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CREOLE FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON . BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO
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1005
Woodward New Orleans
CREOLE FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
By GRACE KING
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. WOODWARD
NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 All rights reserved
T 19
COPYRIGHT, 1921. BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
SET UP AND ELECTROTYPED. PUBLISHED MARCH. 1921
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DEDICATION TO ANNIE RAGAN KING MY SISTER, COMPANION, FRIEND
434930
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PREFACE
T HIS book comes in response to a long-felt wish of an humble student of Louisiana history to know more about the early actors in it, to go back of the printed names in the pages of Gayarre and Martin, and peep, if possible, into the personality of the men who followed Bienville to found a city upon the Mississippi, and who, remaining on the spot, continued their good work by founding families that have carried on their work and their good names.
It has been a pleasure to follow the traces they impressed upon the soil two hundred years ago, and to look through the vista of years that opened before them when they crossed the seas, trusting their names, their fortune, their faith to a new country.
Their genealogical records bear witness to their good blood; their "maintenances de noblesse" are still in existence, brought with them from France, in simple accord with what they considered a family necessity, as much so as a house and furniture. Traditions are still carrying a pale reflection of coloring and wavering outline of them. Little stories of them are still to be met hanging on a withering memory like shriveled berries on a tree that the next blast will rend from their twigs and scatter on the ground.
Some of the little houses they built are still stand- ing; vital statistics-their baptisms, marriages
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OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
and deaths-are still distinct in the old registers of St. Louis Cathedral. Bits of old furniture, jewelry, glass, old miniatures, portraits, scraps of silk and brocade, flimsy fragments of lace can yet be picked up scattered among the houses of the old streets they trod.
Much was in existence to ease the work of the chronicler, but much, alas! was found lacking. In some instances the trail grew too indistinct to be followed with confidence. Too late! Too late! The chronicler came too late. Family papers, so one excuse ran, had been destroyed in the "great fire" (of 1788). According to another the old trunk in which a careful grandfather had packed his docu- ments had gone astray in the panics and flights of the family during the Civil War and had never been heard of since; or, sadder still, the faithful memory which carried the family record, grown aged and feeble, had lost its grip on the past, and had dropped its jewel out of its human setting, as many a fine stone has dropped from its setting, to be swept out with the débris.
The plan traced in advance for the chronicle was a modest one; comprised in time between Bienville and Claiborne, containing only the names mentioned in the historical reports of the period. But as the work and the pleasure of it progressed these limits had to be disregarded. Families ramified and pro- longed their lives in an unforeseen way. The chil- dren of the best men under Bienville became the French heroes under Ulloa; and their children, push- ing on through the Spanish Domination, became the strong men of the city under the American flag and fought with Jackson in the War of 1812. And still
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PREFACE
further their children fared on bravely to wear the gray of the Confederate Army, and onward still another generation advanced soaring higher and higher, and to-day we see them, as in the famous pic- ture in the Paris Panthéon marching across the sky of glory, these fine old French names of Louisiana in the last (and may it be the last!) world war; speed- ing back to France in defense of their ancestral motherland to fight, suffer and die, and be buried there, giving back to French earth its dust!
The chronicler held her way through it all, too well pleased with the story confided to her to realize the end before her-the end of the book, not the end of the story. In truth, like the horizon, the end seemed to recede before her as she advanced, and so the last page of the book caught her unawares, as the last day of life does us all.
And so at the end of her book, the author finds, as doubtless she will do at the end of her life, that what she has accomplished bears but a pitiful resemblance to what she set out to do, and with "finis" bows her head in contrition for her many, many sins of omission.
Throughout the volume may be found in footnotes the grateful acknowledgment of the help accorded her on her way by which she has been able to ac- complish the little she has done. But she would give more explicit mention of her gratitude to, first and foremost: The Louisiana Historical Society, for the freedom it gave her of its records; to Gaspard Cusachs, its president; to Heloise Hulse Cruzat, its corresponding secretary and ever ready helper in historical need; to Miss Freret, its librarian, whose intelligent assistance was never invoked in vain; to
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OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
the Howard Memorial Library and its scholarly librarian, Mr. William Beer, and to his courteous assistants; to Mr. T. P. Thompson, whose rare collection of Americana was cordially placed at the author's service; to Mr. G. Lugano, the able archivist of St. Louis Cathedral; to Trist Wood, Esq., for steady and constant assistance in the collection of his family data; to Meloncy Soniat, Esq., for ever kind response to demands upon his time and manuscript store of precious genealogical records; to Mr. Elsworth Woodward, for his illus- trations, and his cordial collaboration in heart and spirit with the aim of the book, which in this respect, at least, has been able to fulfill the author's highest expectations.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE CHAPTER I
A LA NOUVELLE ORLEANS
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CHAPTER II
MARIGNY DE MANDEVILLE
.
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CHAPTER III
BERNARD DE MARIGNY
23
.
CHAPTER IV
BAYOU ST. JEAN-THE DREUX FAMILY
59
CHAPTER V
A ROMANCE OF THE BAYOU ST. JEAN
.
67
CHAPTER VI
DE PONTALBA
72
CHAPTER VII
ROUER DE VILLERAY
.
. 133
CHAPTER VIII
D'ARENSBOURG .
. 154
CHAPTER IX
DE LA CHAISE .
. 159
CHAPTER X
. 169
CHAPTER XI
LABEDOYÈRE HUCHET DE KERNION
.
. 201
CHAPTER XII
DE LIVAUDAIS
. 212
LAFRÉNIÈRE
CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII
SONIAT DU FOSSAT .
. 221
CHAPTER XIV
DE LA VERGNE
. 236
CHAPTER XV
DE BORÉ
. 239 -
CHAPTER XVI
GAYARRÉ
. 256
CHAPTER XVII
CHARLES GAYARRÉ
. 269
CHAPTER XVIII
BOULIGNY
CHAPTER XIX
ALMONASTER
. 305
DE LA RONDE
CHAPTER XXI
CHALMETTE
CHAPTER XXII
CRUZAT
CHAPTER XXIII
JUMONVILLE DE VILLIERS
CHAPTER XXIV
LAVILLEBEUVRE
. 343
CHAPTER XXV
GRIMA
. 350
CHAPTER XXVI
FORSTALL
XII . 357
. 291
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· CHAPTER XX
. 313
. 318
. 323
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXVII
MACARTY
. 368
CHAPTER XXVIII
. 383
CANONGE
. 392
CHAPTER XXX
DUBOURG
. . 397
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAREST DE LAUZON .
.
. 406
CHAPTER XXXII
BRINGIER
. 413
TUREAUD
CHAPTER XXXIII
. 419
CHAPTER XXXIV
GARRIGUES DE FLAUGEAC-DE ROALDES
.
. 423
CHAPTER XXXV
PITOT
CHAPTER XXXVI
. 435
ST. GÈME
CHAPTER XXXVIII
ALLAIN
CHAPTER XXXIX
BEAUREGARD . 452
CHAPTER XL
ALCÉE FORTIER
XIII . 461
. 429
ROFFIGNAC
CHAPTER XXXVII
. 443
. 446
DE BUYS
CHAPTER XXIX
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LIST OF PLATES
Frontispiece
Type of Wealthy Creole House of the French Period, Dumaine and Dauphin Streets-Servants, Quarters in the Rear . 138 Oaks at Versailles, de la Ronde Plantation-the Chalmette Battlefield to the Left . 314
Vestibule of Grima House-Newel Posts of Brass, Balustrade
of Mahogany . 356
Rue Dumaine
. 408
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
Ursulines and Chartres Streets. Built in the time of Bienville-
now demolished . 11
Royal below Dumaine Street (used as Court House in 1815) where General Jackson was tried for contempt of court before Judge Hall 41 .
Briquette entre Potcaux (bricked between posts). Type of Pioneer house in country outside of New Orleans ·
. 69
Villa on Levee Road below New Orleans, facing West (now demolished) 77
The Napoleon House (with the belvedere) on Chartres Street back of the Court House . 121
Lit de Repos. A beautiful specimen of "Robert Adam" . 241
Toilette Table. St. Domingo mahogany . 267
Eighteenth Century Piano. Mahogany, inlaid with brass . 275
Dauphine near Dumaine Street . 329
Empire Work Table of St. Domingo mahogany and brass . 371
Jefferson Street, back of Pontalba buildings
. 375
Toulouse Street, near "Old Levee" Street . 431
Porte Cochère on Chartres Street 439
Rampart and St. Peter Streets . 457
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CHAPTER I
A LA NOUVELLE ORLEANS
"Orléans, Gentilly,
Pontalba, Marigny, Bourbon! Bourbon!"
These are the words that come to me (The haunting turn of an old refrain) From the Siren City beside the sea, Child of the valour of France and Spain. She sits there weaving her olden spells. The years through her lissom fingers run To form but a chaplet whereon she tells, The names of her lovers, one by one!
Gayoso, Galvez, Bouligny, Caso-Calvo, Derbigny!
Don Almonaster's bells intone:
For Bienville and for Sérigny, For D'Iberville, for Assigny, They make incessant moan. "Orléans, Gentilly, Pontalba, Marigny,
Bourbon! Bourbon!"
-WILLIAM McLENNAN.
T HE old Creole families of New Orleans date from the foundation of the city, and even before that- from the settlement of Mobile, Dauphin Island and Biloxi, their good old names figuring in the lists of military, naval and civil officers who followed Iber- ville to the discovery of the Mississippi and remained with Bienville to hold on to the French possession of it.
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It may in fact be said that New Orleans brought her population into the world with her, or rather, was furnished in advance with it, as a baby is with a layette, or a bride with a trousseau. Like a layette or a trousseau, the material from which the popula- tion was made was of the finest and strongest, and it has worn well.
The men under Bienville who, for twenty years, had borne the brunt of the hardships of colonial settlement in a savage country, were well content to follow him to the last goal in their enterprise, the foundation of a city on the Mississippi-not a fort nor a settlement, but a city-whose image and superscription was to be "France, her sights and sounds, dreams and laughter."
They builded better than they knew, as we can judge to-day. The ground selected was quickly cleared of its forest; the streets were laid out and named; homes were built (to continue the feminine simile) just as the corbeille is still prepared to con- tain the layette and trousseau.
Each square formed by the intersection of the streets was divided into four allotments, and in each allotment was erected a house-a low, square, eight or four-room cottage built of split cypress logs, raised a few feet above the ground, with high ridged roof covered with bark, and with solid cypress doors and windows; the type of building that has perpetuated itself in the city. It was built to last and it did last, for a century and a half .*
The careful Bienville provided also a site for a
* A specimen was spared until recently, when it was demolished in obedience to some civic decree. It was situated on a corner of Chartres Street opposite the site of the old Ursuline Convent.
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church, and pre-empted the space in front of it for a Place d'Armes. The first church was also of the most primitive form of construction-a low, oblong building, only large enough to hold its absolute necessities, as it were, of divine worship; behind it was the graveyard. As it was planned in 1720 it is, in a general way, seen to-day.
The squares were surrounded by deep ditches, which, when filled with water, made little islands of their enclosures and so, in New Orleans' common speech, a square is still called an "islet."
The first census of the city, taken in 1726, gives the names and addresses of its first inhabitants. To cite a few of them: on Old Levee Street (as it is called to-day), the "Rue du Quay" of 1726, were the hospital, the "direction" or official building, the house of M. Pauger, the engineer who laid out the city; of M. Trudeau and his six children; and that of "M. de Noyan in which Petit de Levilliers and his wife resided."
On Chartres Street was the house occupied by the Jesuits, and the "large house where lived de la Chaise, his wife and two children"; St. Martin, with his wife and three children; Marest de la Tour; and Bellair.
On Condé Street (Chartres, below the Cathedral) was the "small house of Joseph Carriere, where he stops when he comes to town"; and the houses of de Lassus and M. de Boisbriant, Commander General.
On Royal Street, the trades people seemed to cluster-carpenters, cabinet makers, a wig maker, a shoemaker, a wagon maker, a "chandelier" (candle maker), armorers.
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Jean Pascal, with "fat wife and child" lived along- side a large house belonging to M. Chauvin de la Frénière, "where he stays when he comes to town" (his plantation was above the city); then followed the house where M. Fazende, the Councillor, lived "with wife and child, mother-in-law and brother-in- law."
On Bourbon Street, we find the surgeons Michel Brosset and Pouyadon de la Tour; the rest of the street being filled up as was Royal with trades people, each one provided with wife and children and designated by a sobriquet-"la Bouillonerie" called "la Douceur"; Joseph Cham called "la Rose."
Bienville Street was more aristocratic. On it stood the mansion of the Governor and the houses of M. de Chavannes, Secretary of the Council; of M. Fleuriau, Attorney General; of Dr. Alexandre, Surgeon Major of the Hospital, etc., etc.
On St. Philippe Street, lived Chesseau, the "can- nonier" of the town. On Barracks Street, St. Pierre, Dumaine, Ste. Anne, and Orléans Streets, lived other useful members of the community.
In 1726, the population numbered 880, of which 65 were servants and 129 slaves. There were only ten horses in it.
By this time the city had become the capital of the province, and the seat of government, with the legal institution of a Superior Council, whose first - Councillors were sent from France. A convent of Capuchins had also been established for the service of the Cathedral.
Tall, pointed picket fences surrounded the houses, built as was the custom in France "entre cour et jardin." In the earliest records, statistical items are
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accompanied by pretty accounts of the flower gardens of the city, planted with seeds brought from France, and cuttings shipped from Havana and Porto Rico. The oleanders that bloom in the Place d' Armes to-day, doubtless are descendants of original stocks. The tall fences were reinforced by inside hedges of orange trees, the sour variety being preferred as more hardy ; the ripened fruit, glittering like lighted lanterns in their dark foliage, over the sharp-pointed tops of the pickets; their blossoms showering down on the pathway outside, embalming the air with heavenly perfume. At the back of the houses, across the yard, were the quarters of the servants, the kitchen and household "offices."
There was apparently little "roughing it" during these early days of the city's life. Indeed, compared with life to-day, the little cypress cottages and their households are to be envied by the brides of to-day as they look back upon the brides of two centuries ago, who arrived from France, trailing their illus- trious heritage of family names behind them.
They brought with them for their new homes an outfit of furniture, linen and glass; and for themselves silks, satins, laces and jewelry. They found awaiting them the best of servants, selected with a careful eye from a market stocked with samples of the best tribes of Africa, and bought without regard to price; and provisions from the rich country about them-fish, flesh, game, vegetables and fruits; with wine flowing generously and good company; their own language, the good manners of the Old World, and a society that, although gay, was kept within the bounds of the proper and the discreet by the rigid maintenance of the etiquette of society in Paris, and the strict
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enforcement of French laws for preserving the purity of blood and family prestige.
Four records of baptism on each side were required before marriage between any loving pair could be solemnized. Parentsand grandparents had to make proof of legitimacy by certificates from the church, and other and more particular enlightenment was ascertained in private ways. The scrutiny was keen and inexorable.
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CHAPTER II MARIGNY DE MANDEVILLE
I N the chronicles of the old Creole families of New Orleans, the name of Marigny de Mandeville stands first. In truth, the family antedates the city itself; and through two centuries of its life contrib- uted active workers to its history.
In the list of officers selected to accompany Iber- ville to the discovery of the Mississippi in 1699, appears the name of a Josselin de Marigny, "Enseigne en Second de la Companie d'Arquian." Bienville was midshipman on the same vessel. It is not yet made clear whether Josselin was connected with the founder of the Louisiana family, although the coin- cidence of the surname and the date is too striking not to suggest the probability of it. The name of Josselin occurs but this once in our annals, while "M. de Marigny" is mentioned in the chronicles of the earliest explorations of Bienville around Mobile in 1704.
The Louisiana family is usually traced to Pierre Philippe, Sieur de Marigny de Mandeville, to whom were issued letters patent of nobility, signed Louis and Phélipeau, dated Paris, 1654, and registered "à la Cour des Aydes et Comptes de Rouen, 1656." By another letter patent issued at St. Germain en Laye, 1671, signed Louis and Colbert, the title of Sieur de Hautmesnil was conferred upon the son, Jean Vincent Philippe, for services rendered, "en la Nelle, France."
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The first of the name of whom we have any sure data in Louisiana is François Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville, Chevalier de St. Louis, born at Bayeux, Normandy .* He married Madeleine Le Maires, daughter of Marguerite Lamothe, native of Paris, Paroisse St. Sulpice, and of Pierre Le Maire, probably of the same family as the Missionary Geographer, François Le Maire, who wrote a "Mémoire sur la Louisiane 1718," and drew a map of the country.
François Philippe was an officer of Infantry in Canada in 1709, and afterwards "Commandant des Troupes en Louisiane." In 1714 he received his commission as Captain and later was made Chevalier de St. Louis. He was placed in command of Fort Condé near Mobile, where he is recorded as serving without pay. On the first map of Mobile, there is an allotment marked "M. de Marigny."
In 1724 the Company of Mandeville is mentioned among the military companies stationed at New Orleans. Subsequently he was made Major de Place, or Military Commandant there. It is pre- sumable that he was with Bienville when the latter had the site of New Orleans laid off by the Royal Engineers, and that he witnessed its slow upbuilding and its gradual growth of population.
By 1724 the city's struggle, not for existence but for official recognition, was over; and Bienville's ambition that it should be the capital of the province was realized. It was made the seat of government. The Superior Council had been removed thither from
* From the "Biological and Genealogical Notes concerning the Family of Philippe de Mandeville, Ecuyer Sieur de Marigny, 1709-1880," by J. W. Cruzat.
Louisiana Historical Publications, Vol. V, 1911.
EWoodward-
Ursulines and Chartres Streets. Built in the time of Bienville-now demolished.
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MARIGNY DE MANDEVILLE
Biloxi, and it held its regular sittings in the Govern- ment Building facing the river. A hospital, the barracks and other public buildings for military and civil offices had been erected.
The Chapel of St. Louis, the precursor of the present Cathedral, had been built, with the necessary house for its priest. The allotments of ground made around the Place d'Armes had been surrounded by ditches and raised walks, and were being grad- ually filled by the gardens and low, four-roomed cypress cottages that constituted the first residences of its citizens.
It was doubtless in such a house that M. de Marigny lived, with his wife and two children, on Chartres Street, according to the Census of 1726. He died here in 1728 and was interred, as a mark of distinction, in the Parish Church of St. Louis. The Marigny tomb is still to be seen, marked by a large white marble stone, which bears the Marigny coat of arms and the inscription of three generations of them, written in French. It is situated on the left aisle of the church, at the foot of the altar of "Our Lady of Lourdes."
In 1729, his widow married François Ignace Brou- tin, "Capitaine Ingénieur du Roi en cette colonie et Commandant des Natchez." Of this marriage were born several children; among them two daughters. One married Jean Delfau de Pontalba, and the other Louis Xavier de Lino de Chalmette, thus uniting three of the most important families of New Orleans.
By her marriage with Marigny, Madeleine Le Maire had one son, Antoine Philippe, Ecuyer, Sieur de Marigny de Mandeville, Chevalier de St. Louis. He was born in Mobile in 1722, and had for god-
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parents Chateaugué, brother of Bienville, and Mar- guerite le Sueur, wife of Nicolas Chauvin de Lafré- nière, mother of the celebrated Lafrénière, the famous patriot who was executed by O'Reilly in 1769.
Antoine Philippe married, in 1748, Françoise de Lisle, presumably the daughter of Guillaume de Lisle, Geographer to the King, whose maps of Louisiana, 1703-1712, ruled for a long period the geographical world of France as the best and, in fact, the only authoritative source of information on the subject of the Mississippi and Louisiana.
Antoine Philippe wrote a "Mémoire sur la Louisi- ane," and became himself an enterprising explorer and expert geographer. In the words of Bossu, the historian, "M. de Marigny de Mandeville, an officer of distinction, undertook with the consent of the Governor to make new discoveries around the Isle of Barataria, and it was in connection with this that he worked to produce a general map of the Colony. This officer made, at his own expense and with the indefatigable zeal of a worthy citizen, the explora- tion of this unknown country."
According to his portrait in the Gaspar Cusach collection of the Louisiana Historical Society, Marigny was a refined, aristocratic, scholarly looking officer, wearing a péruque and queue. He enjoyed with the rest of his fellow citizens the calm and equable administration of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who succeeded Bienville as Governor of the colony in 1743, when in spite of much civic friction and the continual insubordination of the Indians under the encroaching British influence over them, Louisiana grew in strength and importance. The city began
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to take on some show of wealth and social pretension, while the population increased measurably.
But when the courtly Vaudreuil left the colony in 1783, he was succeeded by M. de Kerlerec, a bluff Captain in the Royal Marines, whose character and methods of government were in violent contrast to those of the noble Marquis. The city under Kerlerec suffered all the discomforts of a violent housecleaning at the hands of a vigorous shrewish housekeeper, who quarreled and found fault with all subordinates. The contention between him and his Commissary, Roche- more, broke all the official etiquette that had hitherto restrained such quarrels, and the innovation ensued of the participation in it of the wives of the principals -Madame de Kerlerec and Madame de Rochemore. Each one had her feminine partisans, who (as ever with such partisans, zealous to indiscretion) warred so well that soon the whole social element of New Orleans was divided into two hostile camps.
In default of newspapers the publicity of accusa- tions and insinuations was obtained by means of pasquinades and lampoons affixed to the corners of the streets. The mordant wit of these pleased immensely and was enjoyed by each side in turn. Unfortunately, no specimen of these was preserved, to the great regret of succeeding historians.
The officers of the garrison, naturally, did not remain neutral. Marigny distinguished himself among the keenest supporters of Rochemore against Kerlerec, who with military promptness arrested him and a bunch of his supporting brother officers and summarily shipped them to France on a departing vessel.
Rochemore, the Commissary, was sent to France
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at the same time, as was Jean Baptiste d'Estrehan, the Royal Treasurer of the colony, described by Kerlerec as being "too rich and dangerous." "But if I send away all the mauvaises têtes here," he wrote, "what would remain of the population?"
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