Renée Roccas

Notes:

Also spelled Rochas.

Family/Spouse: Elisee Prioleau. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Josue Gallaudet. Josue (son of Isaac Gallaudet and Marie Jousseaume) was born in of Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon, Deux-Sèvres, France; died after 1685. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

He is said to have been in New Rochelle as early as 1711, although Account of the Gallaudet Family (citation details below) notes that if so he would have had to arrive late in the year, as he was a witness at the marriage of his sister Marie Gallaudet to Renee Boudet of Bellvard in 1711 at the Parish Church of St. Gelais. St. Gelais is about 47 miles northeast of La Rochelle. The first actual mention of him in surviving New Rochelle town records is from 1722. He was naturalized a citizen of the New York colony in 1726. No records exist placing him in New Rochelle after 1732. The record of his daughter Esther's baptism on Staten Island in 1738 is his last appearance in any record. He was a "chirurgien", a surgeon, and addressed as "docteur."

His first wife was named Jan; we know nothing of her origins, birth date, or death date.

His name appears on a bronze plaque at New Rochelle erected to the memory of the early Huguenot settlers. There is also a brass tablet at the Church of Saint Esprit in New York City inscribed to the memory of Pierre Elisee Gallaudet and his mother Margaret Prioleau.

His great-grandson Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, co-founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and he became its first principal. When opened on April 15, 1817, it was called the Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet's son Edward Miner Gallaudet (1837-1917) was the first president of the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind in Washington, D.C., now known as Gallaudet University.

Family/Spouse: Magdalaine Gendron. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

On 10 Dec 1774 the court of Kent County, Delaware granted letters of administration to Esther, widow of Reuben Oliver.

Esther married Reuben Oliver in 1756. Reuben was born about 1730; died before 10 Dec 1774 in Kent County, Delaware. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]