USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 15
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-la Tour d'Auvergne, surnamed by Napoleon "the first Grenadier of France." One of the proudest traditions of the family to-day, however, is the proof they made under the Revolution, of their loyalty to their Church and their King-giving up their lives unflinchingly to the guillotine.
Jean François Huchet, Sieur de Kernion, the first of the name known in Louisiana, was born in Quimper in 1700; he was the only son of Pierre Guillaume Huchet and his second wife, Thomase Rénée Guesdan de Keravel. After a youth spent in Quimper, he embarked in 1720 for Louisiana as an officer on the vessel, "La Loire," which was bringing settlers to the concession of "Ste. Reine," one of the largest grants of Louisiana land made by the Company, situated on the Mississippi above Baton Rouge.
Louisiana was then in its period of greatest infla- tion under John Law, and the "Mississippi Bubble" was glittering in the horizon of French speculators. After an unsuccessful trial of Périer as Governor, Bienville had been put in charge of the colony once more, and was engaged in the effort to end the Natchez War on terms the least disastrous to France. Huchet de Kernion does not figure in the list of his officers, either civil or military. The first mention of his name occurs in 1729; he is mentioned in the census as living with M. Petit de Levillier, officer of the company, on the plantation of "Petit Coulange " on the left bank of the river, going up.
According to the family tradition he brought with him from France the voluminous pages of the Kernion record existing to-day, comprising patents of nobility, titles, baptismal and marriage records and
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settlements reaching back fourteen generations to 1240, even to the divine nimbus surrounding the name of St. Louis. His marriage in 1736 in New Orleans, with Jeanne Antoinette Mirbaize de Ville- mont, Widow Rivard, is the first important item con- cerning him in the Louisiana records of the family.
Jeanne Antoinette Mirbaize de Villemont was the daughter of Henri Martin Mirbaize (or Mirbois), Sieur de Villemont, a native of Poictiers, and of Antoinette Fourier. The Sieur de Villemont, a lieutenant in the French Army, came to Louisiana on the ship "Deux Freres," in 1719, accompanied by his wife, Antoinette Fourier, and his two daughters, Jeanne Antoinette and Marie Anne, and bringing twelve laborers for his concession, which was located on the Ouchita River, one hundred and twenty leagues from the capital.
Gayarré recounts a stirring episode in 1722 of which Lieutenant Villemont was the hero. Stationed at Fort Toulouse, in the Alabama district, in com- mand of twenty-six soldiers, his men were rendered desperate by their hunger in a period of famine and revolted, killed their captain and started to escape to the English, in the Carolinas. Villemont, having escaped from them to the Indians, succeeded in raising a party to join him in pursuing the deserters, who were recaptured after a bloody combat.
Marie Anne de Villemont married Sieur François de Caue. Jeanne Antoinette married, in 1730, Antoine Rivard, son of Antoine Rivard, one of the original settlers in Louisiana, whose plantation is shown on the earliest maps of New Orleans on the Bayou or "Ruisseau" St. Jean. The Rivard act of marriage is one of the earliest records in the Cathedral
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register. Two daughters were born: Jeanne Antoinette and Marie Françoise. The latter died unmarried; the former married Sieur Christophe de Glapion, officer in the French Army, son of Charles de Glapion, Seigneur de Mesnilaganchie in Nor- mandy, an illustrious family with titles of nobility dating back to 1508. The marriage was celebrated in 1757, on the old Rivard plantation on Bayou St. Jean, which was then known as the plantation of Huchet de Kernion.
The wealth of the Rivards was in its day a proverb in Colonial New Orleans, and it is still repeated currently among the descendants of the old families. The marriage of the Widow Rivard with Huchet de Kernion must have been considered an event of great social importance in the entire city. The names of the witnesses inspire respect two centuries afterwards. Bienville, Chevalier de St. Louis, Governor of Louisiana; de Noyan, his nephew, Chevalier de St. Louis and his wife; Fleuriau, Attorney-General; Salmon, Commissary and In- tendant; Renaud d'Hauterive; Madame Veuve Déléry; Françoise de Villemont, sister of the bride.
Only one child was born of this union, Jean Réné Huchet de Kernion.
Bienville having retired to France, and the Company of the West having retroceded Louisiana to the French Government, Vaudreuil was appointed Governor, giving to Louisiana an administration con- sidered still the most brilliant in her annals. His wife, the handsome and elegant Marquise de Vaudreuil, is entitled to share his honors in history. She may be said to have created society in New Orleans, gathering about her the beautiful women
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of the city (among them we may imagine the beau- tiful and rich Madame Rivard) in her little "govern- ment court," training and polishing them and con- verting them to the adoption of an etiquette so perfect in its rulings that it reigned triumphantly during the Spanish and American administrations, and remained in force two centuries later, as New Orleans grandmothers of to-day love to recall.
The Marquise, who adored festivities, held recep- tions where she entertained with music and theatricals. The first drama ever composed in Louisiana, an Indian story, was written for her by a brilliant young French officer of her court, LeBlanc de Villeneuve; and it was acted before her in her drawing-room. The portrait of the author is still preserved as an Indian, the hero of the play. During her reign the ladies of New Orleans advanced very far from colonial simplicity of manners and dress, and indeed went so far in sophistication as to order their carriages from France.
In 1735, Vaudreuil was appointed Governor of Canada, and Louis Billouart de Kerlerec was named to succeed him in Louisiana. A Breton, born in Quimper, and therefore a fellow countryman and townsman of Kernion, Kerlerec found in him a friend during the hard trials of the most uneasy administration known in colonial Louisiana. To the constant menace of Indian troubles and British aggression was added the keen opposition of a private enemy-his Commissary, Rochemore, who, with vindictive persistence, not only thwarted his superior at every turn, but formed with the citizens a cabal against him, and kept up a constant current of charges against him to the Minister in France.
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The doughty Breton, who had begun life at fourteen on the sea, fought as sturdily and obsti- nately against his domestic enemies as against Indian and English intrigues. He fought even against the poisonous venom of the libels of Madame de Rochemore, whom he calls "the worst woman the earth has ever borne, the most perfect emblem of avarice"! He, nevertheless, was recalled in 1763, and was imprisoned in the Bastille until he could disprove the charges against him. Huchet de Kernion was active in Kerlerec's behalf, and he signed, if he did not write, the strong protest sent to France against Rochemore.
On recommendation, Kernion was promoted in 1760 from Associate to Titular or Active Councillor, in the Superior Council, thereby enabling him to take an important part in the great event so soon to follow in Louisiana. This was the transfer of Louisiana by France to Spain. The survivors among the men who had followed Iberville and Bienville to the discovery of Louisiana had entered upon the tranquil enjoyment of the well-earned rest and prosperity of their old age. Their sons were in the full strength of a hardy middle age, when this political chasm opened at their feet.
The story need not be repeated except as to the rôle played by Huchet de Kernion. Ulloa had arrived and was assuming the reins of government despite the public protest of a first indignation meet- ing of Louisianians. A larger meeting was then called and a still stronger protest, signed by more than five hundred of the leading citizens, was pre- sented to the Superior Council, asking the expulsion of Ulloa from the colony. This being read, it was,
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on motion of Lafrénière, referred to the Councillors, Huchet de Kernion and Petit de Launay, to be examined by them and reported upon. The next day, the Council raised to its full strength by appointees to fill the place of absentees, met to hear the report. Upon due consideration of it, Kernion and de Launay wrote a strong endorsement of the petition, which the Council voted unanimously to sustain; and in consequence the Spanish Governor was expelled from the colony.
The inevitable result followed. O'Reilly was sent by Spain with a military force to "pacify the colo- nists," as it was termed. This was done by executing and banishing the leaders of the revolt. Huchet de Kernion who, besides his official act, had attended all the public meetings and put his name to all the peti- tions against Spanish rule and the justicative Memorial of the expulsion of Ulloa to the govern- ment in France was, strange to say, never called to account by the Spanish authorities with the other patriots, nor was his name mentioned once as a "rebel" by Père Antoine, the priest.
But he did not long survive the bloody death of his friends and relatives. Bent with age and sorrow, he died before a year had passed, leaving one son, Réné Huchet de Kernion, who was born in 1739 on the plantation on the Bayou St. Jean. Like his father, he was an officer in the colonial troops, and was retired with the other French officers by order of the King when the colony passed over to Spain.
In 1767, two years before the Spanish Domination, he married "the high and well-born" Louise Con- stance Chauvin de Lery des Islets, daughter of Antoine Chauvin de Lery des Islets and of Charlotte
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Faucoh du Manoir, thus entering the great family of the Chevalier d'Arensbourg and becoming a cousin of the famous patriot Lafrénière and of Joseph Roy de Villeré. His witnesses present us to the most distinguished citizens of the city at the time: the Chevalier de Glapion; Trudeau, Captain of Infantry; de Villemont de Kernion, and all the Chauvins; Boisclair; des Islets; de Lery; Hubert Bellair; de Mazan; Dreux.
With other French officers and children of Louisiana patriots, Huchet de Kernion became in time reconciled to the Spanish rule. During the administration of the greatest Spaniard who ever came to the colony, Galvez, himself the husband of a Creole lady, and through her connected with many distinguished Creole families, he was appointed by the Spanish King Alcalde Ordinaire, the first office in the Cabildo. It was a position of im- portance, dignity and distinction, invested with the function of Judge and as such ranking next to the Governor of the province.
It is noticeable that in official documents he, like his father and grandfather, adhered to the old Breton custom of using the barred K- in names beginning with Ker; signing himself Knion Kernion.
He married a second time; uniting himself to Marie Joseph Modeste du Verges de St. Sauveur, daughter of Bernard du Verges de St. Sauveur, of a distinguished family of Bearn who came to New Orleans in the early days of her history, becoming Chief Engineer of the province. He showed himself to be an able officer under Bienville during the Natchez War, when he surveyed a road for the
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passage of French troops into the Chickasaw country. He also made an important report to the government on the mouth of the river, in 1745.
Pierre, his son by his first marriage, married Marie Geneviéve Claire Jumonville de Villier, the daughter of a retired Spanish officer. From this union descend the Kernion family of to-day. Celes- tine, his eldest daughter, became the first wife of Charles LeBreton des Chapelles, the grandson of Etienne de Boré. Her sister, Marie Rosilde, became LeBreton's second wife.
Chrispin Charles LaBedoyère Huchet de Kernion, born in 1796, became a planter and was living on the old place on Bayou St. Jean, when in 1815 the British Army seemed about to overwhelm New Orleans. He shouldered his musket and walked out to the field of Chalmette. It is related of him that, at the time, he was physically so weak he could not carry his heavy "muzzle-loader" all the way, and that his older and stronger brother had to carry it for him.
He married in 1822 Euphémie Arnill Lambert, the daughter of Pierre Joseph Lambert and Marie Constance Wiltz. The miniature of the two, pre- served in the family archives, represents faces of youth, beauty and intelligence. Euphémie is es- pecially distinguished by the pensive, mysterious expression of her beautiful eyes. At her death, among her private papers was found the pretty legacy of a large portfolio of music, songs and verses, copied in her exquisite handwriting, collected as she went along from the society that she loved and that loved such things-a private labor of love, the patient result of long hours of rapt application and
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withdrawal from the busy world of plantation life and the domestic cares of a family of nine children.
Her youngest son, Anatole LaBedoyère Huchet de Kernion, married Fannie Evelina Campbell (ac- cording to the record a member of the Argyle family), adopted daughter of Samuel J. Peters, Jr., whose wife, Aspasie de la Villebeuvre, was her second cousin. He lived to add one more episode to the history of his ancient family, for he served from the beginning to the end of the Civil War, in the Twenty-third Louisiana Regiment, and was one of the heroic soldiers who gained glory for their cause in the terrible siege of Vicksburg.
On his return, he found that the lot of the van- quished severed him from the past wealth of his family, but not from its proud fortitude and its capacity for business. He "did not stoop or lie in wait for wealth or honors, or for worldly state," as many did in the sad period of demoralization that followed the Civil War, but, courageously facing the doom he had incurred, he sold his ancestral planta- tion and heroically engaged in a mercantile pursuit, serving faithfully for twenty years in the ranks of the employees of the old Canal Bank.
George Charles Huchet de Kernion, the archivist, the kind contributor of these notes, is his son.
CHAPTER XII
DE LIVAUDAIS
E SNOULD DE LIVAUDAIS, Esnould Beaumont de Livaudais, Esnould Dugué de Livaudais .*
The sturdy family tree of the Livaudais was rooted in the strong soil of Brittany. Olivier Esnould of Paramé, 1510, is the first name it bears. Olivier Esnould, 1534; and François Esnould, 1559, continue the record. With Briand Esnould, 1604, the family life begins in St. Malo, where it remains until 1695.
Jacques Esnould de Livaudais, Chevalier of St. Louis, was the first of the family in New Orleans. He was the son of Jacques Esnould de Livaudais of St. Malo, who married Marie Guillette le Jaloux, 1695; therefore he had the good fortune of being born during the glorious period of St. Malo's history. As a child he heard the ringing of the city bells and firing of cannon in honor of the great victories of the mighty sea captains against the English and Dutch vessels. He must have seen the immortal "sea wolf," Duguay Trouin himself, bring-
ing into port his prizes. His own uncle, Lavigne Voisin, was one of the celebrated corsairs of the day. A lad of such a city, such a family and such a period could not prove disobedient to the heroic spirit about him and within him.
Following the example of a brother, he embarked
* Genealogy of the Livaudais family arranged from authentic records, by Alfred Fortuné Livaudais. New Orleans.
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with Lavigne Voisin to make his apprenticeship as a seaman. The good termination of his apprentice- ship opened his way to a position on a ship of the Company of the Indies. The proof he gave of courage, capacity and good seamanship recom- mended him to the directors of the Company, and, in 1720, before he was twenty-five, he was made First Lieutenant on the vessel "La Découverte," with a salary of two hundred livres a month and a "gratification" of two thousand livres on his return, a brilliant testimonial in that day of his worth to his employers. He continued his East India voyages for twelve years to such complete satisfaction of the directors that they transferred him to an important post in Louisiana. He was made Pilot of the Port of New Orleans.
The explanation is hardly needed that, after the founding of the city upon the Mississippi, the problem that confronted its founders was not its maintenance as a city but as a port. A city upon the banks of a river not navigable to large vessels would have been indeed a disastrous speculation for them. Bienville, as we know, had gained the directors of the Law Company to his project of found- ing a city that, he affirmed, should be a dominating port on the Gulf of Mexico for France, as well as an outlet for the trade of all the interior of the continent. He had maintained an obstinate contention with the Council Board at Biloxi to prove the correctness of his calculations; the Council Board maintaining as obstinate a fight in favor of Mobile or Biloxi as the capital port. It was not until the city itself was laid off and the settlement of it begun that the Royal Engineer, de la Tour, practically ended the discussion
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by coming over from the opposition to the side of Bienville and in proof of the feasibility of the latter's assertion sailed through the mouth of the river himself on the loaded vessel "Aventurier," accom- panied by his assistant, de Pauger.
The letters of Bienville to the directors in France, the reports of de la Tour and de Pauger, and the instructions of the directors to their engineers, give in detail the interesting history of their strenuous efforts to solve the stupendous problem before them -the problem that was to be the mythical dragon of the nineteenth century to river commissions and engineers of the United States. The changing channel, the shifting sand bars, the mud lumps, and drift wood held in constant menace over the city for a century and a half the doom prophesied by its enemies at the Council Board at Biloxi.
De Pauger, with a masterly map of the Passes and the table of his continuous soundings of the channel, was the first one to approach the problem with systematic thoroughness; but he died, leaving only suggestions of a remedy behind him. Among them, it is interesting to note a foreshadowing of Ead's scheme-the closing of two of the Passes, and the deepening of the third by means of jetties, to be made of sunken vessels and driftwood .* In the time of Bienville and succeeding French Gover- nors, a pilot was stationed at the Balize, whose duty it was to keep a record from day to day of the depth changes in the Passes and of the shifting of the channel, and to pilot the vessels arriving from France or elsewhere.
In 1734, Bienville, who had succeeded Périer * "Voyages et Découvertes." Pierre Margey. Vol. VI.
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as Governor of Louisiana, wrote to the Minister in France:
"We have had the honor, M. Salmon (the Commissary) and I, to write to you in favor of M. de Livaudais, sent by the King of Louisiana as pilot. He should be made Captain of the Port."
In the letter to which Bienville alludes, he writes that he "par- ticularly recommends M. de Livaudais as an officer to be retained."
A marginal note says, "he is a nephew of Lavigne Voisin, a famous corsair of St. Malo."
Following this, Livaudais was made "Captain of the Port," a title that should be rendered "Captain or Surveyor of the Ports," for it comprehended the charge of all the ports of Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast.
In a voluminous report on the river written in 1738, Bienville and Salmon, his commissary, give an account of the delay, danger and difficulty met by vessels entering the river. He adds:
"The Sieur de Livaudais, who has been a navigator for thirty years, has been up to the present time of the greatest service in getting vessels through the Passes, and has by his prudence saved them often from accidents. After having served on the corsairs of St. Malo, he was transferred to the Company of the Indies. He de- serves, and it would be proper to accord him, a commission."
In 1760, Kerlerec, in pressing need for powder, sent Livaudais on the armed transport, "The Opal," to Vera Cruz for a supply. He left in March and returned in September with the powder, having encountered four British vessels, one of sixty guns. In the chase that ensued, "The Opal" managed to keep her distance ahead, until she arrived in sight of the Balize, where Livaudais, determined not to lose his powder, took the daring risk of bringing his vessel through the Passes at night, although the water was low at the time.
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In 1733 Livaudais married, in New Orleans, Marie Geneviève de la Source, "daughter of an honorable family of Mobile." From this marriage issue the many members of the Louisiana family of the Livaudais that fill the branches of their great genealogical tree. There is no explanation given of the subsequent division of the family name into Beaumont and Dugué de Livaudais other than the suggestion that it came or was assumed from a land title .*
There is no Beaumont recorded among the colonial French officers in Louisiana, and the only Dugué was Jean Sidrac Dugué, of Canadian origin, who styled himself Boisbrillant. He was a brilliant officer under Bienville's first settlement at Mobile. It is constantly stated that he was a cousin of Bien- ville, although there does not appear to be any connection with the Lemoyne family. According to tradition the first Dugué de Livaudais had seventeen children, who married early into the prominent colonial families and left behind them descendants numerous enough to clothe the branches of the family tree with leaves as close set as a live oak in spring. The record, however, limits its list to the eldest sons: François Esnould de Livaudais, born in 1736, who married Pélagie de Vaugine; and Joseph Esnould Dugué de Livaudais, who married Jeanne Fleurian de Morville.
The eldest son of François de Livaudais and Pélagie de Vaugine was François Esnould de Livaudais, who married Charlotte des Islets de-
* In 1728, the Dugués, "famous for their wealth," were estab- lished on Bayou St. Jean. "The Louisiana Historical Quarterly. Vol. I, No. 3.
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Lery. He appears to be the Livaudais who shared with Marigny the honor of being the largest land- owner and wealthiest citizen of New Orleans of his time, and of entertaining the Royal Princes of France on their visit to the city, and, with Marigny, making a generous loan of money to them, although Marigny alone is credited with this.
His son, bearing the same name as himself, married the great heiress of the city, Céleste de Marigny, daughter of Philippe de Marigny, from whom she inherited what would to-day be estimated as fabulous wealth in property situated in the upper portion of New Orleans, which, joined to what her husband already possessed, made them the owners of all the "American" quarter, or uptown portion of the city, just as the Marignys remained the owners of the lower, or "Creole" quarter. The American quarter was then an undeveloped tract of land some of whose great oak trees may still be seen, the aborigines of the primeval forest, in isolated groups standing here and there, in proud defiance of property lines and street demarkations.
In recent years a lawsuit has brought the history of a part of the property of Céleste de Marigny de Livaudais to mind. Pierre Marigny held it under a concession from the French Government. It passed from Céleste de Marigny de Livaudais to her heir, Jacques Enould de Livaudais. It was one of his heirs who conceived the idea of building a military academy, or Prytaneum, on two squares of it, bounded by St. Charles and Prytania, Melpomene and Euterpe Streets. The academy project was abandoned in course of time; the name of the street, Prytania, alone commemorating it.
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The heirs sold the land more than a quarter of a century ago. Celeste, the widow of François de Livaudais, with what remained of her magnificent fortune, retired to Paris where, as the Marquise de Livaudais, she lived until the middle of the eighteenth century, receiving to the last with open arms her friends and relatives from New Orleans, and entertaining them in the style of generous hospitality to which, as a Marigny, a de Livaudais, and a New Orleans woman, she felt herself, as it were, commanded.
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