USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30
Antoinette, who married Jean Enoul de Beaumont de Livaudais; François Guy, who married Cécile de Lassudrie, daughter of Jacques de Lassudrie and of Marguerite de Toucheboeuf; Lucie; Jeanne; Elizabeth, married to Antoine Doriocourt; Guy (Joseph), married first to Marie Anne Arnoult, second, to Louise Duralde (sister of the wife of Governor Claiborne); Marie Emilie, married to Jean Baptiste Bermudez; Catalina; Chevalier Jean Baptiste, unmarried.
The children of Guy Joseph Soniat du Fossat and Marie Anne Aenoult, were: Chevalier Guy Joseph, who died in France; Joseph; Pierre Antoine; Jean Ursin, who married Célestine Allain; François Guy.
There were nine children of Guy Joseph and Louise Duralde (the sister of Clarisse Duralde, wife of Governor Claiborne): Edmond; Charlotte Adine; Martin Valmont; Charles Meloncy; Valérie; Gustave; Célestine; Joseph Théophile; and Charles Theodore, married to Marie Aménaide Labranche, daughter of Lucien Labranche and Mathilde Fortier.
The children of Charles Théodore and Amélie Labranche were: Lucien; Charles Théodore; Louise, who married Amédée Fortier; Gustave Valérien, married to Louise Marie Sarpy; Meloncy Charles, married to Louise Anne Exilée Fortier-named for the sad period in which she was born, after the Civil War, when Louisiana seemed indeed an exile from her once proud state.
This brings the line to the present generation, and notably to Mr. Charles T. Soniat, to whom we are indebted for the finding and publishing of the historic memoir of his great-grandfather. He was born on the plantation home of his father-the Tchoupi-
232
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
toulas plantation in Jefferson Parish, obtained from Bernard Marigny in 1805. Barely thirteen years of age when the Civil War broke out he, like all the spirited youths in Louisiana, was fired with the passion of arms. To thwart his determination to join the Southern army, in which his brother Lucien had already enlisted, his father, on the fall of New Orleans to the Federal forces, sent him to France. Until the end of the war, he remained with his uncle Valmont Soniat du Fossat in Paris, where he completed his education.
On his return to New Orleans, he studied law in the office of his relative, Edmond Bermudez, after- wards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Upon graduation, finding the practice of law did not agree with his tastes, he obtained the commission of Notary Public. To the duties of this office he devoted the energies of his life with so much success that the title of "Perfect Notary" was given him. The good old name that he bore, the prestige of family and race, his courtesy of bearing and polished manners, constituted him in the eyes of society the perfect type of a New Orleans gentleman, as it is perhaps fatuously called; and he became to the beaux and belles of his day the perfect man of the world, as he became to the Bar the perfect notary.
But it is not by such qualifications that the great grandson of the first historian of Louisiana is to be remembered. Far otherwise. He became, for useful services to his State and people, as the prophet says, "a nail in a sure place." Always a student of Louisiana history, he became an active and zealous member of the Louisiana Historical Society, con-
1
---
1 i
-
233
SONIAT DU FOSSAT
tributing to its publications papers written with scholarly preparation upon subjects that he gathered from a rich field all his own-that of notarial records.
In 1908, he published a transcript of a volume of original documents concerning the history of Louisiana, 1679-1769-the manuscript* being repro- duced with all possible fidelity, a storehouse of reference whose value is obvious and above praise. He also donated to the Louisiana Historical Societyt the chronological statement of papers and docu- ments concerning the history of Louisiana, obtained by him from the National Historical Archives of Madrid, accompanied by a letter from Don Miguel Gomez del Campillo, who had prepared the state- ment.
"His Titles to the Jesuit plantation" is in truth, a priceless document of historical and legal authority upon an intricate question-that of the land grants of the French Government to the first settlers around New Orleans. As it need hardly be repeated, Bien- ville and his followers (not inaptly called "Land Grabbers") obtained from their government, well in advance of the foundation of New Orleans, con- cessions covering all the land in the vicinity of the site already selected for the future city. Both banks of the Mississippi were sliced into plantations, so to speak, from the river back to the Gulf. These plantations, in course of time, were sold or divided by inheritance or marriage settlements, and after- wards reunited by purchase.
* Vol. I. Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society. He makes acknowledgment to Mr. William Beer, Librarian of the Howard Memorial Library for valuable assistance.
t Vol. IV. Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society.
234
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
The Jesuits acquired the Bienville concession, the most valuable of all the concessions lying above the city. Their expulsion and the confiscation of their property threw the land back into the hands of speculators. Soniat's researches into the title of the Jesuits led him into the densest thickest of genealogical records and chains of titles. He recon- structed the first plans of concessions on the banks of the river and, link by link, connected them with the corresponding chains of family transactions. He transcribed it all with notarial neatness, precision and accuracy in a great ledger, with a mass of additional information, gathered together from per- sonal observation, family traditions and newspaper articles. In short, he furnished so full and complete a store of historical gatherings that a student, in the vast ease and comfort it affords to research work, is tempted to exclaim: "Were all other land and family records of New Orleans destroyed, the data connecting family and property together could be recovered from this ledger alone!"
The immense work, a labor of love, was carried through privately; and at his death was modestly left, with his notarial business and office, to his brother Meloncy, also a notary, who holds it in trust and administers it for the benefit of the history of New Orleans and its students.
Charles Soniat died in 1918 in his home, situated between the two streets of his name, Soniat and Dufossat, and was laid to rest with his fathers in the old tomb whose preparation he had personally super- intended and made ready for himself. The courtly old name still lives in New Orleans, though divested for the sake of simplicity of its aristocratic trappings,
-
---
235
SONIAT DU FOSSAT
and become only Soniat. So, in truth, are its bearers in simple worth fulfilling their duties, in their several stations among the rank and file of good citizens.
It was with no surprise, rather with an expression of fulfilled expectation, that in his native city, the following item in a local newspaper was read in the closing year of the World War:
"Charles T. Soniat was one of the eight thousand United States marines who distinguished themselves at Château-Thierry and fought at Belleau Wood. In command of one of the famous columns that marched through the retreating Poilus, behind Château-Thierry, Soniat was directed to hold the Boches as long as possible and then retreat. 'Retreat, -! ' he exclaimed. Instead his column advanced through Belleau Wood and beyond. The regiment was sent to Soissons; he fought one day in its victorious finale, when he was wounded, and was barely out of the hospital when the armistice came, and he sailed for America.
"The French Government gave him the Croix de Guerre, and he was promoted by his own Government. His name is one of four stars (Charles, Lucien, Leon, Guy) on the service flag in the home of his mother, Louise Marie Sarpy, widow of Gustave Soniat."
Leon died in the Aisne region while serving with the signal corps. His body lies in the fatherland of his ancestors, and it may be said about him, as about many a Louisiana boy who gave his life freely to France: "Here he lies where he longed to be."
CHAPTER XIV
DE LA VERGNE
T THE present head of the family in New Orleans, Colonel Hugues Jules de la Vergne, a student of Louisiana history and an authority on its colonial families, traces his line back to the twelfth century- to Hughes and Renaud de la Vergne, Lords of St. Cupery and la Mauriange .* The Château de la Vergne at St. Priest, Ligourne, some twenty miles from Limoges, is still in the family, its actual pos- sessor being the Marquis de la Vergne. The record in Louisiana begins with a Lieutenant Lavergne on the list of officers under Bienville in the Archives de la Marine, to whose name is affixed the note, "Has been only a year in the colony; has seen service. Sensible and very energetic."
Further along in history, in 1766, a Captain La- vergne signs the protest of officers and citizens against Rochemore, defending Kerlerec from the unjust charges made by the Intendant against him. Françoise de la Vergne, who married the eldest son of the Chevalier d'Arensbourg, belongs, according to our authority, to another branch of the family.
To follow the present line and the documents in the family : Pierre de la Vergne, Count and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, a native of Brive la Gaillard, Province of Limousin, France, married in New
* Taken from personal notes furnished the author by Colonel Hugues Jules de la Vergne, New Orleans.
236
237
DE LA VERGNE
Orleans, 1789, Marie Elizabeth (or Isabelle) du Vergier Marié, widow of Joseph Fides, Lieutenant and ex-Commander "del Esquadron de Caballeria de Mexico." She was the daughter of Guillaume du Vergier Marié and Rose Busson de la Marinière of New Orleans.
But one son was born of this union; Hughes (1789), who married, in 1813, Marie Adèle de Vil- leré, the daughter of the first Creole Governor of Louisiana and granddaughter of the illustrious patriot who was killed by the Spaniards. He had the honor of serving on the staff of General Andrew Jackson and of fighting in the Battle of New Orleans. He served also on the staff of Governor Robertson, the successor of Governor Villeré.
Although a member of the Bar and a Notary Public, he consented to fill the place of President of the Bank of "The Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana," one of the numerous insti- tutions organized when wealth, like a mythological stream, was flowing through the State, when money, accumulating like the rising currents of the Missis- sippi, threatened a golden overflow in New Orleans. Instead of which, however, the usual result followed a sudden fall after a sudden rise in values with the collapse of levees and crevasses of banks. Fourteen of the new institutions suspended payment. The Consolidated Association of Planters, notwithstand- ing its bulwark of a name, went down with the rest, but more tragically. Its President, proud, haughty, and a fanatic on the subject of personal honor, could not brook what he considered, foolish as it sounds to-day, an imputation upon it. Winding up the affairs of his bank, he crossed the river and made his
238
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
way to the du Vergier plantation, where he sought the family cemetery. He was found on his mother's grave, pierced through the heart with a sword.
His only son, Jules, born in 1818, became a lawyer, and served also as Colonel on the staff of Gover- nor Moore, and afterwards of Governor Allen, during the Civil War. He married Marie Emma Josephine Bermudez, the daughter of Judge Joaquin Bermudez and the widow of Meloncy Soniat. The only child of her second marriage is the present bearer of the name and title: Colonel Hugues Jules de la Vergne, a lawyer like his father and grandfather and an officer on the staff of the Governor of Louisiana. He was born in 1867. His biography, therefore, while not yet history, rests upon the pleasant foundation of social reminiscence and estimation. It may, how- ever, be permitted to state that he is a helpful mem- ber of the Louisiana Historical Society-a student of historical records and a writer of note. He mar- ried Marie Louise Schmidt, daughter of the eminent jurist, the late Charles Edouard Schmidt.
--------
----
CHAPTER XV
DE BORÉ
E TIENNE DE BORE'S family, as we learn from notes left by his grandson, Charles Gayarré, belonged to the old Norman nobility. It ascends to Michel de Boré who, under Louis XIII, was a "conseiller de roi" and Director of Posts and Couriers between Paris and Orléans. Robert de Boré, his son, was also a Councillor in 1652 and was attached to the royal household.
Robert Louis de Boré filled the same offices as his father. He married, in 1654, Elizabeth Hotman. Their grandson, the first of the name in Louisiana, married in Kaskaskia, Illinois, Celeste Thérèse Carrière of that place. Their son, Jean Etienne de Boré, our de Boré, as New Orleans takes pride in calling him, was born in Kaskaskia in 1740. He was educated in France and, as soon as age permitted, entered the Mousquetaires du Roi or "Mousque- taires Noirs," the household troops of the King, a corps that none but a noble could enter: its privates holding the rank of captains, and captains the rank of lieutenant-generals in the regular army.
After ten years of service at court, de Boré was transferred to the command of a company of cavalry, but having married Marguerite Marie, daughter of des Trehans des Tours, a representative of an old French family who for many years had been Royal Treasurer in Louisiana, he resigned his position in
239
240
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
the army in 1772 and came to Louisiana, where his wife possessed much property.
It may be remembered that des Trehans was sent back to France by Kerlerec as "too rich and dangerous;" in reality, because the Treasurer was a friend of Rochemore the Intendant, an unscrupulous enemy of Kerlerec and the leader of a cabal against him.
D'Estrehan had two other daughters: one married Pierre Philippe de Mandeville de Marigny ; the other Favre d'Aunoy; his son married a Maxent, the beautiful lady who subsequently became the wife of Bernardo de Galvez. Besides her beauty there is but one fact remembered about her; that the daughter born to her and Galvez was named Guada- loupe and that the city for which she was named stood godmother to her and gave her a magnificent present in solid silver-one worthy of so wealthy a sponsor and the bearer of her name. But Guada- loupe died in infancy and never enjoyed her god- mother's wealth or her distinction.
We must not omit to mention a souvenir of him that Gayarre always recalled with peculiar pleasure. De Boré had previously visited Louisiana on a leave granted by the Count Rochechouart Montboissier, the Minister of War, upon which occasion he had brought back from America some feathers which he presented to the Countess de Montboissier, the wife of the Minister. When he was ready to embark for Louisiana the second time, he received the following note from the Countess addressed to him as "Mousquetaire Noir à la Rochelle, Hotel du Bien Nourri. (Happy name for a hotel!) The old paper is worn and falling into pieces and the ink is
- ---- 1
1 ---- i
---
i
Lit de Repos. A beautiful specimen of "Robert Adam."
1
1
--
1
1
243
DE BORÉ
faded, but the pleasant words stand out upon it still clear and distinct:
PARIS, 9th January, 1772.
"It is with great pleasure, Sir, that I have undertaken to inform you that the commission of Captain which you seemed so much to desire has been granted you 'par le dernier travail de M. de Mont- boissier.' When the brevet is ready he will forward it to you. He is very glad to have been able to render you this service. We both wish you a happy voyage and a speedy return to us after having arranged your affairs in that country sufficiently to your satisfac- tion. If it should be possible for you to send me a hundred feathers like those with which you had the kindness to favor me, my obliga- tion to you would be very great. The trimming of my dress is finished; it is superb; and as I am afraid of losing some of the feathers, I should be happy to be able to replace them. I beg to be excused for thus taxing too much your gallantry and generosity, for you have given me such a large quantity of the feathers that it looked as if I would need no more. I return to you my thanks in advance, and I entreat you to be convinced of the very great sincerity of the sentiments with which I have the honor to be, Sir.
"Your very humble and very obedient servant,
"ROUCHECHOUART DE MONTBOISSIER.
"P.S .- M. de Montboissier requests me to address to you a thousand compliments on his behalf."
The colony having by the time that de Boré arrived in New Orleans become quieted in the rule of the Spanish Government, he bought the plantation of the patriot Masan, who had been exiled and sen- tenced to imprisonment for life in Morro Castle. It was situated about six miles above New Orleans, measuring from the Cathedral, and was on the same bank of the river. The plantation above him was owned by Pierre Foucher, who became his son-in- law; a portion of it is now Audubon Park. The plantation above Foucher's had belonged to La- frénière, the great Louisiana patriot. His daughter,
244
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
the widow of Noyan de Bienville, who was executed at the same time as her father, married Le Breton who, like de Boré, had been a Mousquetaire in the household troops of the King of France. He thus became the proprietor of the lafrénière place and his son eventually married a daughter of de Boré .*
On Le Breton's death, he was assassinated by a petted slave (to follow the Gayarré's narrative), the plantation passed into the hands of Macarty and Lafrénière's great-grandsons, Des Chappelles Le Breton and his brother, Jean Baptiste Le Breton, who lived with their grandfather de Boré, serving on the managerial staff of the plantation. The other two managers of the plantation had also their his- torical significance. One was the nephew of General Klein d'Alberg, of Napoleon's army, afterwards a peer of France. Gayarré used to meet his son in Paris many years afterwards in the salon of the Baronne de Pontalba. The other employee, very small in stature, "almost feminine in manner and appear- ance; the most modest, the most tender-hearted of men," was the son of General Duphot of the French Embassy, who, under the First Republic, was assassinated in a riot in Rome by the partisans of the Pope.
The ex-mousquetaire gave his plantation a military appearance and ruled it with military discipline. His staff made their report to him every night and received their orders for the next day's work. Every morning at dawn a great bell assembled the whole force of laborers in front of the master's house, where they knelt and said a prayer before being detailed
* "A Louisiana Plantation of the Old Régime."-Harper's Maga- zine, March, 1887.
-
- --
1 - --
i
245
DE BORÉ
to work-a member of the family always presiding during the prayer with head uncovered.
"I vividly remember," writes the historian Gayarré, seventy years afterward, "how I felt when, about eight years old, I was called upon for the first time to preside over the prayer of this dark assemblage."
When the day's work was over, the same ceremony dismissed the negroes to their rest. Before retiring at night and on meeting in the morning, the members of the family respectfully saluted Monsieur de Boré. "For a kiss on my forehead I returned one on his hand as if he were a monarch, and the same feeling of reverence was shown by all who approached him," writes the same historian.
From his service at court, de Boré derived the authority to cite in manners, customs and pro- nunciation, "la cour de Versailles"-the standard that reigned tyrannously supreme on his plantation. One of the anecdotes that Gayarré loved to quote (which is quoted here merely to preserve a personal memory) was that when a very small child, riding a stick-horse on the gallery of his home, he dropped or lost his whip and so began to cry out, "J'ai perdu mon fouet," pronouncing it "foi." Some young ladies and gentlemen sitting on the gallery gaily took up his cry to tease him, adding, "he called fouet, foi." M. de Boré, hearing the teasing, came out upon the gallery to defend his little favorite and, turning to the gay group, said: "Sachez, Mesdames et Messieurs, qu'à la cour de Versailles on dit foi et non fouet" (Know, ladies and gentlemen, that at the court of Versailles they say foi and not fouet."
De Boré's historical benefaction to Louisiana was that of establishing the making of sugar on a per-
246
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
manent and sure basis in 1795. Indigo had been the principal crop of the colony and all the plantations had been given over to its culture, but a worm that attacked the plant and destroyed it through several successive years was reducing to poverty and to the utmost despair the whole population. Etienne de Boré determined to make a bold experiment to save himself and his fellow citizens by turning his indigo into a sugar plantation. Hitherto, many attempts had been made to make sugar in Louisiana. As has been related the Jesuits had, in 1751, introduced the culture of sugar cane into Louisiana from their plantations in the Islands, and the planters who had followed their agricultural experiment had endeav- ored to make sugar from it. But, season after season, they had succeeded only in making syrup or, at best, a soft sugar that melted away in transportation.
De Boré resolved to remake the experiment to manufacture sugar in Louisiana and prepared to go into all the expense and incur all the obligations necessary for so costly an undertaking. His wife warned him that her father had in former years vainly made a similar attempt; she represented to her husband that he was hazarding on the cast of a die all that remained to them of their means of existence and that if he failed, as was probable, he would reduce his family to hopeless poverty. She reminded him that he was over fifty, of an age when fate was not to be tempted by doubtful speculations, as he could not reasonably entertain the hope of a sufficiently long life to rebuild his fortune were it
NOTE. "A Louisiana Sugar Plantation under the Old Régime,'' Charles Gayarré .- Harper's Magazine, March, 1887.
-
i 1 -- -- 1
1 1
247
DE BORÉ
once completely shattered; and that he would not only expose himself to ruin but also to a risk much more to be dreaded-that of falling into the grasp of creditors.
Friends and relatives joined their remonstrances to his wife's, but could not shake the strong resolve of his energetic mind. He had fully matured his plans and was determined to sink or swim with it. Purchasing a quantity of cane for seed from two Spaniards, named Mendez and Solis, who cul- tivated it only for sale as a dainty or for the making of syrup, he began to plant in 1794. His venture excited the keenest interest and many visited him during the year to witness his preparations.
Gloomy predictions had been set afloat about him and on the day when the grinding of the cane was to begin a large number of friends and other citizens gathered about the sugar-house to be present at the failure or success of the experiment. Would the syrup granulate? Would it be converted into sugar? The crowd awaited with eager impatience the moment when the sugar boiler would be able to answer the question. The moment came; the stillness of death spread over them; each one was holding his breath feeling that ruin or prosperity was upon all. Suddenly the sugar boiler cried out triumphantly: "It granulates!"
Inside and outside the building one could hear the wonderful tidings flying from mouth to mouth and dying in the distance. Each one of the bystanders pressed forward to make sure of the fact on the evidence of his own eyes and, when it could no longer be doubted, there came a shout of joy and all flocked around de Boré, overwhelming him with congratula-
248
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
tions and embracing the man whom they called their saviour-the saviour of Louisiana!
In a private gossipy letter to Thomas Jefferson, written in 1806, Governor Claiborne gives the fol- lowing additional account of this episode which he heard from Colonel Macarty during a visit to his plantation:
"The Colonel esteemed the cane the only sure and lucrative crop which could be cultivated in the lower part of this territory. For- merly, indigo was the staple commodity, but for several years in suc- cession the crops were diminished and on many farms entirely destroyed. The planters changed their seed and procured a species from Campeachy; for the first year this quality of indigo prospered, but was ultimately attacked by the common enemy. This destroyer was a worm called by the inhabitants 'vers luisants,' a species of the "chenille," which commenced its ravages in the year 1790. The pros- pects of the farmer were often blighted in a night. . . Thus it was that indigo was finally abandoned and that the planters resorted to a more certain culture. Some raised corn, others cotton; but M. de Boré in the year ninety-six, turned his attention to sugar. The cane had previously been brought from Havana and had orna- mented the gardens of Louisianians; but M. de Boré has the credit of being the first to introduce it in his fields. He succeeded beyond his expectations and found for his sugars an immediate and lucrative market.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.