USA > Louisiana > The settlement of the German coast of Louisiana and the Creoles of German descent > Part 10
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4. Catharine Kleinpeter. She came with her husband, Emmerich Adam, from Maryland.
A. Cath. Adam, baptized 1775, married 1795 Jacob Muel- ler, from Maryland ;
B. Eve Adam, bapt. 1777, married 1796 Johann Thomas, son of Henry Th. and Barbara Ory, from Maryland ;
a. Georg Thomas, bapt. 1808.
C. Marie Adam married 1805 Georg Kraus, another Mary- lander's son ;
D. Mathias Adam, bapt. 1782;
E. Michael Adam, bapt. 1788.
5. Barbara Kleinpeter. She was the wife of Jacob Schlatter, from Maryland.
A. Cath. Schlatter, baptized 1777;
B. Michael Schlatter married 1814 Marie Jeanne Dar- denne, and, in 1820, Marie Pamela Hawkins.
a. Ernestine Schlatter married 1830 James Robert- son ;
b. Michael Schlatter married 1843 Lodiska De- sobry.
6. Eva Kleinpeter, the "native of Strassburg", married 1777 Jo- hann Rein ("Reine") "of America", which here stands for Maryland. Rein signed his name in German script, as did the Kleinpeters and the Ory family.
The name Kleinpeter appears in the records sometimes in the spelling "Cloinpetre" and "Clampetre." De Bow's "Review" says (Vol. XI., 616) that Johann Georg Kleinpeter was the first to grow successfully sugar cane on the highlands. In 1790 he erected the first cotton gin, and his son, Johann Baptist Klein- peter, in 1832, erected the first steam sugar mill.
THE ORY FAMILY.
Another large German family from Maryland was that of NIKOLAUS ORY, whose wife was ANNA STRASSBACH. She died in 1789, aged 72 years. All their children were born in Frederic county, Maryland. One of their sons, serving as a witness to a marriage in St. John the Baptist parish, signed his name in German script "Mattheis Ory, Zeig" (Zeuge=witness).
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
CHILDREN OF NIKOLAUS ORY AND ANNA STRASSBACH.
I. Mathias Ory (died 1820, aged 70 years). He married two months after the arrival of the Marylanders in Louisiana, on the IIth of October, 1774, Agnes Weber (she died 1841), daughter of Jean Weber and Weber and Cath. Traeger (Tre- gre), and left eleven children :
A. Antoine Ory ;
B. Pierre Ory ;
C. Jean Louis Ory ;
D. Jean Eugene Ory ;
E. Elie Ory ;
F. Francois Ory ;
G. Jean Baptiste Ory ;
H. Joseph Ory ;
I. Marie Rose Ory, who married 1798 Georg Kamper (Cambre) ;
K. Magdalena Ory, who married 1819 Pierre Himmel (Hymel) ;
L. Cath. Ory, who married 1813 Jean Bapt. Baudry.
2. Johann Ory, married 1781 Eva Hofmann, daughter of Jacob H. and Sophie Jacob. By this his first wife he had eight children :
A. Cath. Ory marry 1811 Francois Tircuit ;
B. Magdalena Ory married 1818 Denis Remondet ;
C. Louis Ory married 1814 Marie Picou ;
D. Marie Ory married 1814 Pierre Richard ;
E. Nik. Ory married 1821 A. Delphine Bourg ; a. Adele Ory married 1844 Pierre Savoy ;
b. Eugenie Ory married 1844 Paul Materne ;
F. Marianne Ory, baptized 1788;
G. Pierre Ory, baptized 1788;
H. Jean Baptist Ory married 1808 Magdalena Weber. In 1797 the same Johann Ory married Barbe Tircuit, from Canada, by whom he had five children more :
I. Juan Alexis Ory, born 1800;
K. Felicie Ory, born 1802;
L. Emerente Ory, born 1805, married 1827 Eugene Mat- tern ;
M. Francois Ory, born 1812, married 1827 M. Celestine Leche, daughter of Jean L. and Scholastica Keller ;
N. Barbara Ory, born 1797, married 1815 Jean Louis Deslattes.
3. Louis Ory. He married in 1791 Margarethe Wichner (Vicner), daughter of Adam W. and Anna Maria Traeger (Tregre). He died in 1800.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
A. Nikolaus Ory married in 1817 Ursula Charleville;
B. Michael Ory, baptized in 1797;
C. Louis Ory married 1816 Genevieve Schaf (Chauffe) ;
D. Jean Baptiste Ory, baptized 1793;
E. Marguerite Ory who married Geo. Traeger (Tregre). 4. Barbara Ory, the wife of Henry Thomas, from Maryland.
A. Henry Thomas, baptized 1774, married 1800 Isabella Kleinpeter, daughter of Johann K. and Cath. Sharp.
5. Magdalena Ory, the wife of Philipp Jacob Engelhardt, from Maryland. This name appears in official documents in the spelling "Hingle Hart" and "Inglehart".
6. Christine Ory, the wife of Nikolaus Mannhofer, from Mary- land.
A. Marie Mannhofer married in 1778 Lorenz Fellmann, son of Jos. F. and Anna Wiedemann. The Fellmann family still exists on Bayou Lafourche, but the name is now changed into "Falteman", though the progenitor of the family signed his name "Lorenz Fellmann".
7. Christian Michel Ory. Nothing is known of him but his name. His daughter Elise married 1788 one Juan Georg.
8. Catharine Ory, the wife of Paul Sharp, from Maryland.
A. Magdalena Sharp married in 1796 Joseph Kleinpeter, son of Johann Georg Kleinpeter and his wife Ger- trude.
B. Catharine Sharp married in 1781 Juan Petit Pier.
THE CREOLES OF GERMAN DESCENT.
The descendants of the founders of the German Coast and the descendants of all other Germans who came to Louisiana before the year 1803 are the "Creoles of German Descent."
Opinions as to the meaning of the word "Creole"38 differ in Louisiana. All seem to agree that the first Louisiana Creole was born in Mobile in 1704-the child of a French father, nation- ality of the mother unknown. According to the census of No- vember, 1707, the whole white population of Louisiana at that time consisted exclusively of people from France and French Canadians.
In 1719 the Germans began to arrive in Louisiana, and in-
38 "The word Creole is supposed to be a negro corruption of the Spanish criadillo, diminutive of criado, a servant, follower, client; literally one bred, brought up." (Century Dictionary.) In the Spanish West Indies the Euro- peans (Spaniards) ranked first, those born in the colony second.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
ternational marriages resulted. Now what was the status of the children born in Louisiana of German parents and of those chil- dren born from international marriages?
Captain Bossu, a French officer, who, about 1750, lived in Louisiana for several years, gives the following definition :
"We call Creoles the children born from a French father and a French or European mother."
Bossu thus insists upon the French nationality of the father, but the mother may be either of French or of other European nationality, including the German. This distinction excluded the children born in Louisiana of German parents and those children of international marriages where the father was not a French- man.
But international marriages and the marriages of inter- national children back into pure French families soon became so numerous that the French nationality of the father, demanded by Bossu, could no longer be insisted upon, and hence the children of the Germans had to be admitted into full membership among the Creoles.
Incontestible testimony for this interpretation is furnished by the Chevalier Guy Soniat Dufossat, a French nobleman, a marine officer, who came to Louisiana in 1751 and became the founder of the Soniat Dufossat family in Louisiana. His testi- mony, being that of a man who resided permanently in Louis- iana, is undoubtedly more reliable than that of Bossu, who was but a transient observer.
Chevalier Soniat Dufossat says in his "Synopsis of the His- tory of Louisiana," page 29:
"Creoles are defined to be the children of Europeans born in the colony."
This includes the children born of German parents in Louis- iana.
In 1765 and 1766 the Acadians came into the colony. They were descendants of Frenchmen who had emigrated to Canada. As Canada was a French colony, the Acadians were Creoles long before the first Louisiana Creole was born in Mobile. Being
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
*
very ignorant and simple, however, although good people, the Acadians were not called Creoles in Louisiana, and not consid- ered their equals by the Louisiana Creoles; for the Louisiana Creoles, at least in part, were descendants of officials of the king and of the Compagnie des Indes, and of officers, some of whom were members of noble families, whose family records date back to the time of the crusades. In their circles, as elegant education and as fine manners were to be found as in Paris.
Although the Acadians furnished Louisiana a number of ex- cellent men, such as Governor Mouton, Chief Justice Poché, and others, and although there are family connections between them and the other Creoles, still the majority of the Acadians form a more or less separate caste, and are called to the present day "Cajuns."
In 1769 the Spaniards came. Between them and the Louis- iana Creoles there was in the beginning the bitterest hatred. Later, however, came an era of reconciliation, during which the Spaniards, especially a considerable number of Spanish officers, married into Creole families. This disarmed the hatred, and the descendants of the Spaniards are now also considered Creoles.
With the year 1803, however, with the sale of Louisiana to the United States, the admission of new elements of the popula- tion into the Creole class ceased. Louisiana was now no longer a colony, and the large immigration setting in at that time from the United States into Louisiana did not come from Europe. The descendants of the Americans are therefore not called Creoles.
Yet the Americans continued to use the word "Creole" for commercial purposes, and to apply it to everything coming from Louisiana, negroes, animals, and goods of all kinds. "Creole negroes" are negroes born in Louisiana; and we hear likewise of "Creole chickens," "Creole eggs," "Creole ponies," "Creole cows," "Creole butter," and so forth. As a trade mark "Creole" signifies the home-raised or home-made, the better and fresher goods in contrast to those imported from the West, from the North, or from Europe.
After what has been said, we may now proceed to define the word "Creole :"
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
Creoles are the descendants of the white people who emi- grated from Europe to Louisiana during the colonial period, i. e., before 1803; and are properly only those born within the limits of the original territory of Louisiana.
Great stress is to be laid on the word "white," as there are many persons, especially in other parts of the United States, who, from lack of better information, suspect the Louisiana Creoles of having in their veins a tincture of African or of Indian blood, possibly both, along with the Caucasion. Such a suspicion may be justified as regards the Spanish Creoles of the West Indies, Central America, Mexico, and South America, for the Spanish colonists there did not always preserve the purity of their race.
But Louisiana was a French colony, where, as early as 1724, the celebrated "Black Code" was promulgated, which regu- lated the relations between the whites and the blacks, forbade marriages between them, and imposed heavy fines for violations. Even sexual intercourse outside of marriage was forbidden; and when a negress, a slave, had a child by her white master, the master had to pay a fine of 300 livres, and the negress with her child became the property of the hospital of New Orleans. In addition to the legal punishment, such connections were always followed by social ostracism and the refusal of the family to recognize the issue of such marriages and illicit relations; and to the present day every Creole family will absolutely refuse to receive any person on terms of equality whose family at any time, no matter how remote, was tainted by the blood of the black race. It is true that there are many colored people in Louisiana who bear names of Creole families, but this can, in many instances, be explained by the fact that slaves voluntarily freed by their owners, often adopted the family names of their former masters.
The definition of the word "Creole" given above is further supported by what Gayarre says :
"Creoles we call the children of European parents in Spanish or French colonies."
That some of the Creoles of the present generation are not satisfied with the author's definition was shown in 1886, when
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an attempt was made to found a "Creole Association" in New Orleans, upon which occasion it became necessary to define the word "Creole."
Henry Rightor in his "Standard History of New Orleans," page 195, says that he found in the papers of this association, which has since been dissolved, two definitions which undoubtedly represent the views of the founders of the "Creole Association." The first one is :
"The Louisiana Creole is one who is a descendant of the origi- nal settlers in Louisiana under the French and Spanish govern- ments, or, generally, one born in Louisiana of European parents, and whose mother-tongue is French."
As this definition, however, would have excluded the de- scendants of the Spanish colonists, who preserved their mother- tongue, a second attempt at a definition seems to have been made :
"A native descendant of European parents speaking French or Spanish."
It is, therefore, intended now to make the preservation of the mother-tongue the test, and the vice-president of the "Creole Association" made this clear when he, in the absence of the presi- dent, Chief Justice Poché, said in his inauguration speech :
"Let no man, repudiating the tongue in which his first prayers were lisped, join us."
If this view, to determine one's descent by the adherence to the mother-tongue, were correct, nothing could be said against calling now, as some partisans really do, all Creoles "French Creoles," for all Creoles speak French now. But then the ques- tion would necessarily occur :
What, then, if the descendants of the present Creoles in fifty, or one hundred years from now should no longer speak French, but English? Will there then be no more Creoles?
It stands to reason that one's mother-tongue cannot decide the question of one's descent. The mother-tongue never decides in matters of descent. In a succession case no judge would ever think of basing his decision upon the mother-tongue of the claim-
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ants, and of the many millions of people who immigrated from Europe to the United States no descendant ever forfeited his right of inheritance on account of his having adopted English in place of the mother-tongue of his family.
In matters of descent not the language but the blood is the vital matter, and the blood alone. We must therefore classify the Louisiana Creoles according to the blood of their progenitors, and say :
There are
Creoles of French descent,
Creoles of German descent,
Creoles of Spanish descent,
and still others, for instance Creoles of Irish descent (the Mc- Carty family) and Creoles of Scotch descent (the Pollock family ).
WHAT IS THE PROBABLE NUMBER OF THE CREOLES OF GERMAN DESCENT ?
This question may be answered in the words of the promise, given to Abraham : they are as numerous "as the sands on the sea shore."
The church registers of St. John the Baptist prove that the German pioneers were blessed with enormously large families. It seems that heaven wanted to compensate them in this manner for the many dear ones they had lost in the ports of France, on the high seas, in Biloxi, and during the first period of their set- tling in Louisiana. I found fourteen of them, sixteen, eighteen, and once even twenty-two children in a family .?
Yet, in spite of this great number of children there was no difficulty in providing for the numerous daughters. There was a great scarcity of women in Louisiana in early times. Indeed, as we have seen, prostitutes were gathered in Paris and sent to Louisiana to provide wives for the colonists. Few of these lewd women ever had any children, and their families became extinct in the second and third generation. See census of 1721 where it is stated that fourteen soldiers were married but that there was not a single child in these fourteen families.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
According to this census-when the Germans on the German Coast and those on the Arkansas River were not enumerated- there were only thirty women with 21 children for every hundred white men in the district of New Orleans. No wonder that the young Frenchmen, especially those of the better class, chose wives from among the German maidens, who were not only morally and physically sound and strong, but had also been reared by their German mothers to be good house-wives.
Of the Heidel (Haydel) family, whose descendants are so numerous that one of them told the writer: "My family alone can populate a whole parish (county) in Louisiana," female de- scendants of the first five generations married into seventy-four different French families, and it very seldom happened that there was but one marriage between two families. Remember that in these statistics are still wanting the entries of the many registers that were burned at the "Red Church" and those of the volumes burned with the cathedral of New Orleans in 1788.
Yes, even into the most exclusive circles, into the families of the officials and of the richest merchants the German girls married, they became the wives of French and Spanish officers of ancient nobility in whose descendants German blood still flows.
Only one example: female descendants of Karl Friedrich D'Arensbourg married into the families of de la Chaise, de la Tour, de la Grue, de Villeré, de L'Home, de Vaugine, d'Olhond, Laland d'Apremont, de Bosclair, de Livaudais, de Blanc, de la Barre, de Léry, de la Vergne, de Buys, Forstall, Trudeau, Perret, St. Martin, Montegut, Lanaux, Beauregard, Bouligny, Suze- neau, le Breton, Tricou, Duverjé, Urquhart, de Reggio, Rath- bone, Durel, Luminais, Bermudez.
When General O'Reilly, in the year 1769, forced the Spanish yoke upon Louisiana, he selected six of the most prominent citi- zens, whom he had shot in order to intimidate the hostile popu- lation. Of these six "martyrs of Louisiana," were not fewer than three who had wives from German families :
JOSEPH MILHET, the richest merchant of the colony, had as his wife Margarethe Wiltz, whose father was from Eisenach, in Thuringia, while her mother was born in Frankenthal, Saxony ;
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MARQUIS, the commander-in-chief of the insurgents, was married to a daughter of an Alsatian officer, Gregor Volant, from Landsee, near Strassburg, and
JOSEPH DE VILLERÉ, under whose command the Germans of the German Coast had marched against the Spanish in 1768, had a grandchild of Karl Friedrich D'Arensbourg as his wife.
THE GERMAN LANGUAGE AMONG THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.
As a rule, the German girls took German husbands, and whole families married into one another. To give but one ex- ample, it may be mentioned here that out of the ten children of one Jacob Troxler not fewer than eight married into the Heidel (Haydel) family. In such families the German lan- guage survived longest, and old Creoles of German descent have told me that their grandparents still understood and were able to speak the German language, although they were not able to read and write it, as there were never any German teachers on the German coast. I myself found among the old records a building contract of 1763 written in German, in which one Andreas Bluemler, a carpenter, obligated himself to build "for 2000 livres and a cow, a heifer and a black calf," a house for Simon Traeger (Tregre). A law-suit followed and so this building contract, together with the court records of the case were preserved to the present day.
In consequence, however, of the many family ties between the Germans and the French, and in consequence of the custom of the Creoles to marry into related families, French gradually became the family language even in those German families which had preserved the German language during three genera- tions.
Some few German words, however, can occasionally be heard even yet in the Creole families of German descent, especially words relating to favorite dishes, "which our grandmother was still able to cook, but which are no longer known in our families."
German names of persons, too, have been preserved, al- though in such a mutilated form that they can hardly be recog- nized. Thus the tradition in the Heidel (Haydel) family is that
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
the first Heidel born in Louisiana was called "Anscopp," with the French nasal pronunciation of the first syllable. I could not. get the original German for "Anscopp" until I compiled the genealogy of the family when I found that the first Heidel born in Louisiana was christened "Jean Jacques." Now I knew that they called him in the family "Hans Jacob," and that by throwing out the initial "h" and contracting "Hans Jacob" the name was changed into "Anscopp." In a similar manner "Hans Peter" was changed into "Ampete" and "Hans Adam" in to "Ansdam."
The German language disappeared quickest in families where a German had married a French girl. There no German was spoken at all, and even the Christian names customary in German families disappeared even as early as in the second gen- eration, as now also the French wife and her relatives had to be considered in the giving of names to the children. Instead of Hans Peter, Hans Jacob, Michl, Andre, and Matthis, the boys of the German farmers were now called : Sylvain, Honoré, Achille, Anatole, Valcourt, Lezin, Ursin, Marcel, Symphorion, Homer, Ovide, Onésiphore, and Onesime; and instead of the good old German names Anna Marie, Marianne, Barbara, Kath- arine, Veronika, and Ursula, the German girls were called : Hor- tense, Corinne, Elodie, Euphémie, Félicité, Melicerte, Désiré, Pélagie, Constance, Pamela; and after the French revolution each family had her "Marie Antoinette."
THE FATE OF THE GERMAN FAMILY NAMES AMONG THE CREOLES.
The changes which the German family names underwent among the Creoles are most regrettable. Without exception, all names of the first German colonists of Louisiana were changed, and most of the Creoles of German descent at the present time no longer know how the names of their German ancestors looked. Sometimes they were changed beyond recognition, and only by tracing some thirty families with all their branches through all the church records still available; by going through eighty boxes of official documents in the keeping of the "Louisiana Historical Society ;" by ransacking the archives of the city of New Orleans
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and of a number of country parishes, and by compiling the gene- alogies of these families has the author been able to recognize the German people of the different generations, to ascertain their original names, and to connect the old German settlers with the generation of the Creoles of German descent now living.
Various circumstances contributed to the changing of these names. The principal one was, no doubt, the fact that some of the old German colonists were not able to write their names. Their youth had fallen into the period of the first fifty years after the "Thirty Years' War" and into the last years of the war when the armies of Louis XIV of France devastated the Palatinate. In consequence of the general destruction and the widespread misery of that period, schools could hardly exist in their homes. It was therefore not the fault of these people if they could not read and write their names. Moreover, as the parents could not tell their children in Louisiana how to write their names, these children had to accept what French and Span- ish teachers and priests told them, and what they found in official documents. But French and Spanish officials and priests heard the German names through French and Spanish ears, and wrote them down as they thought these sounds should be written in French or Spanish. Moreover, Spanish and French officials and priests at that early time were not great experts in the grammar of their own language.
Finally, the early German colonists did not pronounce their own names correctly, but according to their home dialect.
To prove the last assertion three German names shall be considered : "Schaf," "Schoen," "Manz." In South Germany, where most of these people came from, "a" is pronounced broad, and almost approaches the "o." The South German peasant does not say "meine Schafe," but "mei' Schof." No wonder that the French officials spelled the name "Schaf" "Chauffe." In this form the name still exists in Louisiana.
"Schoen" was evidently pronounced like German "Schehn," for which reason the French spelled it "Chesne," "Chaigne," and "Chin."
And the name "Manz" for the same reason was changed into "Montz."
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
Many changes in the spelling of the German names follow the general "Law of the mutation of Consonants," called Grimm's Law, which may be roughly stated thus : "Consonants uttered by the same organ of speech are frequently interchanged."
Lip sounds : b, p, v, f, ph, (English) gh (as in the word "enough") ;
Tongue sounds : d, t, s, z, sch, (French) ch, che, c, and x;
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