USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 23
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least so thought a young man standing in the crowd to watch the ship arrive. He sought her acquaint- ance (gentlemen at that time acted on such im- pulses), found her face as beautiful as her foot, and then he sought her in marriage (as a gentleman of that time would do), and he did not seek in vain. Lasthémie became his wife and he, in time, became a distinguished Judge. She died after the birth of her only son, Charles Amedée, who was reared by his Aunt Zoé. He, to carry the story a generation further, married, in 1862, Marie Meffre Rouzan, the daughter of Julien Meffre Rouzan, the wealthy merchant and bon vivant of his day, and of Alice Olivier de Vezin. The Rouzan home on Esplanade Street was, in its day, the ne plus ultra of French luxury, and the entertainments in it were royal events in society.
Mathilde Cruzat married Dr. Edward B. Harris. Like her sister Zoé, she lived to a great old age, dying in her eighty-ninth year, vivacious and entertaining to the last. She outlived her three children, and her grandchildren, too, have all passed away. Eulalie, the last of the Cruzat daughters, who was born in 1817 and died in 1906, married Edouard Gardère in 1841. He was the son of François Gardère, Treasurer for the State of Louisiana, and of Elisa Rivière, the daughter of the brilliant Madame Rivière, who was the life of the social circle of Governor Carondelet. The Gardères lived on a great plantation opposite the city, which is still in their possession and where they, despite the cruel changes wrought by time to plantation owners, still maintain a kind of seigneurie over the region. The seclusion of their home and their own dignified
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Love of retirement have, as it were, sealed their family archives from the public.
The children of Edouard Gardère and Eulalie Cruzat are Louise, who married George Olivier; Arthur; Edouard; William; Corinne; Gustave; and Alice, who married, in 1889, William O'Connor.
William Cruzat, the thirteenth child of Don Antoine Cruzat and Victoire de Lino de Chalmette, was born in 1819, and died in 1900, attaining the good old age that seemed a hereditary right of the family. He married his cousin, Joséphine Olivia Cruzat, daughter of Joseph Ignace Cruzat, Spanish Consul at Mobile, and Alix Suzanne Coulon de Villiers. His long life was devoted, not to material but to historical interests.
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He left one daughter, Modeste, and a son, John William, born in 1858, whose life, therefore, is still too fresh in memory for a review of it as history, and yet no man, in truth, ever served history better or more faithfully. Into his soul had been breathed, as it were, the breath of the finer life of the past of his State; and the inspiration elevated him above the sordid views of the present. To his fellow citizens he appeared, doubtless, merely a steady-going, hard- working bank official, with a brain intent only on its treadmill duties, whose handsome face was ever clouded with the shade of portentous responsibilities. To the eyes of a few friends, however, he revealed his real identity-that of a secret, ardent student of history, a passionate collector of documents and facts to serve, as he knew they would serve, to make the path straighter for other students and to build up reputations that would overshadow his own modest worth. He was a recluse, shy of outside
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intercourse, sparing of words, self-effacing to the utmost limit, yet outspoken and bold in historical interests.
A good friend of the Louisiana State Historical Society, he served as its treasurer in the hard years of its rehabilitation after its seeming final bank- ruptcy caused by the Civil War, taking upon himself a burden shunned of others. In his hands meager financial reports lost their depressing influence; and the members of the society were sustained by the sense of carrying on a noble work in the intellectual progress of the State. He drew upon the casket of his memory, in which were stored the historical relations of his father and grandfather, to supply papers needed for an evening's programme. What he wrote has been proved authoritative on the sub- ject of the Spanish Domination, and the historical importance to the colony of the men contributed by Spain to its population. He generously opened, when they were needed for an exhibit by the society, his precious and unique store of family medals, medallions, miniatures and decorations, and placed them on view. In short, as a member expressed it, "Cruzat was not only the treasurer but the treasure also of The Historical Society."
Ill health forced his retirement from the Bank but not from his good historical work. His corre- spondence during his last years with his relative, Baron de Pontalba of Paris, resulted in obtaining the invaluable collection of the Pontalba letters to which due honor has already been paid in this volume. He obtained also from the Baron the letters and secret despatches of Governor Miro that throw the light of day into a very obscure corner of
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international history-a collection of documents that interest not only Louisiana but the whole continent. His carefully traced genealogical records are and must remain the foundation of such research work. He died in 1913, leaving behind him his study, filled with books, notes and documents, a mass of material that is still to be properly inven- toried, that can never be rightly appraised.
Cruzat married, in 1883, Héloise Hulse, the daughter of Albert Hulse (of an old Welsh family), and of Mathilde Chauvin de Lery (that sure and well-certified historical family). His wife proved an able coadjutor in his historical work and, since his death, the ardent executor of his rich historical estate. Their three children are: Joseph de Villiers, Marie Josephine (Mrs. James E. Strawbridge), and William.
NOTE .- Héloise Cruzat is at present Assistant Secretary of the Louisiana Historical Society and a most indefatigable worker for it. Her essays on Louisiana history and her translations from old Spanish and French documents place her in the first rank of present day historical writers. Like her husband, she learned three languages perfectly-English, French and Spanish.
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CHAPTER XXIII
JUMONVILLE DE VILLIERS
T HIS name is considered a feather in the cap of Louisiana, stuck there in honor of a celebrated episode that preceded the War for Independence which linked the name with that of Washington.
The incident is ancient now, but in its day of youth and freshness found a place in every American history. As it was then related: In 1753 the French and English in America were at peace by virtue of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, but both sides were secretly on the alert for the renewal of hostilities which soon was to follow as the Seven Years' War. Their traders clashed over every boundary line and advanced post. The policy of France, as we know, was to unite Canada with Louisiana by means of a chain of fortified posts, which would insure her the possession of the great waterways of the country, and crowd England between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic Ocean.
Midway between Canada and Louisiana lay the Ohio Valley. Should the English gain possession of it, they would cut in two the French line of fortifica- tions and sever the territory of Louisiana from the French. This the English were determined to do. They sent their men out from Virginia and estab- lished trading posts along the banks of the Ohio and its branches, and their traders were soon deftly winning the Indians to allies. The French, no whit
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behind the English in enterprise, descended through Lake Erie, drove the English away, and built three forts to guard their position. One of these, and the most important, was Fort Duquesne, situated at the fork of the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers (the present site of Pittsburgh).
George Washington, then a young lieutenant- colonel in the Colonial army, was sent by the Gover- nor of Virginia to make a protest to the French against their encroachments.
The protest proving unavailing, he was sent the following year with a military force against the new fort. He marched in advance of the troops at the head of a detachment to clear the way and make a road for the advance of the rest of the army.
While he was thus engaged, Indian spies and scouts brought him warning that a French force was advanc- ing against him, hoping to surprise him. To pre- vent this, he advanced his troops, maneuvering to surprise the French. He succeeded. The French saw him in time only to rush to their arms. A spirited fight ensued, during which Jumonville de Villiers, the young commander of the French, about the same age as Washington, was killed, after which his troops surrendered and were sent prisoners to Virginia.
When the news of the disaster reached the French in Louisiana, passions flamed up in wild fury, with clamoring for vengeance against the English. Cou- lon de Villiers, a brother of Jumonville, stationed in the Illinois country, obtained permission from Gover- nor Kerlerec to leave his post and proceed at once to avenge his brother's death and wipe out the dis- grace to French arms. For this purpose he raised a
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force of five hundred Frenchmen to which were added several hundred Indians. He hastened to Fort Duquesne and found Washington entrenched in a rude fortification called Fort Necessity, not far from the scene of his first engagement. Coulon de Villiers and his Canadians attacked with such fire that the English soon showed signs of yielding and agreed to a capitulation. Washington, who did not understand French, was obliged to use an interpreter, a man of great ignorance and, as it turned out, un- trustworthy. Coulon's terms contained a clause whereby Washington acknowledged that Jumon- ville de Villiers had been assassinated by the British, who fired upon him without warning when he was, as the French claimed, merely a peaceful envoy to the British. The word "assassination" had by the ignorant interpreter been rendered "killed" in the articles that Washington signed, as was fully explained afterward. However, the surrender of the British took place to Coulon de Villiers on the 4th of July, 1754, and the Father of his country had to withdraw before him!
The incident created a reverberating excitement in France, and the vile epithet of assassin was hurled at Washington in all public assemblies and speeches, and as such he was denounced in all the newspapers and journals. Thomas, a distinguished member of the Academy, wrote an epic in four cantos entitled "Jumonville," expressing the utmost violence of abhorrence for the dastardly way in which he had been assassinated.
Coulon de Villiers won a promotion for his victory and was made Chevalier of the Order of St. Louis. On the surrender of Canada to the English, he with
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his two sons came to Louisiana and settled in the Opelousas country. The eldest son was in the serv- ice of Spain when the cession to the United States took place. He took the title of chevalier after the death of his father, and died in Opelousas, leaving a large family whose descendants write their name to-day Devilliers.
The second son, Coulon, likewise served in the Spanish Army, and after the cession went to Havana to live, and he died there.
The "old chevalier," as he was affectionately called, married a second time, uniting himself in New Orleans with Marie Françoise Beaumont de Livaudais. He lived to an advanced age, dying in New Orleans in 1803. The only child by his second marriage, Charles, became a planter; he married Marie Louise d'Acosta, and died in the parish of St. Bernard in 1833. He was buried in the old St. Louis Cemetery, where may be read the epitaph on his tomb:
"Ci-git Charles Jumonville Coulon de Villiers, Rejeton d'une illustre race Sans cesse aux coups du sort opposant son grand cœur Dans l'etroit sentier de l'honneur, De ses ayeux toujours il a suivi les traces."
During the British invasion in 1814, some of his property was expropriated by General Jackson for the public defense, and his fortune was thereby considerably damaged; in token of which may be cited the following anecdote, one of the best known in the repertory of the rare raconteurs of the time.
Some years after the event, Bernard Marigny introduced a bill in the legislature for the relief of
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Charles Jumonville de Villiers, and in the course of an eloquent speech gave the French version of the death of the Sieur Jumonville de Villiers, and was understood to hint that France and the French had first made Washington a hero.
Larry Moore, the well-known senator from St. Helena, shouted in a voice of thunder: "Not a word of truth in it! Not a word of truth in it! God Almighty made George Washington a hero!"
The Senate was thrown into confusion. Marigny looked daggers. Old Larry frowned defiance. Mar- igny glowed with the blood of his chivalrous race. Moore was the type of a frontiersman: shrewd, prompt, brave as a gamecock. Friends interposed; explanations ensued; neither gentleman understood perfectly the language used by the other. Marigny had been too strongly construed. Larry meant not a personal, but a historic, lie.
Enthusiasts have sought to connect the family of the de Villiers with the one from which sprang the celebrated Duke of Buckingham; but the family in Louisiana seems to cherish no such claim, looking to no higher or better source of origin than Nicolas Antoine, Sieur de Villiers, a captain in the army of Canada and his good wife Angélique Jarret de Verchères, who was the granddaughter of the Baron de Longueil, and therefore a Lemoyne; hence a cousin of Bienville. She bore her husband seven sons; all of them served in the army of France.
Aubert de Gaspé, in his fascinating volume, "Les Anciens Canadiens,"* gives a tradition of the "Dames de Verchères," which is also current in the Louisiana family; that in 1690, being attacked by
*Published in Quebec, 1864.
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Indians in a fort, when all the men were absent, they put on men's clothes and, seizing guns, marched around the fort beating a drum so loud and lustily that the Indians were deluded into the belief that a strong garrison was inside and retired.
De Gaspé's grandmother was a Jarret de Ver- chères, and as the grandnephew of Coulon de Vil- liers, he gives the family account of the Fort Neces- city surrender which accentuates the bad faith of Washington, but he adds frankly that Guizot, after examining all the proof furnished by the French, put no credence in their version but adhered firmly to the truth of Washington's report of the affair.
Gayarré, in an article on the surrender of Fort Necessity, published in the Magazine of American History, gives a print of a portrait of Coulon de Villiers. He is represented with a face of noble beauty and expression; of manly strength and firm- ness, tempered with courtesy and gentleness.
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CHAPTER XXIV
LAVILLEBEUVRE
J TEAN LOUIS FIDEL FARAULT DE LAVIL- LEBEUVRE, Chevalier de Garrois, lives in the annals of Louisiana history as one of the most eminent of public officials under the Spanish Domina- tion. He served as Indian Agent, or, as we would call it to-day, Commissioner, from 1780 to 1797.
Lavillebeuvre was born in Rennes, the capital of Basse Bretagne, in 1731, and was the son of Baron Louis François de Lavillebeuvre and Dame Jeanne de Beaumont. About 1754, he came to Louisiana to join his uncle, Baron de Kerlerec, who was at that time Governor of Louisiana, his father having been induced by the Baron to grant the young man permission to come to the colony. Here he was commissioned Ensign of Infantry by Louis XV in 1762, and the following year a letter of commenda- tion was written to him for his good services to France, by order of the King .*
In New Orleans, in 1764, he married Demoiselle Jeanne d'Arby, daughter of Jonathas d'Arby, an officer of Militia, the wedding taking place upon the d'Arby plantation near the city.
The transfer of the colony to Spain being effected, de Lavillebeuvre passed from the services of France to those of the new government; and as Don Juan
* Originals of commission and letter in the possession of Mrs. Anna Lavillebeuvre Hyman, of New Orleans.
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de Lavillebeuvre he was commissioned as Captain in the Louisiana Regiment of Infantry by Spain and was placed in command of Fort Panmure, one of the Natchez forts captured recently by Galvez from the British. Ricciardi, the only historical student, so far, who has made a special study of de Laville- beuvre's services in the Louisiana colony, complains very justly that although he lived in a very critical period in the history of the colony, and rendered services unique in their value and scope, there is no mention of him in any of the histories of Louisiana, with the exception of the one written by Professor Alcée Fortier of Tulane University. Ricciardi, him- self, has handsomely atoned for this sin of omission in others by his own diligent researches, delving for his information into the mines of the American State papers and sifting the Carondelet documents .*
The Baron de Carondelet, by order of the King, commissioned Don Juan de Lavillebeuvre to reside in the Choctaw Nation, whence the interesting letter of 1792, quoted by Ricciardi, is dated, giving an account of an assembly that Lavillebeuvre had held of that Nation, and of the speech he had made urging them to unite with the Chickasaws, Talapouches and Cherokees, to prevent "other white men (Eng- lish, French and Americans) from seizing their land."
As Ricciardi says, the Indian trade was what both the Spaniards and Americans sought. In their competition to obtain its monopoly they made use of any intrigue or stratagem that cupidity could suggest-the favorite and easiest being to seduce
* "The Services of Jean Louis Fidel Farault de Lavillebeuvre de Garrois." Nicholas A. Ricciardi. May, 1908.
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the Indian chiefs from their loyalty to sworn agree- ments. This was done, of course, by bribery in giving medals, gifts or assistance in their intertribal wars. The traders who were commissioned by the hostile outposts were unscrupulous agitators, who had no interest to serve but their private gain.
De Levillébeuvre lived in this hard command for five years, stolidly and faithfully serving his govern- ment, but maintaining, in what later generations have learned to know as the Lavillebeuvre way, his own honest principles, and not sacrificing them, as his predecessors had but too often done, to expedi- ency. This is most apparent in his official letters and in the letters of others about him. He writes with dignity and courtesy of the great Indian chiefs with whom he was thrown in contact and gives what is strikingly absent from the letters of other Indian Commissioners, due consideration to their problems and difficulties, as well as to those of Spain. The acute condition arising from the marauding bands of vagrant Indians, deserters from their tribes, roaming the country, led for the most part by white men of bad character, in search of opportunities to commit depredations, producing friction among the tribes and arousing retaliating vengeance from the white inhabitants.
Carondelet, on his part, writes to de Lavillebeuvre with the utmost frankness, expressing full confidence in his capacity to bring about an intelligent settle- ment of the question upon which, in truth, depended the stability of the Spanish Domination over the colony. And de Lavillebeuvre was in fact reaching the consummation so much desired by the Governor; peace among the tribes and their submission to
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Spain, when, his health failing, he asked permission to go to Pensacola for medical treatment. Unfor- tunately he died on the way, at Mobile, in 1797.
His son Juan, who had married Mademoiselle Eulalie de Trepagner, survived him to pass with the colony back into the possession of France, and from France to the American Government. He fought in the Battle of New Orleans, in token of which his sword is still preserved by his descendants, although the record of his rank in the army has not been so carefully preserved.
But a little story is transmitted that is evidently considered of more importance. The day after he had bidden good-by to his wife and little son, with what apprehension only the young husbands of that date can appreciate, he went into camp. When the next morn had dawned on the desolate household, and none but the young wives of that date can appre- ciate what the desolation was, his little son Elie was discovered to be missing. For a few hours, the English, General Jackson, the absent husband, all were forgotten in the household, while a frantic search was made for little Elie. He could not be found and despair-the black despair of a mother who fears the worst for a child, settled down upon the once happy home. At last came a shout after an interval of anguish that seemed an eternity. The child had been found! Had been picked up trudging on his little legs determinedly down the highroad along the bank of the river toward the camp at Chalmette, going, like his father, to take part in the battle. He was at the time only five, some say four years old, and according to one version he was, when found, actually stumbling into the trenches.
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Little Elie lived to be an old man, but he never denied that he had run away to the battle.
Jean (as Juan was now called) Ursin had the reputation, in his day, of being a great hunter and a great lover of what used to be called fine living. He lived in the country above New Orleans, on a vast tract of land that stretched from the river across St. Charles Street to the woods bordering the lake. It is now called Rosa Park-a spot of excep- tional beauty and much sought after by seekers of residential sites who love the, as the French call it, "je ne sais quoi," quality that gives it dis- tinction above other similar sections. The dis- tinction is a heritage from its original owner who has endowed it with the charming tradition that he gave entertainments in his handsome home to every man of note who visited New Orleans in his day. The portrait of his grandfather, the Indian Commis- sioner, in Spanish uniform, hung in the place of honor in the dining-room, and under it was the glorious sword of Chalmette.
Lafayette dined in this room in 1825. The mahogany dining table, like the glorious sword, can be still shown in evidence a real mahogany table with leaves to match that could be extended to accommodate fifty places (and it did accommodate them for the Lafayette dinner). With the table can be seen the tablecloth that covered it of fine linen damask, like satin, such as could not be found to-day, with the fifty napkins to match, as large themselves as small tablecloths, woven according to a pretty fancy with a corbeille of flowers in the center sur- rounded by a garland of flowers. They were well worthy a festal board set in honor of so great a hero
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as Lafayette! Tradition, that seldom keeps within bounds when it is set talking, says that Chateau- briand was also entertained here by Lavillebeuvre, but, unfortunately for Chateaubriand, this is manifestly impossible.
The great hunter was evidently a great lover of beautiful things, and a generous spender of money to procure them, for he left behind him a trail of relics to beautify the homes of his descendants. His daily table service was of silver according to the fashion of the rich men of his day. His crystal and silver epergne, with candelabra to match, silver dolphins supporting the crystal (also used at the Lafayette dinner), are still the handsomest of their kind in the city, which is celebrated for such bric-à- brac. A mammoth silver salver, that in old times was filled on fête days and anniversaries with cornucopias of bonbons for all the children of the family and all their friends, is still kept waiting in refuge in the house of a great-granddaughter, for the day when it will once again be refilled. Near it is the old carved mahogany mantelpiece that stood over the fireplace in the home of Jean Ursin-and still doing duty as a timepiece is the tall mahogany- cased clock that ticked the births and deaths during two centuries of the Lavillebeuvre family. There, too, is the round, gilt-framed convex mirror that, for all we know, may have once reflected the proud features of the great Lafayette.
The old father, son of the Indian Commissioner, had lived with his son Ursin through all the years that led from the cession of the colony to the Civil War, and through the Civil War into the ruin and sorrow beyond. At eighty-five his eye-
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