♂Thomas Theriot

Thomas Theriot (about 1745 – before February 1812) 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 in April 1766; he married there and raised a family of at least ten children 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 (1778–).

Family and marriage

Thomas was born about 1745, the son of Joseph Theriot and Francoise Melancon, Acadians of Cobequid. 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, or soon after. 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 neighbour’s 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 baptised at the Ascension church downriver; the rest were baptised 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

No record of his death has been found. His wife was buried in February 1812 as his widow, so he died before then; a compiled online tree gives 1807.

Notes

The register of the marriage of 1771 gives the date as 23 April; an online family tree has 22 April. A son Joseph, born about 1783 and later of St. Martin Parish, is attributed to the couple only by an online compiled tree; no baptism for him has been found in the published registers.