♂Placide Cyrille Thibodeaux

Placide Cyrille Thibodeaux (4 October 1802 – 7 December 1838) was a man of Acadian descent from St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, on the Bayou Teche, whose early death left his widow, Mathilde Valentine Landry, the guardian of their three young sons. He was the third great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Leonard Thibodeau (1823–1857).

Early life and marriage

He is thought to have been the Placide born on 4 October 1802 to Cyrille Thibodeaux and Scholastique Breaux. His brothers and sisters included Achille and Olivier, born about 1806 and 1819, Josephine, who married Pierre Guidry, and Belzire, who married Olivier Guidry.

He married Mathilde Valentine Landry, a native of St. James on the Mississippi whose parents, Valentin Landry and Celeste Bourgeois, had settled on the Bayou Teche; the wedding is reckoned to have taken place at St. Martin on 20 November 1820. When Mathilde’s mother died, the couple sat in the family meeting of autumn 1822 that settled the property she had held in community^W with Valentin Landry. Mathilde made her mark on the papers; Placide signed his own name. According to a published Thibodeaux genealogy, in 1825 his brother Achille married Mathilde’s sister Euphrosine Landry, so that two Thibodeaux brothers had married two Landry sisters.

Family

Their six sons were born at Saint Martinville between 1821 and 1831. Three died in early childhood, the eldest, also named Placide, among them; Leonard, Cyrille Damonville and Olivier Thelismar grew up. In 1830 Placide headed his own household in St. Martin Parish, next to the household of Cyril Thibodeau, presumably his newly widowed mother’s. His own household held four enslaved people: a man, a woman and two girls.

Death

Placide is said to have died at Saint Martinville on 7 December 1838, and to have been buried there. On 28 January 1839 Mathilde petitioned the St. Martin probate court to be confirmed as natural tutrix of the three minor children and heirs: Leonard, Cyrille Damonville and Olivier Thelismar. She asked also for an under-tutor, an inventory and a family meeting, and for their community of acquests and gains to be closed.

When Achille’s estate was inventoried on 27 March 1854, Leonard, Damonville and Télisman were among the heirs, “par représentation de Placide Thibodeau, leur père, décédé”: standing in for their dead father, they shared the quarter that would have been his. In 1867, nearly thirty years after his death, a petition over the tutorship of Leonard’s orphaned children still called Mathilde “Mathilde Landry, widow of the late Placide Cyrile Thibodeaux”.

Notes

Birth, parents and marriage

His birth, parents, brothers’ birth years and marriage date and place come from a Thibodeaux genealogy published in the Attakapas Gazette in 1985, citing the St. Martin church registers; an index of St. Martin baptisms has a Placide born on 4 October 1802 to the same couple. That this Placide is Mathilde’s husband rests on the genealogy, and Achille’s estate bears it out: in 1854 it names Placide as Achille’s deceased brother, with Olivier, Josephine and Belzire. A compiled family tree gives the marriage as 28 November 1820 instead of the 20th; the register entry has not been seen.

Death and the 1830 census

The day and place of his death and the burial at Saint Martinville come from a Find a Grave memorial, followed by several compiled family trees; no church record of his death or burial has been seen. The widow’s petition shows he was dead by 28 January 1839. A printed list of the 1830 census gives his neighbor as “Mrs. Cyril Thibodeau”; his father had died in October 1829. The enslaved members of his household are counted, unnamed, in the census index.

Another Placide

The 1850 census of St. Martin Parish lists a planter named Placide Thibodeaux, aged fifty-five, who held about thirty enslaved people. He was once taken for this man and is a different one: an age of fifty-five does not fit a birth in 1802. In the same census a Mathilde Thibodeau, aged forty, was living in Leonard’s household, most likely the widow, though her age was then forty-five.