♂Valentin Landry

Valentin Landry was an Acadian settler of St. James Parish on the Mississippi, in Spanish and then American Louisiana, and the husband of Celeste Bourgeois. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his daughter Mathilde Valentine Landry (1805–1879).

Baptism and marriage

He was baptized at St. James on 15 January 1771, the son of René Landry and Anne Landry, with Simon LeBlanc and Marie Landry as godparents. In 1788 and again in 1789 he was at Ascension, where he probably stood as godfather at the baptisms of children of Olivier Landry and Marie Aucoin. On 27 November 1792 he married Celeste Bourgeois at St. James, where the register describes his parents as “of LaFourche”; the witnesses were Fermin and Polonia Landry.

Children

The St. James register records the baptisms of eight of the couple’s children between 1796 and 1813: Valentin, named for his father, Anne Fanelia, Adelard, Leonard, Matilde, Magdelaine, Euphrasie and Marie Leocade. The four baptisms from 1796 to 1803 name all four grandparents, René and Anne Landry and Josef Bourgeois and Maria Giroir, as the marriage entry had named the parents. His daughter Matilde, baptised on 17 November 1805, carried his name as her own middle name, and was known in later life as Mathilde Valentine Landry.

On 24 October 1803 at Ascension he was a witness at the marriage of his brother-in-law Simon Bourgeois to Marcellite Judice. The census of August 1810 finds him at St. James at the head of a household of ten: he and his wife, both between 26 and 44, with three sons and five daughters, the eight children then living. On 9 June 1811 at St. James he was godfather to Hortense, daughter of Simon Bourgeois and Marcellite Judice.

A ninth child, Celeste, married Etienne Bourgeois, a son of Pierre Bourgeois and Marie Bergeron, at St. James on 20 April 1812. A Valentin Landry, most likely her father, was among the witnesses. Her own baptism has not been found. The last of the baptisms at St. James, that of Marie Leocade, was in March 1813. Published abstracts of the St. Martin church registers, on the Bayou Teche, then name daughters of Valentin Landry and Celeste Bourgeois as brides there in 1814, 1820, 1825 and 1827, which suggests that the family had moved west by then. Only the abstracts have been seen, not the registers themselves.

Death and succession

Celeste died before 16 September 1822. On that day Valentin asked the St. Martin Parish probate court to end the community of property between them, and the court ordered an inventory. The property was sold on 17 October 1822, and Valentin bought back the habitation on the east bank of Bayou Teche for 1,070 piastres. On 7 April 1823 at Saint Martinville he married Céleste Dupuis, the widow of Jean Charles Guilbaud.

Valentin died on the morning of 6 September 1823 at his home on Bayou Teche, and he was buried the same day in the parish cemetery of St. Martin de Tours at Saint Martinville. On 16 September 1823 his nine children petitioned the same court as his legal heirs, asking for an inventory, an appraisement, a sale and a family meeting, and the court granted the petition that day. Each of the nine had already been named in their mother’s succession the year before.

Notes

A Valentin “of St. James” had a daughter baptized at Ascension in 1818 by Anne Seraphine Dugas; he may be the same man, remarried, but no record found so far says so. His birth date has not been found.

Ascension baptisms, 1788 and 1789

The Ascension entries of 1 May 1788 and 29 November 1789 (Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, Vol. 2) name only the sponsor, Valentin Landry, and the children’s father, Olivier Landry. The identification with this Valentin is probable, not certain, because the sponsor’s name is the only link to him in either entry.

Marriage, burial and age, 1823

The marriage of 7 April 1823 at Saint Martinville to Céleste Dupuis, the widow of Jean Charles Guilbaud, and the death and burial of 6 September 1823 are known from Donald J. Hebert’s Southwest Louisiana Records (SWLR), under LANDRY, V, which abstracts the St. Martin church registers. The marriage is also entered in the St. Martin Court House marriage book, volume A, page 188. The burial entry gives his age as about 56; the baptism of 15 January 1771 would make him about 52 in 1823. His heirs’ petition dates his death to a day, now unreadable, of “the present month of august”, but the court’s order on it is dated 16 September 1823, and the burial register gives September.