Marriage Record of François Perrotin and Catherine O’Grady

What the Record Tells Us

According to this record, François and Catherine were no youngsters when they were married.  He was 42; she was 25 – a bit older than the typical brides of the time.  The priest’s  notation that Catherine signed her name with an X, “her mark”  suggests she could not read and write.  That would not be unusual for a young girl who fled dire poverty during the Great Irish Potato Famine.

There were three witnesses to the marriage: Nancy Pettiss, A. Cook, and J.P. Brinck.

A. Cook was Albert George Cook.  He was a grocery merchant in Shreveport who was a friend of François’.  He may also have been his employer, as François was a baker at the time. Martha “Nancy” Pettiss was the mother of his fiancée, Sally Gurney. 

I found J.P. Brinck in the United States 1860 Census.  He was a 34-year-old boot and shoe manufacturer from Norway, married and the father of five young children who ranged in age from six months to eight years old.  Another record lists him as Johannes Petter Brinck.  The census shows his wife’s initials were C.E.  She was a milliner, so she might have known or even worked with Catherine, a seamstress.

Father John Pierre, French Missionary

“J. Pierre” was Father John Pierre, the founding pastor of Holy Family Church, the first Catholic church in Shreveport.  As a seminarian in France, Pierre had been recruited by Bishop Augustus Martin of the then-new Diocese of Natchitoches to do missionary work.  He arrived there in 1854.  On his ordination date one year later, Bishop Martin appointed Father Pierre as pastor of the first parish of the diocese, Holy Apostles.  When he became aware that the Catholic families in the nearby city of Shreveport had no priests or places to worship,  Father Pierre persuaded the bishop to let him expand his missionary work. He bought land on the corner of Fannin and Marshall Streets in Shreveport, where he built a small wood frame church (the first in Shreveport) in 1856.  He replaced it with a larger brick church three years later.  This was Holy Family Church, where he likely married François and Catherine.

Father John Pierre, center

* Because of Father Pierre’s heroic efforts and those of four other Catholic priests who gave their lives while ministering to the sick during the 1873 Yellow Fever Epidemic, the Vatican approved the path to sainthood for all five in 2020.