USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 10
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* Mrs. James Grimshaw; a Miss Berthoud, daughter of a dame d'honneur of Marie Antoinette.
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blonde péruque to take away with him to fulfill a promise to a favorite of his harem, and that he was in despair at not finding one suitably handsome. From maid to maid and from coiffeur to coiffeur the story went and traveled upward until it reached the ears of Josephine that the Louisiana Countess, McNamara de Mérieult, carried on her head the making of the most beautiful and wonderful péruque in the world! To Napoleon this was sufficient; Madame McNamara de Mérieult was approached and offered her own terms for her hair! She declined. And the story goes no further.
Celestin de Pontalba and Blanche Ogden left two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Baron Edouard de Pontalba, brings the family well within the present memory of Louisianians. He was born in France in 1839, and in 1864 married, at Senlis, Désirée Victoire Clothilde de Vernois, the handsome aristo- cratic grande dame, who presided with the ineffable grace (one may say, of a Louisianian) at his table; showing herself in sympathy, talk and historical interests his coadjutor as well as helpmeet.
In heart and mind, true to ancestral attachments, Edouard de Pontalba ever responded to the name of the State as to a watchword; and fortunate was the one able thus to invoke his kindly interest and enjoy his unforgetable generosity of mind and hospitality of board. He was an ardent student of Louisiana history to which, as we have seen, he was connected by family ties, reaching through ancestral alliances to Bienville himself. Through his long and careful searchings for historical documents con- nected with Louisiana, he became an intimate fre- quenter of the colonial archives of France, prov-
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ing an ever-ready and available means of communi- cation between them and Louisiana historical students.
In the progress of further elucidation of political questions and personal appreciations, he penetrated into the family archives of Mont l'Evêque, where finding the letters (from which we have quoted) of his distinguished and unfortunate great-grandfather, written to his wife, that throw such a kindly light upon his character, he copied and presented them to the Louisiana Historical Society. It is in his own minute, beautiful handwriting that we possess also the Etat des Services of the gallant soldier, which, with the letters, he presented to the Historical Society. He added also to its archives from his family papers the very valuable copies of the official letters of his great-granduncle, Governor Miro; an inestimable aid to the understanding of the important period of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana.
Slight of form, with extreme delicacy of features, modest and retiring to an almost embarrassing degree, he nevertheless conveyed the impression of an heir and, if need be, of an actor oi heroic deeds. He was a good talker in spite of his reserve, drawing frankly upon the inexhaustible treasures of ex- perience, reading and family traditions at his command.
After passing through the war of 1870, and the horrors of the Commune, he, in his old age and feeble health, was summoned to suffer the even greater horror of the late war! In Paris, in 1914, he endured the painful anxieties caused by the ruthless march of the Prussians upon it, and the terrible panic that, as a whirlwind, drove him and his family
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into flight from the capital. When he returned he was broken in health. His beautiful summer home at Senlis lay in the path of the Prussian army. He did not live to see the compensation of victory. He died during the early winter of 1919 in Paris, at the 1 home of his daughter, rue Pergolese 66, and was buried at Senlis.
His only child, Blanche Genevieve Jeanne Micaela Delfau de Pontalba, is the wife of Jacques Frédéric Kulp of Paris. Their daughters, Jacqueline and Désirée, are the only descendants of this line of the Pontalbas.
Jacqueline is the wife of the Comte Roland Balmy d'Avricourt. The title and the patrimonial château of Mont l'Evêque passed to a half brother of the Baron Edouard, whose grandson Alfred is the only male descendant of the family living to-day.
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CHAPTER VII
ROUER DE VILLERAY
T HE name of Villeré shines with a luster all its own in the annals of New Orleans' history. To the historian the hand of the city seems to hold it poised aloft-a jewel from her casket. The name was known at first as Rouer de Villeray and, accord- ing to local tradition, was originally Italian, belong- ing to the illustrious house of la Rovere, which gave two Popes besides Cardinals and Bishops to the Church, many sovereign Princes to Italy and the Republic of Genoa, and possessed chevaliers innum- erable of the most distinguished orders of France. t
When the family became French is not recorded, but it is known that branches established in Pied- mont passed from there into France in the sixteenth century, where they were known under the several names of Rovere, La Rouyer, Rouer.
One of them, Raymond de Rouer of Languedoc, a Knight of St. Louis and Governor of Narbonne, was sent as Ambassador to Spain in the sixteenth century, and in 1562 he commanded the armies of the King during the religious wars in Languedoc.
Louis Rouer de Villerày, the first of the name who
* "Familles de la France Coloniale." Margry. Paris, 1851.
t There are no documents left in the family for the reason that when, in Havre, in 1793, the wife of the Marquis de Villeré, a loyalist and émigrée, dreading a domiciliary visit from the Revolu- tionists, destroyed all her family papers, fearing that their discovery might lead to her husband's denunciation and condemnation.
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went to Canada, belonged to the branch of the family established in Touraine, the head of which, Rene de Rouer, bore the hereditary title of Marquis de Villerày, Seigneur of Martin, Révillon and of Comblot, near Mortagne, where he died.
Louis Rouer went to Canada about 1650, very young and very poor, to seek his fortune, following the good old Norman recommendation, "cherche qui n'a." The young Canadian sought; but found at first only dangers innumerable and cruel hardships of all kinds. Nevertheless, he was able to make his way despite them all, and from a subordinate employ- ment rose at the age of twenty-four to a respectable position in the Sovereign Council of Canada, later becoming its President, a position that he filled for thirty years.
He married Catherine Sevestre, daughter of one of the great pioneer Canadian families, his name being now corrupted by the Canadians into Roy de Villeré. His sons following in the career he had opened for them in civil life, became Councillors and Judges. They married into good Canadian families, such as Le Gardeur de Tilly, de Repentigny, de Léry and Lemoyne de Longueil. They passed, or, as it was regarded in that day, mounted from the magistracy into military service. At the end of the Seven Years' War, four Villerés were listed in the French Army as officers. Upon the surrender of Canada by the French, they returned to France.
Previous to this, however, a Villeré had made his appearance in Louisiana. He had presumably, with the Canadian Chauvin family, to which he was allied by marriage, joined Iberville's expedition for the discovery of the Mississippi. It will be
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remembered that Iberville, in his preparations for his expedition, demanded that a contingent of Canadians should be allowed him.
The existing marriage contracts furnish the only traces by which this Villeré can be followed. In 1695, Jacques Nepveu, son of Philippe Nepveu and Marie Denise Sevestre, was married in Montreal to Michelle Chauvin, daughter of Pierre Chauvin and Marie Antreuil-a dispensation being obtained on account of their consanguinity. Marie Catherine Nepveu, their daughter, was married in Montreal to Etienne Roy de Villeré, the first Louisiana Vil- leré. He became the father of Joseph Roy de Villeré.
Coming to our next stepping stone of date, in 1726, we find living on Bienville's land, extending from New Orleans up the Tchoupitoulas road, "Le Roy, his wife, and Bellair, his associate." Higher up the river, on the Tchoupitoulas tract in Bienville's concession, were situated the plantations of the three Chauvin brothers: DeLery, Beaulieu and Lafrénière.
In 1728 the marriage was celebrated, in the St. Louis Cathedral, of Catherine Nepveu, widow of the deceased Etienne Roy de Villeré, and Jacques Hubert Bellair, son of Ignace Hubert and Barbe Chauvin. Here also, a dispensation, on account of consanguinity, was necessary, both parties being children of sisters.
Joseph Roy Villeré, who was very young when his father died, was reared by his stepfather, Bellair, who sent him to France, where he and his cousin, Nicolas de Lafrénière, received their education. The daughter of Hubert Bellair and Catherine Nep- veu, Marie Marguerite Bellair, was married to her
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cousin, Nicolas de Lafrénière, who thus became the brother-in-law as well as cousin of Villeré. When Lafrénière was appointed Attorney-General, Villeré was named to the official post of Ecrivain de la Marine (maritime notary).
Beyond these facts nothing is known of the early life of Villeré. The great Canadian pioneers, leav- ing no private papers or documents behind them, have to be trailed, as it were, across a virgin forest of history, through which they glided like Indians. We come, however, into a clear space in the marriage contract between Villeré, described as an "Ecrivain de la Marine en cette ville," and Mademoiselle Mar- guerite de la Chaise, grandaughter of the Chevalier d'Arensbourg. The settlements were handsome and generous from both parties, as beseemed so notable a marriage. The dower of the bride amounted to forty thousand livres, the groom presenting her with six thousand. According to the good old Creole custom, the parents of the bride provided all the furniture, silver and linen of the future establish- ment, but with the stipulation, also a Creole custom, that the husband and wife should live with the bride's parents for the space of three whole consecu- tive years. The marriage was solemnized in the St. Louis Cathedral October 12th, 1759.
In 1763, Marie de la Chaise, sister of Marguerite, was married to François Chauvin de Léry-the first cousin of Villeré-thus binding the two great families together by another tie.
By 1763, Villeré had acquired a plantation on the Côte des Allemands and had become Captain of the German Militia, of which his wife's grandfather, the old Chevalier d'Arensbourg, was Commandant.
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At the end of the prescribed three years, the couple established themselves on their plantation. As described by Gayarré, it was not a large planta- tion, and the slaves upon it, of both sexes and all ages, did not exceed thirty-two. The house was the usual modest Louisiana plantation house of the period, one of the little unpainted wooden cottages, called at that time "Acadian houses," furnished with the Spartan simplicity which, Gayarre remarks, distinguished the Louisiana planters of that time. The furniture of the wife of the most distinguished citizen of Louisiana and granddaughter of the Sieur de la Chaise, consisted of a cypress bedstead, three feet wide by six feet in length, with a mattress of corn shucks and one of feathers on top; a bolster of corn shucks, and a coarse cotton counterpane, spun and woven probably by the lady herself; six chairs with straw bottoms; and candelabra with the common wax candles made in the country. The rest of the house was not more luxuriously furnished. Here, in 1761, was born to them their son, Jacques Philippe Roy de Villeré, who became the first Creole Governor of Louisiana and, in 1764, their daughter Louise, who married Simon Du Courneau Dasplatia, and here they ended their serene lives of wedded bliss.
In June, 1764, the news came of the cession of Louisiana by France to Spain. It was the hardy, independent Canadians who were the first to resent the transaction as an insult to Louisiana and to themselves. Always restive under the official arro- gance of the French officers, civil and military, they had with their own arrogance shouldered their way to the front in opinion and action, assuming a pro-
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prietary right of domination in the community founded by Canadians, and maintained by their independent strength and shrewdness, in striking contrast to the more dependent position of the French.
Lafrénière, the foremost citizen among the Cana- dians, had risen to the important position of Attor- ney-General, a position that he owed to his natural abilities and superior education. Backed by his strong family connections and by his ever-growing popularity, he, and not Aubry, was unquestionably the first representative of power in the Louisiana country. When he voiced a manly opposition to slavish submission to a decree that, by the stroke of a pen, passed them, their families, their children and their posterity away to another foreign country, Aubry's voice, in comparison, was a mere whimper- ing of childish fear.
When Lafrénière called a public meeting in New Orleans to protest against the cession of the province to Spain, Villeré attended it, seconding him enthusi- astically and whole-heartedly, and leading the applause of the Assembly for Lafrénière. When the Assembly was again called to support the resolution for the expulsion of Ulloa, Villeré, at the head of four hundred armed Germans, marched down the river, captured the Tchoupitoulas Gate, entered the city and proceeded to the place of meeting, where he again supported Lafrénierè's resolution. His serv- ices can be measured by the furious denunciations of the Spanish Attorney-General. Lafrenière, alone, has the glory of surpassing Villeré in the celebrated "presentment":
"With regard to Villerć," so it says, "he was a man of atrocious
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Type of Wealthy Creole House of the French Period, Dumaine and Dauphin Streets.
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disposition and remarkable for his pride and violence; he was undoubtedly one of the most conspicuous movers in the conspiracy, and signalized himself by deeds of the most striking character. He it was who stirred up to rebellion the Germans, of whom he was the commander. He it was who made them sign the petition request- ing the expulsion of Ulloa and of other Spaniards. He it was who led them to New Orleans to incorporate them with the other rebels and to strengthen the insurrection . . he was at their head and commanded them."
Upon the arrival of O'Reilly, Villeré at first thought of seeking safety with the English at their post a few miles above his plantation. But when he heard of the arrest of his friends and kinsmen as conspirators, receiving at the same time assurances from Aubry that O'Reilly was minded to act len- iently toward all engaged in the revolt, he decided to proceed instead to New Orleans and present him- self to the Spanish General.
He was arrested at the Tchoupitoulas Gate. There are various versions of what befell him. The Spanish official report states that the blasting of his hopes threw him into such a state of frenzy that he died, raving mad, on the day of his arrest .*
The cool and judicial Martin, who lived at a time when intimate evidence of the affair was obtainable, relates that after Villeré was arrested he was im- mediately conveyed to a Spanish frigate which lay in the river. On hearing of this, his wife hastened to the frigate in a skiff rowed by her slaves. As her boat approached the vessel, she was hailed and roughly ordered away. She made herself known and solicited admission to her husband, but she was answered that she could not see him. Villeré, in the place of his confinement, recognized his wife's
* Gayarré's "French Domination."
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voice in protestation, and insisted on being allowed to see her. On the refusal of this, a struggle ensued between him and his guards, in which he fell, pierced by their bayonets.
"His bloody shirt, thrown into the boat, announced to Madame Villeré that she had ceased to be a wife; and the rope was cut that held the skiff to the frigate." Gayarré thinks that the atrocity of the bloody shirt is not probable; but the story is piously preserved in popular tradition, and has been repeated by other historians as well authenticated as Martin.
Villeré's escape from the Spanish tribunal did not relieve him from the condemnation he had deserved, according to the Spanish Attorney-General. As the others had been condemned to death, in the same manner, his memory was condemned as infamous. The death of Villeré, however, in New Orleans, excited even more horror than the subsequent execu- tion of Lafrénière. A contemporary historian, Champigny, has written what must have been the popular feeling about him:
"None could be braver than Villeré . . . he had everything; valor, fortitude, freedom of mind. Violent and fiery, but frank, loyal, and firm in his resolutions; of good size, well made, his step firm, his look bold and martial, his devotion to his King was a frenzy rather than a form of patriotism. Had all the colo- nists thought as he did, I doubt whether a single Spaniard would ever have reached New Orleans."
The machinery of the Spanish Government was installed and set in motion. The great French Colonial tribunal, the Superior Council, was abol- ished, and in its place the Cabildo was inaugurated, with Alfarez, Alguazil, Alcalde and Regidores. Spanish was made the official language, not only in
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the State, but in the Church. Spanish priests were put in the Cathedral. The Ursuline Nuns were required to use Spanish breviaries and to teach Spanish. De jure and de facto, the province was made the province of Spain, as surely as it had formerly been the province of France.
After O'Reilly's departure, Don Luis de Unzaga became Governor. A great silence and quietude fell over the Creole population. The excitement of the revolution, like a delirium of fever, passed away in the gradual restoration of healthy activities-save in the hearts of those families where was cherished and enshrined the bloody grave of a father or hus- band. Time and the gentle conduct of the Spanish Government slowly effaced the traces of the past. The brother of Marguerite de la Chaise, and brother- in-law of Villeré, accepted a position in the Cabildo. In an incredibly short space of time we read of social amenities and cordialities between the Spaniards and the Creoles, with the usual happy result of inter- marriage. Unzaga, himself, set the example by marrying the daughter of St. Maxent, a wealthy Creole planter; other officers imitated him. Milhet's widow married Don Panis, Captain of the firing squadron that executed the patriots, but it is said that she never found this out, so well did he guard his secret. Creole names crept into official positions. A Louisiana regiment, to serve the Spanish King, was formed from the élite of the population. "It is an admitted fact," writes Gayarré, "that the Creoles of those days were remarkable for their great size, for the manliness of their bearing, for their peculiarly striking lineaments, which constituted nobility of face, and for the elegant symmetry of their forms."
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O'Reilly, struck by the distinction in appearance of the Creole officers, regretted his inability to take with him some of them to show the King as speci- ments of his new subjects.
Of all the documents that the historian longs for at this period, the one whose loss or non-existence is most deplored is one that might have recorded the life of Jacques Philippe Villeré, the son of Joseph Roy Villeré, the first Creole Governor of Louisiana. Imagination alone can supply it, and we turn fondly to the picture of the little boy of eight in the planta- tion home, anxiously watching his father in delibera- tion, hesitating between the advice of his wife not to trust the Spaniards but to escape to the English, and the advice of Governor Aubry, in a written letter counseling a manly confidence in O'Reilly's fine words and gracious demeanor. The child sees and hears the proud decision; the final determination to brave rather than to flee from the Spaniards; to take his stand beside his imprisoned friends. With beat- ing heart he looks on as his father makes ready to depart, and with his mother he receives his embrace.
Then in the quiet of the apprehensive household, comes the rumor-forerunner of the dire truth of the master's, the father's, the husband's arrest and capture! Then the little boy beholds his mother's consternation and frenzied haste to go at once to join her husband-to share his fate with him! No time now for farewells! She throws herself into the skiff, always waiting at the plantation landing on the river, and her slaves, the good rowers, bend their backs and strain their muscles under her urging for greater and greater speed-and so they disappear around the bend in the river. Anxious long hours of
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waiting follow for the little boy-she returns, clasping a reddened garment to her bosom! No cries! No words! They are not needed, and then the black doom hovering like a cloud over the city for days, crashes, falls! To the eyes on that plantation, it must have been a surprise that annihilation of the city itself did not ensure, that its buildings still could be seen standing!
The seizure of the plantation by the Spanish officials followed, and the flight of the widow and her two children (although this is not known) to a refuge with the grandfather, the old Chevalier d'Arens- bourg, the patriarch of the German Coast. The rightful inheritance of wealth was succeeded by an inheritance of poverty! But after this comes a tardy gesture of pity and sympathy from France. King Louis XVI sends for the son of Joseph Roy Villeré, to be educated at his court, at his expense. The little boy departs for France, and his career is now recorded for us.
Schooled and trained like the son of a nobleman, he became a page in the Court of the King. But, according to a story inherited by his great-grand- children, and still repeated, the life at court had its trials for the little Creole, fresh from a Louisiana plantation. His vernacular was the Creole patois of his negro nurse. When excited or angry he forgot his French and, in local parlance, talked "nigger," to the extreme delight and amusement of his fellow pages. His feet, as awkward as his tongue, could never learn to walk on waxed floors; he slipped and fell continually, an accident that never failed to excite further ridicule. One day when the laughter at his expense was at its height, the young Creole, with a
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vigorous expression or two of "nigger," jerked off his coat and, proceeding to show the little courtiers what he could do with his fists, gave each one a severe drubbing, and suffered no more from their ridicule.
At eighteen, Villeré was commissioned a Lieu- tenant in the French Army, the King presenting him with a sword. He joined a regiment serving in San Domingo. A few years later, on the death of his mother, he returned to his own people in Louisiana; and in 1784, in the parish church of St. Louis, he was married to Henriette Fazende, daughter of Gabriel Fazende, who came from France in 1723 to serve on the first Superior Council in the colony. They made their home on a sugar plantation below the city, facing the river and adjoining the estates of Delaronde, Chalmette and Bienvenu. The land of these plantations, gained, as we shall see, immor- tality in history as the battlefield upon which General Jackson defeated the British Army under Pakenham, in 1815.
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The home of Villeré was a wooden cottage similar to the one in which he was born, all the rooms being on one floor, with wide galleries in front and rear, surrounded by trees and shrubberies.
Five children were born to him: René Gabriel, 1785; Adele, 1792; Jules, 1794; Delphin, 1797; Caliste, 1799; Félix, 1802; Anatole, 1807.
There are no other happenings to record in the life of the sugar planter. His was the life that his father had dreamed of, on his plantation, with his wife and children. The passing of the seasons, the ripening of his crop of cane, the growth of the chil- dren from babyhood to childhood, filled the years, a scant number as history reckons it, when lo, by a
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mere grasp of the hand, Napoleon seized from Spain and returned to France the colony so carelessly thrown away in 1763-the country which thirty-four years before his father and uncle had given their lives to preserve to France!
Villeré could watch from the gallery of his plan- tation house the Colonial Préfêt, Laussat, going up the river on his way to take possession of the city, his barge followed by a long procession of boats, filled with Spanish officials and Creole citizens. He doubtless contributed by his presence to the bril- liant fêtes given in the city to celebrate the great event. But his name does not appear in any of the addresses to the French Préfet printed by the exuber- ant Creoles.
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