270th birthday
For members of the Chapman family
Joachim de Ortega y Prieto was born on August 2, 1755. So, today would be his 270th birthday.
Joachim is my 6th- and 7th-great-grandfather; he’s an ancestor of one of my maternal grandparents, Elroy Chapman.
Joachim was born in or near the town of Tordesillas in the province of Valladolid, Castile and León, Spain. His parents were Santiago de Ortega y Molinero and Francisca del Prieto y Rio. He was baptized a few days after birth at the largest church in town, 16th-century Iglesia de Santa María la Mayor.
If you’re not familiar, Spanish naming customs typically result in a person inheriting the first surnames from each of his or her parents, with the paternal surname coming first (at least, prior to the 90’s). So Joachim’s surnames were Ortega (his father’s paternal surname) and Prieto (his mother’s paternal surname). In casual usage he probably would have just used Ortega, and in the tradition of the French-Spanish colonies where he later settled, his children only inherited the surname Ortega (ɔːrteɪɡə)… which later morphed into the modern Ortego (ɑːrtiːɡoʊ).
Anyway, by the time his was in his mid-twenties, Joachim had ended up in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana — which was at the time a province of New Spain. That’s where he married Marie Josephe Damasene (or Damesainte) de Soto y St. Denis (a granddaughter of famous colonial explorer and founder of Natchitoches, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis) on January 14, 1782.
The newlyweds then moved to the colony of Florida, New Spain, where Joachim served as “comisario de artillería” (artillery quartermaster, basically the guy in charge of cannons) at the Presidio San Miguel de Panzacola — the precursor of modern day Pensacola.
The couple would go on to have at least eight children together, seven of whom were sons. At least the first two were born in Florida, but sometime before 1790 the family returned to Louisiana. The couple left many descendants in the region around the area of Bayou Chicot (a.k.a. Lake Chicot in Chicot State Park / Louisiana State Arboretum) — including the family of yours truly.
Joachim lived to the age of 70. He died in Louisiana in the early summer of 1826, and was buried in St. Landry Catholic Church in Opelousas.
Though we don’t know much about the most the intimate details of his life, we are very fortunate to know as much as we do about this 18th–19th-century ancestor. Happy 270th, Joachim.