Alain and Marie

"Alain Jardeler"¹ and his wife "Marie Illic" left from Lorient, a city on the south coast of Brittany, France, on 13 August 1720 bound for Louisiana. They were listed in the passenger list of the ship Gironde as husband and wife, no children, laborers for the concessions of Messieurs Mezieres and Desmarches.² Mezieres and Desmarches had a concession in Biloxi, but it is not known where the ship landed in New France nor where they worked.

The city of New Orleans had been founded only two years before and conditions all along the Gulf Coast settlements were still very primitive. Land had to be cleared and settlers had to survive heat, storms, flooding, hunger and malnutrition and attacks from the local natives.

In addition to a large number of laborers, there were various officials - directors, inspector generals, storekeepers, tobacco inspectors and a surgeon. Other passengers were skilled laborers such as carpenters, founders, masons, brewers, shoemakers, butchers and so on. Other ships brought similar groups of workers as well as soldiers, prisoners, vagabonds, etc. Immigrants came from all over Europe and a large number of Germans settled in the Gulf Coast area in these early years.³

Alain Jardelat and his wife were living in New Orleans on Rue St. Anne during the New Orleans censuses of 1725, 1727, 1731 and 1732. St. Anne Street is located in the French Quarter close to the St. Louis Cathedral. In the 1927 census Alain was listed as a charcoal maker.⁴ Alain and Marie were in New Orleans in 1726 when their daughter Marie, four years old, was buried. A son, Nicolas, 8 mos. old, was buried in 1731. In the 1725 census they had two children, so they must have had at least one other child besides Nicolas and Marie by 1731. The burial records for Marie and Nicolas give the names of their parents as Allin Jardelas and Marie Guerique.⁵

Their son Pierre was born about 1733 in New Orleans.⁶ His record of burial in 1798 gives his parents as Pedro Jardelas and Maria Querique - the names were recorded in French or Spanish depending on who was in control at the time. Pierre's father was married to a Marie Querique/Querlque in various records. The spellings of her name as Illic, Guerique, Querlque are close enough to be misspellings of the same name. It is possible that Alain had a brother Pierre who could have been Pierre's father, but the fact that Pierre's mother's name was so close to the name of Alain's wife makes that unlikely. There were no other Jardelats that I have found at the time in Louisiana. Alain probably went by more than one name, not unusual at that time.

There is an "Alain Jardelas called Tempete" in a list of French Troops in 1745. He was in the fusiliers group.⁷ An Allain Jardelas is listed as one of the Louisiana Troops, discharged Oct. 1, 1750. He would have been at least fifty.⁸ Alain would have been the right age to be Pierre's father; he had young children around the time Pierre was born in 1733; he was married to a Marie Guerique and Pierre's father was married to a Marie Querique. Allain was in the military. Pierre, his son, was in the military at Arkansas Post. These facts lead me to believe that the Alain in the census, the Allain, discharged from the Louisiana Troops, and Pedro Jardelas, the name given for the father of Pierre, b. ca. 1733, are all the same person - Alain Jardelat or Alain Pierre Jardelat.

According to their son Pierre's burial record, his parents, Alain and Marie, were originally from "Cape Corentin (?) in Brittiany, European France."⁹ They left from Lorient, in Brittany, but there is no cape or place by that name in Brittany.

There is another Jardelat in the records and she is probably the daughter of Allain Pierre and Marie and the younger sister of Pierre.

A Maria Theresa Jardelat Casberg is listed in the burial records of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. She was buried 17 August 1811 in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. She was the widow of Mathurin Casberg, spelled Kalsherk in the cemetery records, and also Casteverg, Casberk, Casteberg, Casteverg and Casverg in various transcriptions of the records.¹⁰

Maria Theresa was 74 years old when she died, putting her birth about 1737, about the time the other Jardelat children were born. Since there were no other Jardelat families in the records, my assumption is that she was a younger sister of Pierre Jardelat. Her burial record lists her as a native of the city of New Orleans, as does a baptismal record for a granddaughter. Another baptismal record for a different granddaughter notes that she is a native of Natchez. The Jardelat family was living on Rue St. Anne in the 1720s and 1730s, so if she was truly a native of New Orleans, this adds to the evidence that Maria Theresa is a member of this family. She would, however, been very young when she married, about 13 or 14.¹¹

Little is known about her husband Mathurin Casberg, so perhaps it is he who is the native of Natchez. Mathurin, or Maturino, who also went by Jean Mathurin, was listed as a master carpenter at the birth of a son. He died before Maria Theresa. Six children are listed in the baptismal record in New Orleans for Mathurin and Maria Theresa: Magdeleine, baptized 1751, Jaque, born 1752, Jean Louis, born 1756, Marie Therese, baptized 1758, Pierre, born 1762, who died within a month, and Pierre, born 1764.¹²

Where Alain served in the military, what he and Marie did after his discharge, when and where they died is not known.