♀Virginie Delahunt

Virginie Delahunt (about 1843 – 28 November 1912) was a woman of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, who married for the first time at about seventeen, in the spring of the year her father died, was twice married, and in 1900 was living in her daughter’s household with her own widowed mother, three generations of widows and wives under one roof. She was the elder sister of Augustin Delahunt (1845–1915), the grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014).

Early life

Virginie was born in Avoyelles Parish in about 1843, the daughter of Samuel Dillahunt (1815–1860), a carpenter, and Delphine Marcotte (1824–1900). A family history posted online by a descendant of the family gives her birth as 18 December 1842, taken from the baptism registers of St. Paul’s church at Mansura. In the census of 1850 she was seven, living in Avoyelles Parish with her parents and her younger brother Augustin, then five.

Marriages and family

On 12 April 1860 Virginie married Jean Bte. Rachal in Avoyelles Parish. Her father died the same year. The family history says that Rachal died and that she married again, to Edmond Dubroc; the family record spells his surname Debrock and gives his birth as 1847. By the census of 1880 she was a married woman keeping house in Avoyelles Parish.

Three children of Virginie and Edmond are known, born between 1872 and 1879, among them Louise Emeline Dubroc (1875–1953), who married Amable Ducote. The census of 1900 recorded Virginie as the mother of six children, three of them then living, so three more had died before that year.

Widowhood and later life

Edmond died before 1900. In June of that year Virginie, a widow, was living in Ward 9 of Avoyelles Parish in the household of her son-in-law, Amable Ducote, and her daughter Louise. On the next line of the same census page was her mother, Delphine, then 76 and also widowed, recorded under her maiden name, Marcotte, as the grandmother-in-law of the head of the house. Virginie was still in Ward 9, again listed as a widowed mother-in-law, in 1910.

The family history and a Find a Grave index give her death as 28 November 1912, and the index places her burial at Cottonport, Avoyelles Parish. The family history puts her grave in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Assumption Catholic Church there.

Notes

Her birth year varies between the records: the family history’s baptism date gives December 1842, and the census of 1900 gives December 1844, while her age in 1850 fits about 1843. Her second husband’s surname appears as both Debrock and Dubroc. The family history names two of the Debrock sons as Joseph, born in 1872, and Delahunt Dubroc, born in 1874; these do not match the names the family record holds for the children, and no parish register entry is given for either name. A December 1860 household headed only by “Mrs. S. Dillahunt”, aged 35, included a “Marie”, aged 17; the head is identified with Virginie’s mother on an initial alone, which has not been proven, and Virginie had by then been married for eight months.