♂Thomas Theriot

Thomas Theriot (about 1745 – before 28 October 1807) was an Acadian exile who reached the Mississippi as a young man with his widowed mother and three younger brothers, and appears in the first census of the Acadian settlement at St. James^W in April 1766; he married there and raised a family of at least nine children, to which compiled trees add a tenth, in Spanish Louisiana, two of whom, a son and a daughter, married a brother and sister of the Dupuis family in a double wedding on the same day. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Rosalie Theriot (born 1778).

Family and marriage

Thomas was born about 1745, the son of Joseph Theriot and Francoise Melancon, Acadians of Cobequid^W. The census of the new Acadian settlement on the Mississippi at St. James, dated 9 April 1766, lists “Francoise Melancon, widow Theriot, age 57” with her sons Thomas, 21, Ambroise, 18, Paul, 15, and Xavier, 12: his father had died before the family reached the river. In the census of September 1769 Thomas, then 25, headed a household with his brothers Paul and Francois, and Ambroise lived nearby. His mother was dead by June 1777, when the register of Ambroise’s marriage described both parents as deceased.

By early 1771 Thomas was living at St. James, where on 7 January he witnessed a wedding. On 23 April 1771 he married Agnes Daigle, daughter of Paul Daigle and Marie Hebert, at St. James; the bride appears as “Marie” in the marriage entry and as Agnes in every later record.

Children

The couple’s first child, Caesar, was born in August 1772 and baptized at the Ascension church upriver; seven of the rest were baptized at St. James. Their children were born between 1772 and 1791, and eight of their baptisms survive in the published abstracts of the church registers. The baptisms of the 1770s and early 1780s are written in French, and those of the late 1780s in the Spanish of the colonial clergy, so the older children appear as Hubert and Estienne and the younger as Pedro, Maria Modesta and Margarita.

Thomas stood as witness at his children’s weddings as they came of age. On 17 February 1800 he witnessed a double wedding at St. James, at which his daughter Rosalie married Pierre Dupuis and his son Caesar married Pierre’s sister Maria Dupuis, both entries written on the same page of the register. He witnessed his son Hubert’s marriage in September 1802, and was named as grandfather at the baptisms of Rosalie’s children in 1801 and 1803.

Death

He was buried at St. James on 28 October 1807, and the burial entry gives his age as 60 and his birthplace as Acadia. His widow was buried at St. James in February 1812.

His succession came before the St. Martin Parish court in February 1811. A letter from Michel Cantrelle, writing from St. James, concerns his young grandson Justinien, the son of the late Caesar Theriot and his widow Maria Dupuis. A share of about 1,200 piastres came to Justinien “du cote de feu son grand pere” (from his late grandfather’s side), and the family had placed that sum in the hands of his uncle Francois Theriot. The widow had to obtain the judge’s authority and give security to his uncle before she could claim it.

Notes

The register of the marriage of 1771 gives the date as 23 April; an online family tree has 22 April. The ages in the records disagree: the 1752 census of Ile Saint-Jean (age 9) puts his birth about 1743, the census of 1766 (age 21) about 1745, and the 1807 burial entry (age 60) about 1747. A son Joseph, who married Rosalie Dupuis at St. Martinville in February 1806, is attributed to the couple by compiled genealogies; no baptism for him is known.