime and, like his father before him, Michel, fils, was born on 11 March 1799, the son of Michel Cormier (born 1772) and Ludivine Guillebaut. An index of the St. Martinville register gives his birth at St. Martinville, while Cormier’s compilation places his parents’ household at Grande Pointe on the Bayou Teche, where it says he was born. He was baptized on 26 April 1799 at Carencro, at the house of Pierre Bernard, when the priest of St. Martin came there on a missionary visit. The baptismal entry names all four of his grandparents, Michel Cormier and Anne Sonier and Charles Guillebaut and Anne Trahan, “all from Acadia”, and gives his father as “from St. Landry of Opelousas”.

An abstract of the St. Martinville church register, as Hébert’s Southwest Louisiana Records gives it, dates his marriage, on 8 July 1816 at the church of St. Martinville, to Céleste Dupuis, called Silésie, a minor daughter of Pierre Dupuis and Rosalie Thériot of St. James Parish (the abstract writes the mother as Oscalie Theriot). By that account he was a minor son of Michel Cormier, an inhabitant of la Pointe, and of the late Ludivine, and she was a native of St. James parish. The witnesses were François Gombert, Louis Chemin, Alexandre Dessarp and Pierre Dupuis. The bride was then living at Grand Pointe.

Marriage and family

Michel and Céleste had sixteen known children, born between 1817 and about 1847. The first, an unnamed son, was born and died in December 1817. Michel Treville followed in November 1818 and married Marie Azema Melancon in 1838; four of his sisters married between 1838 and 1850. Madeleine Ordalie, born on 22 November 1827, married Léonard Thibodeaux in 1845 and is the family’s line to this branch. Césaire, born in 1840, married Séverine Castille at Breaux Bridge in 1861, and the youngest, Corinne, was born about 1847. Steven A. Cormier’s compiled history of the Acadians of Louisiana adds that Michel Treville died in 1850 and that Sosthène, born in October 1829, died at five in 1834. The 1850 census of St. Martin Parish found him, aged 50, at home with Céleste and their children.

The twins Amelie, called Emelie, and Emile were born on 7 November 1833. Emelie married Pierre Dolze Melancon in 1851 and was dead by December 1854, leaving a young son, Alfred. When Michel’s widow went to the St. Martin court that month she was sworn as natural tutrix of her own minors, Sylvain, Césaire, Euzeide and Corinne among them, and of her grandson Alfred Melancon.

Death

On 15 January 1850, describing himself as sound in body and mind, Michel Cormier dictated a nuncupative will before notary A. Coudroy at St. Martinville, leaving his wife the universal usufruct of his whole estate for her life; he signed the document himself. He was dead by 28 December 1854, when Céleste Dupuis petitioned the St. Martin court as his widow and was confirmed as tutrix of their minor children, and his heirs still held a mortgage on the land of his son-in-law Leonard Thibodeau in December 1857. Cormier’s compiled history and an uncited Geneanet family tree both place his death in November 1853, within that window; Cormier adds that the St. Martinville priest who recorded the burial gave his age as 60, though he was 54, and that his succession was filed at St. Martinville in December 1854. Earl E. Vallot’s 1967 genealogy of the family in the Attakapas Gazette, citing the register of St. Bernard’s church at Breaux Bridge, records that he died at Breaux Bridge on 14 November 1853.

Notes

His own parentage — Michel Cormier and Ludivine Guillebaut — is known from published, second-hand quotations of the St. Martinville baptismal register, in his daughter Ordalie’s entry and in his own baptism at Carencro (Hébert’s Southwest Louisiana Records, as quoted on WikiTree), and from an index of that register; Cormier’s compilation names the same parents and may draw on the same abstracts. The birthplace rests on that index, and Cormier’s Grande Pointe is his own statement. A Geneanet tree (uncited) gives him the additional name “Onézime” and a death of 14 November 1853, citing his own succession record. The date of 14 November 1853 rests on Vallot’s citation of the Breaux Bridge register. The St. Martinville marriage abstract is also second-hand, quoted on WikiTree. It writes his mother’s surname as Broussard, which is evidently an error for Guillebaut, the name in his own baptism. It gives the bride’s mother as Oscalie Theriot; her own 1801 christening abstract gives Rosalie Thériot, the form used in the text.

The sixteen children are assembled from the index of baptisms at St. Martin church, the 1850 census household, Céleste’s tutorship oath of December 1854 and a 1967 genealogy of the family by Earl E. Vallot in the Attakapas Gazette; the marriages rest on that genealogy alone, and no register entry for them is known.