USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 4
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
A day or two later Sparks read to a group of his friends his quite sufficient retort. It begins: "Dear Marigny," but concludes with :
"A warmer heart or weaker head, On earth, I own, I never met.
And on your tomb inscribed shall be
In letters of your favorite brass 'Here lies, O Lord! we grieve to see A man in form, in head an ass!' "
Marigny heard the reading, arched his brows and, without speaking, retired. An hour later he came to Sparks and said: "Suppose you write no more poetry? I shall stop. You can call me a villain, a knave, a great rascal, every great man has had that said about him. Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, General Jackson, all have been called so. You can say that; but I tell you, Sir, I do not like to be called an ass!"
"He was the aggressor," continued Sparks, "and though offended, was too chivalrous to quarrel. He had fought nineteen duels and I did not want to quarrel either."*
The last remnants of the great riches that Mar- igny inherited were lost by him. In scriptural language, his fortune took wings and flew away, as fortunes always do; unless, as Marigny says of cer- tain rich men of his day who kept their wealth, "they were born dead, since they never knew how to live."
When he was nearing seventy years of age, he wrote in self-defense against the sneering accusation of poverty and printed a pamphlet for private circulation :+
"To my fellow citizens:
"The calumnies," he says, "of which I have been the object for
* "The Memories of Fifty Years."-W. H. SPARKS, 1870.
t "Bernard Marigny's à ses Concitoyens." New Orleans, 1853. Pamphlet in T. P. Thompson Collection.
1
1
49
BERNARD DE MARIGNY
some time, the epithet of 'old fogy,' thrown at me by certain individuals, force me to give to the public the following facts."
He enumerates his services to the State in a very modest and moderate vein, and then follows his private explanation; a story of financial loss and failure, only too well known in Louisiana; a road to failure well trodden by sugar planters in the past.
"Certain persons," he writes, "have often asked the question: 'How did Mr. Marigny lose the fortune he possessed, of five or six hundred thousand dollars?' The answer to the question is as easy to make as to understand-it disappeared under the influence of events and circumstances which I could not control. In 1839, Messrs." (he names five gentlemen) "undertook the estimation of the value of my possessions, an estimation I judged necessary at the time of my departure for France. The amount of my fortune was fixed by these gentlemen at nine hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. My debts then amounted to three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, two hundred and eighty thousand of which repre- sented a debt to the Citizens Bank. I rallied my resources and asked for longer terms from my creditors, for I thought I could re-establish my fortune. I had a sugar plantation and a brickyard, but to develop the sugar plantation I needed to construct buildings, dig canals, provide equipments, and put in necessary machinery. To meet such great expenses, crops were needed. They failed in conse- quence of a crevasse in 1850, followed by another in 1851. That is not all: bricks fell to their lowest price" (he owned a large brick- yard which he worked with his slaves,) "and the price of sugar* was reduced from two and a half to three cents the pound.
"On this the Citizens Bank announced to me that if I did not decide to sell the plantation, they would seize it. I was, therefore, forced to sell at a very moderate price. The Citizens Bank, naturally
*A cause of the financial distress in Louisiana was the tariff which had depreciated the value of American sugar in proportion as the duty had been reduced on the foreign article. In 1837, one hundred and thirty-six sugar plantations were given up; numerous bankruptcies followed. Lands could no longer be sold; fortunes based on them fell even more suddenly than they had risen .- Annals of Louisiana.
50
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
took possession of all the products of the sugar house and of the brickyard.
"Calculating upon a fine crop in 1851, which I could have made if it had not been for the crevasse, counting also upon an office (that of Mortgage and Conveyance), whose commission did not expire until February 10th, 1855, I had contracted a debt of eight thousand dollars in order to put my sugar house in a condition to work profitably. But my hope was disappointed.
"In 1851 the crops failed. There remains to me, therefore, to-day only my office, which, as I have explained, expires in 1855. I have still a few slaves, but their value is partly covered by the (para- phernal) rights of Madame de Marigny, and the returns from their hire pays the taxes and expenses of her house. As for my other property, it barely covers what is owing to the Citizens Bank."
The site of the great Marigny canal on Champs Elysées, which in colonial days had fed a sawmill that poured gold into Pierre Philippe's coffers, was bought by the Pontchartrain Railroad. Fontaine- bleau went from Marigny and all his land in Mande- ville, with the exception of one small house, which still enjoys local fame as the last residence of the whilom Lord of all Mandeville, to which he would still come from New Orleans seeking recreation and refreshment.
Estrangement from his wife was followed by estrangement from his children and grandchildren; the friends of his convivial days declined with his fortunes. He retired to an apartment in one of the houses which he could still claim as his own (French- man Street, near Royal, still standing), a plain three- story brick building kept by a colored housekeeper. And here, in sight of the great mansion of Pierre Philippe de Marigny, his father, where he was born, and where took place the great and stately entertain- ments that made the name of Marigny famous in the past, in two rooms furnished with remnants of his
51
BERNARD DE MARIGNY
old furniture, the portraits of his ancestors on the wall; on the sideboard, the silver service presented by Louis Philippe, afterwards sold to the mint by weight, he passed his days like some old sailing vessel, its stormy voyages over, safe in the harbor. In this seclusion he penned his pamphlet, "Bernard Marigny a ses Concitoyens," in 1853. It concludes with the lines:
"Nearly seventy years old, with no fortune whatever, I ignore the destiny that awaits me. However painful it may be, I will support it with calm and resignation."
In a postscript he adds:
"Believing it to be my duty, before descending into the tomb, to make known the results of more than forty years of minute research into the history of my country, I announce to my readers that I am at present writing a work, already well advanced toward completion. Its title will be 'Reflections upon the History of Louisiana, under France, Spain and the American Government.' "
The work did not advance beyond a sketch, which was published in pamphlet form in 1854. It bears the following dedication:
"To the Honorable Members of the General Assembly of Louisiana. "Gentlemen:
"Unforseen vicissitudes having deprived me of a considerable fortune, I have been compelled to abandon the political career which had been to me peculiarly attractive. Consigned to an office (mortgage and conveyance) where my duties require my presence, I have devoted a few hours of my leisure to a work which, I trust, will at least show my attachment to my native land of Louisiana, as well as my devotion to the United States of America. This work is dedicated to the General Assembly of Louisiana. Be pleased, gentlemen, to accept it as a humble pledge of my patriotism. "I remain with respect,
"Your obt. servt.,
"BERNARD MARIGNY."
52
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
It closes with words that cannot fail to touch the hearts of a Louisianian, or indeed of any lover of a "good sport" of the old-fashioned kind.
"Having nearly attained the age of seventy, having lost my fortune and independence, it is an arduous task which I undertake. Reader, I solicit in advance your indulgence in view of the motives which renovate my strength and make me almost forget my troubles. I venture to hope that Providence will aid me, and that my moral energies will not be wanting. I also hope, my beloved countrymen, that you will say at some future day: 'We have read the work of old Bernard Marigny-we have recognized therein his patriotism.' To noble hearts the native land is ever dear!"
This tender commitment of his work to posterity stays the hand of a Louisiana critic, which would not if it could dissect it coldly, any more than it would use the scalpel upon the body of an ancestor.
A prettier historical legacy than "old Bernard Marigny's" to his countrymen has rarely been made. Well may Alcée Fortier declare that it was received with almost filial respect."
Beginning with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, he explains, in his shrewd personal way, the causes of the American Revolution, and the subse- quent political evolution of the United States, its growth in power and in moral influence. He urges the annexation of Cuba, for reasons contained in his statistical study of the island. Strange to say, as Fortier remarks, although writing only seven years before the Civil War, for all his political wisdom, he did not foresee the bloody chasm that lay across the path of his country. He was confident, he says, that the compromise of 1850 had allayed the pas- sions of the United States.
*Louisiana Studies. 1894.
53
BERNARD DE MARIGNY
In his relation of Louisiana history, he "drank of the brook in his way," and he passes the refreshing draught on to his readers. The faded documents in the archives of the Louisiana Historical Society, that historical students study to-day, he knew prac- tically in their living form. From Bienville to Aubry, from Ulloa to the old and infirm Salcedo and Casacalvo, "the man of no ability," he knew every man of importance, either from his own personal intercourse with them, or as they lived in the memory of his father or of his father's father.
The preliminaries of the cession of Louisiana was fresh in the minds of men whom he knew in France and New Orleans. He was a familiar of Laussat; Lafayette was an old friend, and so were Jackson and Henry Clay and Sam Houston.
Marigny relates among other personal reminis- cences, a conversation held with Louis Philippe in 1837, when the King, addressing him as "mon cher Bernard," asked his opinion about the political condition of Texas, and whether the new republic would be able to withstand the army of Mexico. Marigny responded that the King, who had traveled all through the United States and knew its power and population, was well able to answer his own question; but he gave his reasons for believing in the future of Texas as a member of the Union. The King listened attentively and observed to him: "What you say is very reasonable." The Republic of Texas was shortly afterwards recognized.
"Louis Philippe," comments Marigny, "was a wise and enlightened King. I have seen but few men who entertained a greater admiration for our institutions and high opinionare of the American
54
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
people. Louis was really a man, under the garb of royalty; he was a republican King."
The Louisiana Assembly passed a vote accepting his historical sketch, and ordered one thousand copies printed; five hundred in English and five hundred in French, for which M. de Marigny was to be paid one dollar apiece.
Marigny lost his office in 1855, and thenceforth lived on the crumbs of his former possessions, selling here and there small pieces of property that had lain, as it were, unnoticed at his feet. Having lost all, he had nothing more to lose in the Civil War. In his humble home he escaped the rude hand of the Mili- tary Governor of the city that fell so heavily upon his descendants, and the descendants of his friends and the relatives about him. He has left no record of himself during these hard years of the war, nor of the harder ones of reconstruction that followed the war. The breaking up of old ties; the inroad of strange men and strange measures; the wrecking of old estates and of hopes, old and new, left him appar- ently, for once in his life, speechless.
He passed his evenings in the congenial circle of the family of the son of his old friend, Governor Clai- borne, where he devoted himself, as he had devoted himself through life, to the ladies; amusing them with his good stories, his wit and his puns. Occasionally he recited for them, in the fine manner learned in France from Talma, in his youthful days, always choosing some beautiful lady to address as queen. Never sad, never complaining, ever the polished, courteous, dignified old French nobleman of the old régime, who for all his gay wit and persiflage was never known to speak lightly of religion, or its sacred
55
BERNARD DE MARIGNY
practices. He dressed as simply as any citizen of moderate means, but he always wore broad silver buckles on his shoes.
The handsome residence of the Claibornes faced Washington Square, the ground which Marigny had presented to the city; its lower boundary was the Champs Elysées, named so fancifully by him in the days when his ideas were fanciful and poetical.
After his evening visit, accompanied always by the young son of the Claiborne family (now Judge Charles F. Claiborne), he would skirt Washington Square and cross the Champs Elysées and wend his way a block further on to his home on Frenchman Street, talking to his youthful friend of his old days and sowing many a good story in the fertile, appre- ciative mind. Always lively and interesting, he never let fall, however, a word or hint relating to his writings or to any serious preoccupation.
Of a morning or afternoon, he loved to saunter up Royal, Chartres, or Bourbon Streets, which held the houses so full of gayety and pleasure to him in the past, and which must have lain in his memory, like some fine opera; with beautiful scenery, gallant actions, charming actresses, lovely figurines, fascina- ting dancers.
In old days he always rode in a carriage, now he went on foot, sometimes essaying an omnibus. It is related that he never found an omnibus driver who would accept fare from him. "No! No! M. de Marigny, not from you!"
In passing a house, if he heard a piece of music beautifully played on the piano inside (one heard such playing then oftener than to-day) he would stop and listen. Music held him in bondage in old age as
56
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
in youth. Then, mounting the little wooden steps, he would knock on the door or ring. When the servant opened the door: "Say it is M. de Marigny." He would enter without ceremony and sit in a chair, making a sign to the pianist to continue, which she was glad to do. M. de Marigny! Whom would any woman rather play to?
Men would stop on the streets to look at him; "old Bernard Marigny!" a relic of Colonial Days, walking the streets, at ninety! Handsome, active, erect, with intellect clear and vigorous, manners courtly; the hero who, in current parlance, could throw away thirty thousand dollars on a bagatelle, but who would never consent to bring a lawsuit against a fellow citizen.
So, on the 4th of February, 1868, in his usual gayety and friendliness, on his daily promenade, greeting those who saluted him with kindly cor- diality, his foot tripped on the pavement. He stumbled and fell heavily, striking his head. Death ensued almost instantly.
His body was conveyed to his apartment on Frenchman Street and there, in the habiliments for the grave, Bernard de Marigny was laid underneath the portraits of his family and his royal friends. "It was impossible," writes the reporter who chronicled the event for a daily paper, "to gaze unmoved upon the aged form, the last of the Creole landed aris- tocracy, the representative of the strength, the follies and wealth of a passed generation, one who knew how to dispose of a great fortune with con- temptuous indifference."
In cold, inclement weather, next day, the funeral took place. An extended line of carriages headed
57
BERNARD DE MARIGNY
the long and imposing procession which, passing Washington Square, slowly proceeded up Royal Street. It stopped not at the Cathedral, as ex- pected, but went out to the old St. Louis Cemetery to which the tomb of his first wife had been trans- ferred.
People on the sidewalk looked with solemnity upon the hearse that carried him who for seventy- five years had represented without a rival the life, gayety, wit, polish, refinement and luxuriance of society; who, for all his wealth in youth, died poor yet left behind him nothing to put a stain upon his proud escutcheon!
He once wrote an epitaph to be placed on his tomb and confided it to a friend, but when the time came to use it, the friend could not find it. He could only remember that it was well written and charac- terized by originality, simplicity and wit; not osten- tatious nor self-flattering. The epitaph was never found, nor the other valuable relics and papers left by him.
His will, dated July 8th, 1865, contained the fol- lowing requests:
"I ask that my body shall be placed in the tomb of my first wife, in the old cemetery facing the Carondelet basin; that a tomb with two compartments be made there of brick, plastered with cement.
"My grandson, Gustave de Marigny, is the head of my family, being the son of Prosper de Marigny, by my first marriage with Maria Jones. My testamentary executor will remit to him my family portraits, the engravings representing the Orleans family, all my family papers, the letters of my ancestors, and correspondence, particularly with the Duke of Orleans, who became King Louis Philippe, and the letters of that King."
By his union with Mathilde Morales, Marigny had five children:
58
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
* (1) Antoine James (known as "Mandeville" Marigny; born 1811, died 1890. He mar- ried Miss Sophronia Claiborne, daughter of Charles Cole Claiborne, first American Governor of Louisiana. She died in 1890. The three children born to them died with- out issue.
(2) Rosa de Marigny; born 1813, married to M. de Sentmanat, of Mexican fame. They had three daughters; one married Nelvil Soulé, son of Pierre Soulé; the other mar- ried Allain Eustis (descendants living in Europe); and the third married Philippe Villeré, no issue. Rosa de Marigny re- married, in 1832, Enould de Livaudais; no issue by this marriage.
(3) Angela de Marigny; born 1817, married Mr. F. Peschier, Swiss consul in New Or- leans. They had several children; one of the daughters married Leon Joubert de Villemarest of New Orleans.
(4) Armand de Marigny.
(5) Mathilde de Marigny; born 1820, married Albin Michel de Grilleaud, son of the French consul of that name in Louisiana. Descendants are living in Europe, where they still enjoy the highest social preëminence.
By the death of Prosper de Marigny, great-grand- son of Bernard de Marigny and Mary Jones, his first wife, in Mandeville, 1910, the name of Marigny became extinct in Louisiana, where it had held sway for over two hundred years.
*Biographical and Genealogical Notes concerning the family of Philippe de Mandeville, Ecuyer Sieur de Marigny, 1709-1910. J. W. Cruzat. Louisiana Historical Society Publications, Vol. V.
CHAPTER IV
BAYOU ST. JEAN-THE DREUX FAMILY
TT may be remembered that on Iberville's first reconnoissance of the Mississippi River in 1699, he stopped at a landing recommended by his Indian guides and was conducted over a short path to a little bayou which floated their pirogues to the lake, where, in truth, Iberville could see his ships in the distance. This incident decided the site of the future city on the Mississippi, the guiding star of Iber- ville and, later, of Bienville's ambitions.
Bienville in course of time adopted this shorter route from the lakes to the river, in preference to the longer and somewhat dangerous journey through the mouth of the river. From his name, Jean, the useful little bayou received its name of St. Jean, and when the city was founded some years later, it was by this back door, as it were, that new arrivals entered it.
This was the road that Le Page Du Pratz was ad- vised by Bienville to take when he came to locate his concession for a farm. His ship anchored at Dauphin Island,* and he says that as soon as the Te Deum had been sung, in thankfulness for the safe voyage, the passengers and their effects were landed. In a few days he found means of transportation and hastened the departure of his party "with as much joy as diligence."
* "Sieur de Bienville." Grace King.
59
60
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
His boat followed the gently curving line of the Gulf Coast, passing Pascagoula, Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, leaving Horn Island, Ship Island and Cat Island behind them on the left-the usual and always beautiful itinerary of the summer yacht. Going through the Rigolets, camping en passant on the Isle à Coquilles, he entered Lake Pontchartrain. Pointe aux Herbes and Bayou St. Jean dropped behind them; Bayou Schoupique, which was guarded by a fort, received them. The boats ascended until they came to an old village of the Colapisas, "the nation of those who see and hear," where they found Jean Lavigne, a Canadian, established. Dupratz sought the location he desired; not there, however, but on the Bayou St. Jean, a half league from the capital.
The Bayou St. Jean offers the visitor to-day the same attractions that induced Le Page Dupratz to stop on its banks, with the soft placid aspects of its shores; the easy, somnolent serenity of its tranquil waters, too tranquil to show a current; the drooping willows hanging over it; the sturdy oaks standing on the high land behind them. The scenery woos the eye and speaks to the heart to-day, as it did then; and, as in Dupratz's time, it charms home seekers into preferring its beauty to a more profitable venture financially in the city. The sky may not be bluer overhead there, foliage may not be greener, flowers not bloom more spontaneously-but they seem so to the denizen of New Orleans, who loves to leave the streets and their car lines behind him, and wander along its quaint, pleasant paths.
The concessionaires on Bayou St. Jean throve from the very beginning, and became noted as much for
61
BAYOU ST. JEAN-THE DREUX FAMILY
their wealth as for their air of aristocratic supremacy. Their houses were the first to show a pleasing devia- tion from the absolutely plain structures in the city. They were built with two stories, and of brick laid between heavy posts, "briquetté entre poteau," as it was called then.
By the end of the century, visitors were taken out on the Bayou St. Jean Road, to see the handsome villas there and their gardens. During the summer citizens were wont to go there for fresh air and bathing-incredible as it may seem to-day. Tradi- tion says that the waters were then clear and limpid, showing a firm white sand bottom; the bottom of the bayou is now soft mud, the stagnant waters are dark and have an evil repute for producing malarial fever.
In the Census of 1726, Bayou St. Jean is men- tioned as an "embarkation to reach Biloxi, Pasca- goula and Mobile." It numbered of masters 23, servants 6, slaves 10, horses 6, cultivated tracts 154. The neighboring village, Gentilly, settled at the same time, had gone far ahead in its prosperity. It numbered of masters 21, servants 50, slaves 40, horned cattle 139, horses 11, cultivated tracts 291.
The authors of this prosperity, the "Sieurs de Gentilly," as they were called, were the locally celebrated brothers Mathurin and Pierre Dreux. Their names are seldom met separately. The record of the family, still carefully preserved, begins bravely with the name of the Comte de Dreux, fifth son of Louis VI of France (1108-1113) and quietly travels down across the names of Kings of France and Dukes of Brittany, through centuries, until it comes to the Marquis Dreux-Brezé, Grand Master of Ceremonies under Louis XVI, to whom was ad-
62
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
dressed Mirabeau's thundering answer, "Go and tell your master that we are here by the will of the peo- ple, and will leave only by force of arms!"
The Louisiana branch of the family begins with Mathurin Dreux, born in 1698 at Savigny, Province of Anjou, France; son of Louis Dreux-Brezé and Françoise Harant. He emigrated to Louisiana in 1718, during the period of inflation by the Company of the West. According to family tradition, he was one of the men who accompanied Bienville, when he actually landed on the site of New Orleans. It is said that he directed the clearing away of the forest and alignment of the streets; and that he signed the Procès Verbal, sent to France by Bienville.
Like other friends of Bienville, and like Bienville himself, he obtained, "in recognition of his serv- ices," according to the accepted formula, a large and valuable concession of land, to be located by himself.
He did not, however, follow Bienville's example and select a location for plantations, either above or below the future city. With a shrewder eye for business, he chose a tract richly wooded, lying along the Bayou St. Jean, and extending over a ridge that rose from the flat land and ran like a fortification across the rear of the city. It was the highest land in the region, well above the constant danger of over- flow from the Mississippi or from the bayou when flooded by the waters from the lake; a tract of land that to this day maintains its reputation for beauty, salubrity and fertility .*
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.