♂Sallust Marcotte

Sallust Marcotte (born about 1822 in Louisiana) was a farmer in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. He was the brother of Delphine Marcotte (1824–1900), great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014). His marriage was one half of a double exchange between two families: on 19 March 1840, in a civil ceremony before Judge Joseph Joffrion, he married Elizabeth Delahunt (Dillahunt), sixteen days after his sister Delphine had married Elizabeth’s brother, Samuel Dillahunt. A church blessing of Sallust and Elizabeth’s marriage followed on 6 February 1841 at St. Paul the Apostle in Mansura.

Farming and family

Sallust farmed in Avoyelles Parish through at least 1870, when he was living in Subdivision 5 near Marksville, and at some point received a federal land patent there. He and Elizabeth raised seven children together, born between 1841 and 1859, among them a son, Lovel, still a minor when his mother died.

Later years

Elizabeth died by July 1875, and on 2 July of that year Sallust swore before the parish court at Marksville as natural tutor of Lovel, his minor son. Five months later, on 15 December 1875, he appeared again in the same court, this time as under-tutor to the four orphaned children of Joseph S. Marcotte, whose widow, Virginie Aymond, served as their natural tutrix. Under Louisiana law of the period an under-tutor was drawn from the side of the family opposite the surviving parent, so the appointment implies Sallust was kin to Joseph S. Marcotte through the father’s side, though the record does not say exactly how. No further record of Sallust has been found, and the date of his death is unknown.

Notes

Identification

A 1978 transcription of that parish register, made by a certified genealogical records searcher, identifies Sallust as a son of Augustin Marcotte (1796–1839) and Celeste Aimee Joffrion (died after 1850), and Elizabeth as a daughter of John Dillahunty and Elizabeth Martin; the identification rests on the searcher’s copy of the register rather than on the original entry, which has not been examined directly. Sallust’s given name is an uncommon one for the parish, recalling the Roman historian Sallust^W (Gaius Sallustius Crispus); no record says why his parents chose it, though French Louisiana families of the period sometimes gave children classical names.