USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 26
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Gaspard de Buys seems to have been among the Creoles of his day who viewed with indifference the passing of the colony from Spain to France and from France to the United States. His name does not appear in any of the reports of the proceedings attending the ceremonies involved in the raising and lowering and raising again of the different flags. And he did not, apparently, take part in any of the demonstrations of violent discontent that followed, when Congress decreed that the new possessions should be governed as a territory, and not given the sovereign rights of a State, as had been stipulated in the Act of Cession. His name, however, does appear in the first Legislative Council named by the President in the inauguration of the new government. Although historians are strangely uncommunicative about them, perhaps no body of men in the history of Louisiana has ever had so many and such impor- tant political problems to solve as that first Legisla- tive Council of Louisiana, and none have ever received so little recognition of the value of the services they rendered.
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Gaspard Melchior de Buys and Eulalie de Jan had four children: Pierre Gaspard, William, Manette and Adèle. Pierre Gaspard, born in 1790, married, in 1811, Jeanne Clemence, daughter of Jean Antoine Viel and of Jeanne Rosa Dupuy. The Viel family, like that of the Montjean, barely escaped extermina- tion by massacre. They came originally from Lor- raine to St. Domingo, where Jean Antoine became a large landowner. Having always been a good master to his slaves he did not fear the revolution, and refused to flee when urged to seek refuge in a vessel about to sail to France. He, his mother and son were massacred; his wife and daughters were saved, the youngest one, a baby, being safely hidden by her nurse in a well. They found a refuge among relatives in Santiago.
Pierre Gaspard was so exuberantly republican in his feelings that he indulged in an exhibition of them that is carefully transcribed in the family record. When his eldest son Pierre was born he gave him a political as well as a religious christening feast, inviting all of his friends to it, and requesting them to bring with them their patents of nobility (for, as we have seen, the good French families emigrated to Louisiana with their patents of nobility carefully packed in their boxes). On the festal board stood a large silver chafing dish; the patents of nobility were placed upon it, fire lighted underneath, and the infant Pierre was passed over the smoke of the burn- ing titles amid cheers and plaudits.
The other children-Marie Elizabeth Eugénie, Paul, Emile, Marie Antoinette Odile, Eugéne, Lucien, Napoleon-showed in their names at least a broadening catholicity of political convictions. De
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Buys served on the staff of General Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and it is one of the pretty memories preserved faithfully in the family that at the grand ball given by the Governor to celebrate the victory, the General, whose eye was never dull to beauty or to politics, asked his aide-de-camp, de Buys, who a certain very beautiful lady was. He answered that she was his wife, who, though still so young, was the mother of two children. Her sister, it is said, was also a noted beauty in New Orleans, and the same reputation was inherited by her daugh- ter Eugénie.
In the resolutions passed by the Legislature after the victory in 1815, there is this handsome compli- ment to his father:
"Whilst our gallant militia were employed in the defense of the country, at the several posts assigned to them, the citizens more advanced in years, having voluntarily formed themselves into com- panies of veterans, attended to the preservation of police and civil order in town. They greatly contributed by their good countenance to dissipate the alarm created by the approach of the enemy and by their unwearied exertions they insured the speedy and faithfull conveyance to camp of such articles as were to be sent there. They were also usefully employed in seeing that the many donations made » by our fellow citizens should be both applied and without confusion. . At the head of these veterans appeared M. de Buys, their captain.""
After the War of 1812, William de Buys, with other: ambitious spirits, had to be content with civic : ambitions. He was elected to the Legislature and became Speaker of the House in 1846. He was pushed forward by his party as candidate for governor to succeed Governor Roman, and he proved "' a sharp competitor for Isaac Johnson, who was3 elected.
He lives in memory, however, still more vividly ?
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perhaps as commander or general of the Louisiana Legion. This was, as should be explained to readers foreign to New Orleans, a famous military organiza- tion that for a score of years nourished the popular craving for military glory that has always been endemic in the place. Its germ was the Batallion d'Orléans,* that corps d'élite of young Creoles recruited only from the Creoles or Frenchmen who had seen active service. They were perfect in every detail and always ready for immediate service. When the call to arms came in 1814, the Bataillon d'Orléans stepped into the field of action fully armed and equipped and proved themselves trained veter- ans under fire-Jackson himself praising their prowess and efficiency.
After the war, the battalion increased in strength and stability so rapidly that it was necessary to incorporate it into a Legion, which was commanded in succession by such generals, in repute, as Augustin Cuvellier, de Buys and Lewis. Its ranks were opened to every nationality-the companies bearing the names of Jaeger, Cazadores, Cuirassiers, Lan- ciers, Emmett Guards, Sappers and Miners. There was among them even a company of mounted Mamelukes. They paraded on the Fourth of July and other patriotic dates, and were reviewed by the Governor on state occasions, but it was on the Feast of Ste. Barbe that they shone in their full glory, when they turned out in splendid array and marched through the crowded streets, with bouquets stuck in their muskets, to the Cathedral to hear mass and be blessed by the Bishop (when they took up a collection for the asylums of the
*New Orleans As It Was." Castellanos.
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city). Their banner was presented to them by the Governor in the Cathedral after being blessed. When the war with Mexico was declared and volunteers were called for by General Taylor to go at once to the Rio Grande, the Legion answered within twenty-four hours, readily furnishing the contingent required; and the daily papers noticed on this occasion that William de Buys (having been succeeded in his command) walked in the ranks, a musket on his shoulder, beside his two sons.
He retired in his old age to his beautiful home at Biloxi on the lake shore, where he passed his time fishing and hunting and painting in water colors. He invented a fishhook for deep-sea fishing that is still in use by fishermen of the Gulf. He died there in 1774. By his wife, Corinne Andry, he had four children: Felicie, Gaspard, Ovide and Hortaire. John de Buys, the noted duelist, was an adopted son taken from his Irish mother's arms when she died of cholera.
To return to the head source of the family, Gas- pard Melchior de Buys and Eulalie de Jan, their eldest daughter Manette married Pierre Victor Amedée Longer of Rouen. She is ever cited in New Orleans as a woman of wonderful accomplish- ments; a perfect wife, a model housekeeper, an exemplary society woman; grave, serious, dignified, and although beautiful above her associates, never condescending to be a belle. She was left a widow with eight daughters still in childhood. They grew up beautiful, with all the good qualities of the mother, and noted more than she had been for charm of conversation and manner. It is of tradition that every eligible man in the city offered himself to
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one or the other of them. Their choice was decided by the mother's sagacity. All were married well to men of standing in the community and all were happy in their marriages and were blessed by chil- dren worthy of them. Not to know the names of the married Longer ladies is regarded in the Creole city as proof of unpardonable social ignorance. Eulalie became Mrs. Samuel Bell; Adele married Florian Hermann; Odile, Michel Musson; Armide married Amedée de Saules; Amélie, James Behn; Angèle, Evan Jones McCall; Heda, Charles Kock; Helena, Charles Luling. Mrs. Luling's daughter is Lady Alice Ben, wife of Sir Arthur Ben, M.P., London.
Gaspard de Buys died in 1827; his daughter, Madame Longer survived him a half century, a cherished relic of other and far different days, respected and revered by all, served by her old servants, relics as she was of older times. Children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren came to her from their distant homes in England, France and the United States. She passed away in the home of her daughter, Mrs. James Behn, on South Rampart Street. No statelier procession of mourners than that which followed her up the aisle of the church to her grave in the old St. Louis Cemetery has ever assem- bled in New Orleans.
General de Buys' eldest daughter, Felicie, married A. J. Mummy, Esq., of France. She had two daughters. One married M. Schroeder, Consul- General for Germany in France; the other married M. le Comte de la Guerronnière, of Haute Vienne, France.
The General's sisters and brothers, the children
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of Pierre Gaspard de Buys and Elizabeth Viel, were: Marie Elizabeth, who married twice, her first hus- band being Hypolite Tricou, her second one, Samuel Herman. Estelle Tricou, the daughter of the first husband, married Bernard Peyton of Virginia (their son, William Charles, married Anne Dupont). Samuel Herman's daughter, Alice, married Henry Palmer, and their daughter May became the first wife of the Hon. Chauncey Depew. Louise, the second daughter of Samuel Herman, married Hall McAlister of Georgia.
Paul Emile, the son of Pierre Gaspard and Eliza- beth Viel, married Emma, the daughter of Placide Forstall of New Orleans. Their son, Gaspard James, married Stella Rathbone, and from them descend the four well-known brothers who bear the de Buys name at present in New Orleans: Rathbone, the dis- tinguished architect and archivist of his family; Lawrence, an eminent physician; Walter and James.
Marie Antoinette Odile de Buys was married twice; first to Joaquin de Vignier of Havana; after- wards to Foster Elliot of New York. Children and grandchildren of both husbands survive. | Pierre Victor Amedée married Cécile Denis, daughter of Henri Denis of New Orleans. They had two chil- dren: Alfred, who lives in New York, and Amélie, who married the late George C. Preot of New Orleans, a distinguished littérateur and educationalist.
Lucien Napoleon Eugene de Buys married Lucile Elizabeth Enoul Dugue de Livaudais, the descendant of the two old and distinguished families of Livaudais and Dreux. She and her husband, during their long married life, brilliantly maintained the prestige of their name and blood in their home and society
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and were always proudly cited as examples of what the good old Creole families really were. They were blessed with fifteen children, twelve of them daughters.
To Madame Lucien de Buys, who since her hus- band's death has gathered together the dates and documents relating to his family for the use of future generations, is due the sincere acknowledgments of the present writer.
CHAPTER XXIX
CANONGE
THE great heroic and historic days of New Orleans passed away and the chronicles of the city, once set to the accompaniment of martial music, now move along to the soft and somewhat monotonous strains of domestic and social life. The city, in short, is like a lady who, having passed through a youth of anxious experiences and arrived at a middle age of ease of mind and comfort of body, can tolerate in her journal only pleasant and ornamental entries. And pleasant and ornamental in the journal of the city is the good name of Canonge.
Mrs. Emma Canonge Nott has left her intimate notes written for family use, to which access, in the present instance, has been graciously granted.
"The maternal grandmother of my father," she writes, "was the Marquise de Jusseau. Her hus- band was in the service of France under Louis XV, and we still possess his commission signed by the King. The only daughter of the Marquise de Jus- seau, Elizabeth Renée, was seventeen when she married my grandfather, twenty years older than she.
"The marriage was a happy one and was blessed with eight children born in St. Domingo. When the revolution broke out upon the island, my grand-
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mother, who was a widow for the second time, having married her cousin, M. de Montagé, left St. Domingo and went to St. Iago, Cuba, leaving her wealth behind her, invested in a sugar and a coffee plan- tation. Thirty devoted slaves followed her. My father (J. F. Canonge) was reared in Marseilles by his uncle, Major Canonge, a Chevalier of St. Louis. He was an officer of distinction in the French Army, whose devotion to the Royalists' cause was to cost him dearly."
Recalled by his family, young Canonge left Mar- seilles and returned to St. Domingo, but was driven away again by the insurrection of slaves and took refuge in St. Iago. While there he was fired with the idea of gaining the island of Cuba and turning it over to Napoleon, thinking that the very sound of this great name would smooth away all resistance. But his plot was discovered and a price put upon his head. He made his escape and joined his two brothers in Philadelphia. His French education proving a hindrance to a commercial career, he turned to the law and studied under the celebrated jurist Duponceau.
After receiving his diploma, he naturally gravi- tated toward New Orleans, where the French element was still the predominating one in social and pro- fessional life. There he took his position at once among the group of men still considered the most distinguished in the history of the Bar.
In New Orleans he married the young widow Amelung, born Mercier, a cousin of the Mademoi selle Clary, who married Bernadotte, afterwards King of Sweden. "My grandmother, Mercier," continues the little manuscript, "was a Demoiselle
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Fontenelle, of the same family as 'le grand Fonten- elle,' who was related to Corneille. The home of my father and mother was a most hospitable one, all visitors of distinction were presented in it; the Prince of Wagram, Lafayette and General Desnou- ettes; who gave to my mother the precious souvenir of five letters of Napoleon written (still in existence) to him." :
At the time of his arrival, French and English were both used on the floor of the House of Repre- sentatives. Canonge filled the position of clerk of the House for several sessions. Possessed of an incomparable memory, he took no notes of discus- sions and debates, and although it frequently occurred that in the official proceedings translations were required from one language to the other, he made them without omitting any important feature and frequently reporting the words literally. He made a name as orator, linguist and improvisator, speaking impromptu in French, Spanish or English. He was called in his day-oh, golden day of social intercourse !- an accomplished conversationalist, and when he talked men gathered around him to listen; he was also a ready rhymester and astonished, on two occasions, his audience by delivering addresses in verse. And to add to his accomplishments, he translated the Georgics of Virgil into St. Domingo Creole patois.
His success at the Bar secured for him the appoint- ment of Judge of the Criminal Court by Governor Roman. At that time the Criminal Court was unique in its character; from it there was no appeal. He filled this position for ten or twelve years, dis- tinguishing himself by his enlightened legal views
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and by the impartiality of his charges to the jury. A legal incident in his career is mentioned by his biographer. * On one occasion the celebrated Judge Xavier Martin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, intimated to Judge Canonge that in a certain case he should accord a new trial; Canonge refused to comply, and although the Supreme Court persisted in its demands, the Criminal Judge, alleging that there was no appeal against the decisions of his court, continued firm in his position. The result was that the Supreme Court issued an order for his arrest for contempt of court, which was met by Judge Canonge ordering the arrest of five judges of the Supreme Court for the same offense. The operations of the two courts were suspended in consequence of their antagonism, but the matter was finally settled by the acknowledgment of the Supreme Court of the legality of Canonge's position.
Judge Canonge's wife died in Paris in 1830. From the marriage were born four sons; Alphonse, Hypo- lite, Placide and Ernest. All were educated in Paris at the Collège Louis le Grand. Alphonse, following in the footsteps of his father, became an eminent lawyer and was prominent as the Superintendent of Public Schools. Hypolite Canonge, also a brilliant scholar, died at the beginning of his career. Placide, who married Miss Forstall, is remembered by his son, Placide, who for half a century was the bright light of literature in New Orleans. He was the brilliant collaborator in the "Abeille," the only French newspaper in Louisiana, and infused into it a vitality that it lost at his death. He was also the hero of his time in the gay world of society. He
* Charles Palton Dimitry.
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wrote light comedies and proverbs in prose and in verse, which under his direction were acted in the private and exclusive salons of the society leaders, the rôles being filled by the beaux and belles of the "beau monde."
"Qui perd, gagne," a comedy in one act in prose, is remembered as one of the most successful.
"Le comte de Carmagnola," a drama of five acts, appeared in 1849, and was dedicated to Alfred de Musset; it was acted several times with great success in New Orleans.
Emma Canonge, married to Mr. George William Nott, lived to a great old age, surviving her husband so long that she was known only as the mother of her son, George William Nott. She was educated at a celebrated boarding school in Paris, where she was noted among her fellow pupils for her accomplish- ments. Like her brother, she possessed a mind of superior quality that never lost its Paris polish and finish. She remained a prominent member of society to her last years, preserving her beauty of face and distinction of manner, without a concession to time. In her loge at the opera, always in company with her son, her beautiful daughter-in-law, and her granddaughters, she was ever one of the distinctive features of the audience. It was in regard to her that a saying of Brunetière's was distorted from "what is not clear is not French," into "what is not charming is not Canonge."
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CHAPTER XXX
DUBOURG
DUBOURG-CHAREST DE LAUZON-BRINGIER TUREAUD
N TOT four families but four names; four strands, as it were, forming a single cord. We begin, as is due, with the most prominent one historically- Dubourg.
The ancestral line of the Dubourgs is set forth in a "maintenance de noblesse," dating from 1623, which was deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, in the eighteenth century by Pierre François Dubourg, "on the point of undertaking a long journey." The maintenance was discovered two centuries later by Henri Dubourg, an ex-officer of Hussars, who had been devoting many years to the study of his family. He and his younger brother Joseph (known later as the devoted adherent of the Comte de Chambord), belong to the Château de Morville branch of the family, the Seigneurs de Rochemont, near la Louvère, whence arises the Louisiana branch of the family.
The parent line runs back to the celebrated Anne Dubourg, Chancellor of Francis II, who was burned at the stake for favoring the Protestants in the six- eenth century, and from him to a great-grandfather, Hugues Dubourg, who lived in 1396. The Louisiana line begins with "M. Pierre François Dubourg,
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écuyer et Capitaine de Navire," the husband of Marguerite Vogluzan, who filed his "maintenance de noblesse" in Paris, before undertaking a long voyage. This was to St. Domingo, where he settled at Cap François and became proprietor of the great estate of Ste. Colombe.
Here, in 1766, was born his eldest son, the great Archbishop Dubourg-the first American Bishop, as he is called, of New Orleans. Pierre François Dubourg, known as the "Chevalier de Ste. Colombe," was born the following year and succeeded his father as proprietor of Ste. Colombe. He was educated in France and England. His estate being ruined and his home destroyed in the revolt of the slaves in 1793, he escaped to Jamaica, and there in 1797 married Demoiselle Elizabeth Etienne Charest de Lauzon, daughter of M. François Charest de Lauzon and of Demoiselle Perrine Therese de Gournay, his wife, who was the daughter of Michel Isaac de Gournay, Chevalier of St. Louis. All of them were described in the marriage contract as residents of the Quartier de la Marmelade, Island of St. Domingo, and now, by reason of the misfortunes of that colony, refugees in the town of Kingston, Jamaica.
The married pair came to the United States and after passing through New Orleans visited the elder brother, Abbé Dubourg, who lived in Baltimore, taking with them their little daughter Aglaé, then about nine years old. Leaving the child in Baltimore to be educated under the supervision of her uncle, the abbé, Pierre François Dubourg and his wife returned to New Orleans about 1800, and there
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made their home with the Chevalier Charest de Lauzon and his wife on Dumaine Street.
In New Orleans, Dubourg became, three years later, an American citizen and, profiting by the undeniable commercial advantages resulting to the city from its transfer to the United States, he set himself to the work of repairing his shattered for- tunes. He succeeded in this to the full measure of his best hopes as a merchant; and he rose to high position in the social as well as in the commercial world.
He attained the rank of Major in the Louisiana Volunteers, the most distinguished corps of the militia, and in the records of the Cathedral is described as Collector of the Port of New Orleans, though there seems to be no official confirmation of such an appointment. He acted as Consul of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and filled the lucrative posi- tion of agent for his rich son-in-law, Bringier, and for many other of the wealthy sugar planters.
Although a good and practising Catholic, like many other men of his church at this time in New Orleans, Dubourg was a Mason and was elected Worshipful Grand Master of the Perfect Union Lodge, the oldest in the State, which in 1812 he formed into a grand lodge combining all the others, including the Polar Star Lodge to which Carlos Gayarré, the father of the historian, belonged. Dubourg was re-elected Grand Master in 1813 and 1814.
Dubourg acquired a large estate just above the city, "Plaisance," it was called, which is the origin of the name of the Pleasant Street of to-day. Louis-
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iana Avenue, the handsome boulevard just above Pleasant Street, runs through what was once the center of the Dubourg property.
He died in New Orleans in 1830, leaving five daughters. His eldest daughter, Aglae, educated in Baltimore under the supervision of Mrs. Seton, the founder of the College at Emettsburg, was married to Doradou Bringier. His four other daughters were reared in the family home on Dumaine Street. Noémie married General Horatio Davis* of the Delaware family. Eliza married Seaman Field, Captain of the Thirty-second United States Infantry, of which regiment his father was Colonel. He became Colonel of the Louisiana Volunteers in the Mexican War and later Adjutant- General of the State of Louisiana. Their daughter married Bailly Blanchard, of New Orleans, long connected with the American Legation in Paris; his son was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His daughter, the Vicomtesse Henri Perrot, resides in France. Victoire married James Harvey Field, nephew of Seaman Field. Their descendants have moved away from New Orleans. Adèle married her cousin, John Thibaut. They have many descendants in Louisiana.
But the glory of the family, as has been stated, was the Archbishop, Louis Guillaume Valentin. He was sent to France when but two years old to be * General Horatio Davis, born in 1761, was made Colonel for his gallant defense of Lewes during the War of 1812. He was at one time Captain of the Port of New Orleans, and resided at "la Corderie," the famous old "Rope Walk" of early American New Orleans, just above the canal which was filled and turned into the handsome street called Canal, the shopping center of the city for half a century.
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