Thomas d'Aquin was the eldest son of his parents with a name matching his father. He married Marie Melasie Picou in 1852 in a civil marriage in St. James Parish. Why a civil rather than a church marriage is not yet clear. The location seems strange because his parents were living in St. John Parish and Marie was born in French Settlement in what was in 1833 the newly formed Livingston Parish. Did he remain at the farm his parents had left in St. James Parish the previous year or was this a convenient place half way between the two families, or something else?
In any case, in 1860 Thomas Jr, Marie and their children are living with his parents and he was overseer of their property at age 28. The 1870 census is discussed in the biogrraphy of his parents.
By the 1880 census, two of their older children, Julia and Joseph, plus the three young children were living with them. The whereabouts of two other older children is yet to be determined. Two children that appear in the 1870 census, Mary Philonese and Henry, would be too young to have left home by 1880. More research is needed to find out about them.
Also, on the same page of the 1880 census are the long-lived James with his new bride, Regina, and Jules and Eva with their now eight children.
The records of the 1890 census were destroyed in a fire in Washington in 1921. What was not destroyed by fire was water damaged, refused by the Library of Congress in the 1930's and then destroyed deliberately. A few fragments remain, but none for Louisiana.
In the 1900 census, all their children appear to have left their home as the youngest would be twenty one. Living with them, however, is an adopted daughter, identified as Regina Cambre, born in 1868 and age thirty-two in 1900. Regina appears again with then in the 1910 census. The circumstances of her adoption are still a mystery.
Also, in the 1900 census their daughter Julia Marie appears with her husband Adam Tamplain and their eight children with ages ranging from sixteen down to one. So, Julia and Adam had to be married between the 1880 census and 1883 to have a sixteen-year-old by 1900. Julia died three years after the census, 1903, at age 46 and Adam in 1904. Apparently, Thomas and Melasie took in their grandchildren despite being in their early seventies.
The situation with Julia and Adam is made clear by the 1910 census, Six of the Tamplain children are living with Thomas and Melasie, now in their late seventies. The oldest, Bernadette Tamplain, now 26, is married to Willis Bourgeois, Jr. Her sister Louella Tamplain, age 17 is living with them. Whether Willis is a descendant of Jean Baptiste and Mary Magdelaine from Acadia is not yet clear.
Thomas died in 1919 at age 87. Marie Melasie died eight years later in 1927 at age 93. She has not yet been found in the 1920 census, nor is it clear how she supported herself after Thomas died.
