Notable Tools that Researchers Do Not Want to Miss
May 11, 2026
This past March, I received an announcement from Amy Simon, associate archivist of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, that 22 volumes of their church records from 1707 to 1900 were now free to the public online on their website, www.diobr.org/archives. While my personal research library covers the first eight volumes in paper and in hard cover, it is indeed a welcome treat to have immediate access from home to more baptisms, marriages, and burials. In addition, researchers can now examine African American burials from St. James Catholic Parish (1883-1891) and persons without surnames from East and West Baton Rouge and Feliciana Parishes (from pretty much the entire 19th century).
In somewhat different fashion, the New Orleans Records can be searched at or without cost. The official archdiocesan site requires assistance and a fee. With http://www.lagenweb.org/orleans, you can also explore sacramental transcriptions through the year 1810 in volumes 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 10 or purchase volumes 3, 4, 8, 9, 11-19. This particular access will not satisfy all, yet a trip to New Orleans or to the Library of Congress in Washington involves a lot more time and expense.
In addition, I would also suggest using Steve Cormier’s website, http://acadiansingray.com, with its indispensable compilations of early settlers in Louisiana.
In January, Patrick A. Marcotte shared with me his most recent publication entitled The DeValcourt Family of Louisiana: A Genealogical Dictionary (self-published in paper, December 2025). The volume consists of 378 pages, with great supportive documentation from genealogists, death indexes, censuses, and actual newspaper sources. The many obituaries are a great read.
The DeValcourt family’s American odyssey began in 1793. Alexandre François Gallopin de Valcourt was born in Paris in 1760 to Jean-Baptiste Bernard Gallopin and Catherine Marguerite Francfort. The Gallopin family was granted noble status in the early 1770s during the reign of Louis XV. Alexandre felt obliged to depart from France in the early years of the Revolution and arrived in Saint-Domingue in the last days of January 1792. He had previously fathered a daughter, Alexandrine Mechling, in 1789. On 18 July 1794, he married into an Acadian family in Baltimore. His American wife, Margaret Hermange Gold, was the daughter of Oliver and Martha née White (LeBlanc). This union produced six children, whose life journeys took them at various ages to France, Ohio, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Of course, Marcotte’s work concentrates chiefly on the Louisiana line of sons Theodore and Jean-Baptiste (John B.). For his part, Theodore had a distinguished career as founder-publisher of the Attakapas Gazette, St. Martinville, 1824-1847. The Baltimore connections lasted into the 1830s, at which time Alexandre died in France in 1833. A little time after, wife Martha ventured to Ohio with daughters Caroline and Martha Eugenia, who spent the remainder of their lives there with their spouses.
Baltimore city directories document DeValcourt residence from 1796 through 1824, mostly at 28, 33, 35, 40, and 44 S. Charles Street. Though a petit noble, Alexandre was listed at various times as a merchant, grocer, storekeeper, and collector. Since the male Golds were noted seafarers, it does not come as a surprise that his son Thomas Samuel was first noted as a 13-year-old, a little over 4 feet four in height, on a seamen’s protection certificate on 12 June 1815, and later as a captain living in New York, when in September 1832, he fell victim to cholera at the age of 30.[1]
I highly recommend Marcotte’s detailed book, which is available through Amazon for approximately $20.
[1] Abstracts and Registers of Seamen’s Protection Certificates for Baltimore, 1808-1816, National Archives, Washington, DC, RG 36, 4D 1152.J, Box 1.
Francophones in Maryland 