USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 11
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Laussat, nevertheless, was too well informed to ignore Villeré's importance in the community. He writes in his report to his government on the measures he took to annul the Spanish municipality and inaugurate a French one in its place, announcing that after selecting M. Boré for Mayor, he took care to join with him, in authority, some of the most respectable inhabitants of the city, known to have a capacity for business and a knowledge of the three languages spoken in the colony-French, Spanish, English.
"It was with a true feeling of pleasure," he writes, "that I put in authority M. Villeré, the son of the most interesting of O'Reilly's victims, himself much loved in the colony and held in repute for his probity, good conduct and merit. I thus discharged a second debt on the part of France."
In the more impressive ceremonies shortly after- wards, of the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, Villeré acted as Major on the staff of Laus-
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sat. He became, with the colony, American, and served his new flag with steady-going loyalty.
To the new American Governor's many anxieties, to the many causes of perturbation that were spread like thorns on the couch of that serious, conscien- tious official, to his patient complaints to President Jefferson and Secretary Monroe, Villeré furnished naught. When Louisiana from its state of probation was finally raised to the dignity of a State in the Union, he was chosen as a member of the convention called for the momentous duty of framing a consti- tution-the first constitution of Louisiana (1812). The record of his contributions to its proceedings is contained in the report of the Convention.
Three years later came the great, the crowning ordeal to the new State. In 1815, the English Army invaded Louisiana, counting upon finding a divided State through the ill feeling of the Creoles to the American Government, and an easy and sure con- quest of New Orleans. But the annals of military history do not contain a more striking example of miscalculation than the simple story of what en- sued. It is too well known to repeat except in connection with Villeré. Offering himself at once to Governor Claiborne, he was made Major-General of the first Regiment of Louisiana Militia, and given a commission at one of the outposts of defense of the city.
The English plan of campaign was to secure a position on the river, whence they could strike at New Orleans before it had time to prepare adequate means of defense. Through the treachery of some Spanish fishermen, they were led from the lake where their ships lay, through a bayou, to the
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Villeré plantation canal, in full view of the river. But the story should be told in its full completeness :
"At dawn the barges entered the bayou. The English sailors, standing to their oars, pushed their heavy loads through the tortuous shallow water. By nine o'clock the detachment was safe on shore. 'The place,' writes the English authority, an officer during the campaign, 'was as wild as it is possible to imagine. Gaze where we might, nothing could be seen except a huge marsh covered with tall reeds. The marsh became gradually less and less continuous, being intersected by wide spots of firm ground; the reeds gave place by degrees to wood, the wood to enclosed fields.'
"The troops landed, formed into columns, and pushing after the guides and engineers began their march. The advance was slow and toilsome enough to such novices in swamping. But cypresses, palmettoes, cane brakes, vines and mire were at last worried through; the sun began to brighten the ground and the front ranks, quickening their step, broke joyfully into an open field, near the expected canal. Beyond a distant orange grove, the buildings of the Villeré planta- tion could be seen. Advancing rapidly along the side of the canal, and under cover of the orange grove, a company gained the buildings, and, spreading out, surrounded them. The surprise was absolute. Major Gabriel Villeré and his brother, sitting on the front gallery of their residence, jumped from their chairs at the sight of the redcoats before them; their rush to the other side of the house only showed them that they were bagged!
"Secured in one of his own apartments, under guard of British soldiers, the young Creole officer found in his reflections the spur to a desperate attempt to save himself and his race from a suspicion of disloyalty to the United States, which, under the circumstances, might easily be directed against them by the Americans. Springing suddenly through his guards, and leaping from a window, he made a rush for the high fence that enclosed the yard, throwing down the soldiers in his way. He cleared the fence at a bound and ran across the open field that separated him from the forest. A shower of musket balls fell about him. 'Catch or kill him!' was shouted behind him. But the light, agile Creole, with the Creole hunter's training from infancy, was more than a match for his pursuers in such a race as that! He gained the woods, a swamp, while they were crossing the field, spreading out as they ran to shut him in. He sprang over the boggy earth into the swamp, until his feet, sinking
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deeper and deeper, clogged and stuck. The Britons were gaining; had reached the swamp! He could hear them panting and blowing, and the orders which made his capture inevitable. There was but one chance; he sprang up a cypress tree, and strove for the thick moss and branches overhead. Half way up, he heard a whimpering below. It was the voice of his dog, his favorite setter, whining, fawning and looking up to him with all the pathos of brute fidelity. There was no choice; it was her life or his, perhaps the surprise and capture of the city! Dropping to the earth, he seized a billet of wood, and aimed one blow between the setter's devoted eyes-with tears in his own eyes, he used to relate. To throw the body to one side, snatch some brush over it, spring to the tree again, was the work of an instant. As he drew the moss around his crouching figure, and stilled his hard breathing, the British floundered past. When they abandoned their useless search, he slid from his covert, pushed through the swamp to the next plantation, and carried the alarm at full speed to the city!
"The British troops moved up the road along the levee to the upper line of the plantation, and took their position in three columns. Headquarters were established in the Villeré residence, in the yard of which a small battery was thrown up. They were eight miles from the city and separated from it by fifteen plantations, large and small. By pushing forward, General Keane in two hours could have reached the city, and the Battle of New Orleans would have taken place then and there; and most probably a different decision would have been wrested from victory. The British officers strongly urged this bold line of action, but Keane, believing the statement that General Jackson had an army of about fifteen thousand in New Orleans, a force double his own, feared being cut off from the fleet. He, therefore, concluded to delay his advance until the other divisions came up. This was on the twenty-third day of December. 'Gentlemen,' said Jackson, to his aides and secretaries at half past one o'clock, when Villeré had finished his report, 'the British are below; we must fight them to-night.' "*
In the skirmishes that followed, and in the great battle of the eighth of January, Joseph Roy Villeré fought gallantly and brilliantly, when (so it is always repeated in the family tradition) he wielded the
* "New Orleans, The Place and the People." Grace King.
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sword presented to him by Louis XVI. One of the trophies picked up from the field of battle was given to Villeré-a small, very pretty fowling-piece, said to have belonged to General Lambert. All the boys of the Villeré family learned to shoot upon it, calling it familiarly and tenderly "le petit Lambert." It is still a cherished heirloom in the family, having sur- vived all the trials and tribulations possible to a gun during the Confederate War.
Pakenham, shot on the field of battle, was car- ried, dying or dead, to the Villeré house and there laid upon a bed in a front room. According to the slaves employed in the house, he was buried temporarily under a great pecan tree on the lawn; by the same token, the old slaves, more picturesquely than truth- fully, aver the nuts from that tree, for years after- wards, always showed a red streak as of blood.
The Villeré house exists no longer, having been destroyed by fire, but its substitute, a low cottage with gallery in front, preserves a likeness of the home in which Villeré lived and to which the body of the gallant Pakenham was borne from the field of battle. The field would still be in sight, and the river, as in 1815, but for what, after the memory of the battle, is the glory of the spot-an avenue of majestic oaks, veiled in their moss .* The venerable trees did not belong to the Villeré house, but to Versailles, the mansion of the Marquis de la Ronde, whose drive- way, leading from the river, they shaded and adorned. The good brick walls of the noble ruin, with ragged holes in their stucco, still strive to
* In the opinion of Mr. Charles S. Sargent, the supreme authority on trees in America, this avenue of oaks is probably "the finest in the United States" as he expressed it, in conversation with a friend.
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maintain their old air of patrician pride and strength. Time has despoiled the once elegant villa of its great front gallery, and its only roof is now the evergreen tops of tall trees, that have pushed their way up from the foundations to spread their covering leaves over it. The soft foliage of a thick undergrowth screens the desolation of the once lordly hall and drawing-room. A more beautiful, haunting place for memory cannot be imagined, when, under the low-lying sky, the long gray moss of the oaks swings, and vibrates in the breeze from the river. It is a spot of pious pilgrimage for historical devotees, a hallowed shrine frequented by strangers. Ladies of patriotic societies hold gatherings there on the anniversary of the battle and recapitulate to one another the traditions, the stories, the incidents that ladies love to collect from the past. A ceme- tery for soldiers, with its checkerboard of graves with painted headboards, fills the space (and hurts the eye), where once fought the heroic forces of England and America, and a tall, gaunt, bare monu- ment tries, in vain, to commemorate the glory of the victory.
Poetry and imagination, however, have raised their own monument-not from granite but from living memory, to Jackson behind his embankment with his Tennesseeans, his Kentuckians, his Baratarians, and his Creoles having against them Pakenham with his hitherto unconquerable regiments, flaunting on banners their famous names. After the battle, it is said, they made a broad red line of uniforms on the ground where they fell, whole platoons together! And it is always remembered and re- peated how, once the smoke of battle cleared away,
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the Angel of Peace came down to the ground where lay the dead with such blessing of good will as wiped all enmity from the heart of the living. For, as sings the oldest of poets of the most heroic of war- riors: "These men fought for the sake of a heart-con- suming contention. Yet did they part again after in friendship bonded together!"
(1) The Colonial Dames of Louisiana have exerted every possible effort of enthusiastic patriotism to obtain from Congress adequate provision for the preservation of this noble field, and its maintenance as a National Park. It is the fervent wish and prayer of all Louis- ianians that what they once preserved to the Union may, by the Union, be preserved to them, "To the glory of God and in memory of the glory achieved by men!"
(2) The Chalmette Tract, as it is called, is now the property of the Southern Railways System, which maintains there extensive docks, where ships arrive from all parts of the world, to discharge and receive cargoes.
To return from the fascinating divergencies of the history of Louisiana to the history of Villeré-after the Battle of New Orleans, he had one more adven- ture before him. In 1816, he was elected Governor of Louisiana to succeed Claiborne. Time has never awarded a more signal compensation for past in- juries. His term fell during the halcyon days when Louisiana enjoyed, as our history records it, her Golden Age; when wealth flowed in a tidal wave over State and City, disrupting old limits and barriers and obliterating old landmarks; when, in truth, prosperity had to be contended with as adversity once had been.
The record of it is to be found in the pages of Gayarré and Martin. Villeré proved himself to be the Governor for the period; wise, steadfast, exalted in his ideals. His first messages are those of a Louisianian carried away by the good fortune that
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had come to his State, through admission to the Union. "May we always by our conduct render our- selves deserving of such blessings," is the ending of one of them. His last message comprehends not only Louisiana, but America:
"Wherever we turn an enquiring eye, it is impossible among the civilized nations of the earth to discover one whose situation we can reasonably envy. The most powerful are certainly much less free; the most free are less tranquil; the most tranquil less independent; and the most independent, less sheltered from foreign influence, than the great American family."
Villeré died in 1830 and was buried in the St. Louis Cemetery, in a simple brick tomb that has almost sunk out of sight in the soft soil. His eight children survived him. The sons settled on planta- tions below the city on both sides of the river as near as possible to the paternal home; prettily named "Conseil" in memory of the good counsel that had never failed them there. It was the pleasant custom of the six brothers every morn- ing, before beginning their day's work, to meet under a great tree on one of the plantations over the river, where they exchanged greetings and talked over the news of the day.
René Gabriel was married to Eulalie de la Rondes; they had five children. She was the daughter of Pierre Denis de la Ronde. Jules, married to Perle Olivier, had three children. The daughter of Jules Villeré and Perle Olivier became the wife of General Gustave Toutant Beauregard, and was the mother of his three children: René, Henri and Laure. Del- phin, married to Delphine Bienvenu, had four chil- dren. Caliste, married to Isabel Duverger, had eight children. Hon. Paul Villeré, Vice President of the
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Hibernia Bank, is the grandson of Caliste Villeré and Isabel Duverger. St. Denis de Blanc Villeré, a noted citizen and the bearer of two famous names, is also the grandson of Caliste Villeré. His father was the well-known merchant, Ernest Villeré; his mother, Angèle Bernard. Felix married Eloise Verret and had six children. Anatole, married to Félicité Elmina Forstal, had six children. Adèle married Hugues de la Vergne; they had six children. Léo- cadie married, first, Cyril Fazende; second, Paul Lanusse.
Governor Villeré's eldest son, Major Réné Gabriel Villeré, died in 1855 on his plantation in the Parish of St. Bernard, in the same house, so it was stated, in which he had been taken prisoner by the British in 1815. To quote a mortuary notice which, in his case, was a true testimonial, he was "a noble repre- sentative of the virtues and high qualities of the ancient population." He was buried with military honors in the old St. Louis Cemetery.
With the sole exception of the Delery family, the descendants of the Chauvin brothers, the Villerés count more descendants in active business life in the city than any of the other "foundation families," as they may be called. Their name spreads like a fruitful vine over all the genealogical records of the old prominent Creole families .*
* The records of the Villeré family were kindly furnished the author by Madame Fernand Claiborne, herself a representative of the direct line of Joseph Roy Villeré. Her father was Alcée Villeré, her mother Delphine Fleitas, daughter of Paulin Fleitas and Celes- tine Jumonville de Villiers. She is married to Fernand Claiborne, Esq., grandson of Governor Claiborne. Their children are: Made- moiselle Clarisse Claiborne, and Lieutenant Omer Claiborne, in service in France (A. E. F.).
CHAPTER VIII
D'ARENSBOURG
C HARLES FREDERICK D'ARENSBOURG arrived in Louisiana, landing at Biloxi in 1721, according to our best and indeed only authority about him .* He was a former Swedish officer from the town of Arensbourg on the Island of Oesel in the Bay of Riga which, with the whole province of Livonia, belonged to Sweden up to the year 1721, the date of Charles Frederick's emigration to Louisiana. As thirty Swedish officers are said to have accompanied him, as Deiler states, it may be assumed that as the cession of Livonia to Russia occurred in 1721, they all, having fought on the side of Sweden against Russia, preferred exile to Russifi- cation.
According to tradition among his descendants, d'Arensbourg fought at the Battle of Paltava, on the staff of Charles XII (1709), and fought so gallantly that the Swedish King presented him with his sword. On the surrender of the Swedes, the Russian General gallantly refused to take this sword from the young officer and he brought it out with him to Louisiana.
D'Arensbourg came to his new country with a commission, issued in Paris by the "Compagnie des Indes," shortly after the failure of the Mississippi scheme and Law's flight. He was given command of
* J. Hanno Deiler. "The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana."
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a large band of German settlers, awaiting embarka- tion in Havre for the Law concession on the Arkansas River. They sailed on the "Portefaix" and arrived in October at Biloxi, bringing with them the news of Law's failure, which caused great consternation among the new colonists.
The news traveled up to the Arkansas River, where a band of Germans were already settled; they, abandoning their lands and crops, took to their boats in a panic, and hastened to Biloxi, to demand im- mediate passage back to their fatherland. Stopping on the way at New Orleans, where Bienville was at work on his proposed city, he found means to pacify them and induce them to remain in the colony and join the fresh arrivals of their countrymen, under d'Arensbourg; changing the location of their settle- ment to the much more promising one of the rich alluvial lands on the banks of the Mississippi, about twenty miles above New Orleans (comprised to-day in the parishes of St. John Baptist and St. Charles).
It seems impossible to resist the temptation to give Hanno Deiler's moving description of what fol- lowed:
"No pen can describe, nor human fancy imagine, the hardships which the German pioneers of Louisiana suffered even after they had survived the perils of the sea and epidemics and starvation on the sands of Biloxi. No wonder that so many perished. Had they been of a less hardy race, not one of these families would have survived.
"It should be remembered that the land assigned to them was virgin forest in the heavy alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi, with their tremendous germinating powers awakened by a semi-tropical sun. Giant oaks with wide spreading arms and gray mossy beards stood there as if from eternity, and defied the axe of man. Between them arose towering pines with thick undergrowth, bushes and shrubs and an impenetrable twist of running, spinning, and climbing
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vines under whose protection lurked a hell of hostile animals and savage men. Leopards, bears, panthers, wild cats, snakes and alli- gators; and their terrible allies, a scorching sun, the miasma rising from the disturbed virgin soil, and the floods of a mighty river-all these combined to destroy the work of man and man himself. There were no levees then, no protecting dams, and only too often when the spring floods came, caused by the simultaneous melting of the snow in the vast region of the upper course of the Mississippi and its tributaries, the colonists were driven to climb upon the roofs of their houses and up into trees, and hundreds of miles of fertile land were inundated. . . . There is in Louisiana a popular saying -heard from Creoles when they speak of work uncommonly hard: 'It takes German people to do that.' "
"Nevertheless, in spite of all the hardships which the pioneers had to endure and the difficulties to be encountered, German energy, industry and perseverance conquered all; and although hundreds perished, the survivors wrested from the soil not only a bare living but in the course of time a high degree of prosperity also. Early travellers who came down the Mississippi, describe the neat appearance of their little white houses which stood in endless num- bers on both banks of the Mississippi, and they also tell how these thrifty Germans used to row down to New Orleans in their boats, with an abundance of their produce; vegetables, corn, rice, and, later, also indigo, to sell their goods on Sunday mornings in front of the Cathedral; and how at times when non-producing New Orleans in vain waited for provision ships from France or San Domingo, these German peasants more than once saved the city from heavy famine."*
Charles Gayarré relates that one of the pleasures of his childhood was to stand on the levee in front of his grandfather's plantation above the city and watch of a Saturday afternoon the long procession of skiffs, from the Côte des Allemands, "heavily laden with vegetables, fruit, poultry and eggs, pass by on their way to New Orleans, which they sup- plied with farm produce."
* The "Côte des Allemands" was dubbed, in short," La Côte d'Or" of Louisiana.
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Laussat, in an official letter to the Minister of the Interior, Chaptal, June, 1803, adds this tribute of praise :
"What is called the 'German Coast' is the most industrious, the most populous, the most at ease, the most upright, the most respected part of the inhabitants of this colony."
D'Arensbourg obtained a concession among his German settlers, built his home and reared his family among them, sharing their joys and hard- ships. For forty years he served them as judge and commandant, taking creditable part in all the mili- tary activities of the colony, particularly in the defensive measures against the Indians after the Natchez massacre. He took a prominent stand against the giving over of the province by France to Spain. So competent an authority as Deiler says that "the revolution of 1768 against Ulloa began on the German Coast, and it was d'Arens- bourg's word and his influence that enabled Vil- leré to march with four hundred Germans upon New Orleans and take the Tchoupitoulas Gate." After this, joined by the Acadians under Noyan and the Tchoupitoulas militia under de Léry, they marched to the Place d'Armes to support the demand of Lafrénière to give Ulloa three days' time to leave Louisiana.
Among the six revolutionists condemned to death by O'Reilly, two were married to granddaughters of d'Arensbourg. Tradition has it that O'Reilly in- tended also to have d'Arensbourg executed, but he was saved through the intercession of For- stall, under whose uncle O'Reilly had served in the Hibernian regiment in Spain.
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D'Arensbourg was made a Chevalier of St. Louis in 1763. He died in 1779, a patriarch of eighty-four, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and the children and grandchildren of the German settlers that he had led to Louisiana when he was a young man of thirty-one.
He married, in the colony, Catherine Mextrine, according to Hanno Deiler, a daughter of one of the German settlers. The eldest son married Françoise de la Vergne; the second, Elizabeth Duclos de Selles. Pélagie married Jacques de la Chaise, son of the King's Commissary. A third daughter, whose first name is unknown, became Madame de "Bois Clair."
Of the Swedish officers who accompanied d'Arens- bourg no trace remains in Louisiana history. In the course of centuries the Germans have been absorbed in the Creole population (as were the descendants of d'Arensbourg) and can only be traced in Louisiana records by the curious philologist who, like Hanno Deiler, cares to follow the windings and transmuta- tions of these names, as they travel upward to bloom on the highest branches of local genealogical trees, attached to representatives of most prominent and important governmental and social personalities.
Of the fate of the famous Charles XII sword, the following story is told. The Chevalier was a model of virtuous dignity and of the most perfect moral rectitude, giving an example to his eldest son which was not followed. Before his father's death, the bearer of his name and title asked for the sword, claiming it as his by right. The stern old Swede took it, and, standing up, broke it across his knee, handing the fragments to his son with the words: "You are not worthy to wear it!"
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