USA > Louisiana > The settlement of the German coast of Louisiana and the Creoles of German descent > Part 4
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These Germans therefore needed assistance until they could help themselves, for not another livre was to be expected from the bankrupt John Law; and the concession must be given up unless the company or some one else should step in to provide for those people.
It seems incomprehensible that the directors of the com- pany in Louisiana, under these circumstances, should have waited from the 4th of June to beyond the middle of November of the same year to decide to take Law's concessions over ; and even after they had decided to manage the concessions in the future for their own account, the resolution was not carried out, as Law's agent on the Arkansas, Levens, refused to transfer the
13 Law left Paris on the 10th of December, 1720, for one of his estates six miles distant. There Madame Brié lent him her coach, and the Regent furnished the relays and four of his men for an escort. Thus Law travelled towards the Belgian frontier. Returning her coach, Law sent the lady a letter containing a ring valued at 100,000 livres. (Schuetz, Leben und Char- akter der Elisabeth Charlotte, Herzogin von Orleans, Leipzig, 1820.)
14 This statement of La Harpe cannot be accepted as correct. Law left France about the middle of December and the news of his flight spread rapidly. The ship La Mutine arrived in Louisiana on the 3d of February; the four pest ships which sailed from L'Orient on the 24th of January- six weeks after Law's flight-arrived in March; the ship St. Andrè, which sailed April 13th, came towards the end of May, and a few days later came La Durance, which sailed April 23d, and still no news of the disaster? The ship Portefaix with D'Arensbourg on board, which arrived on the 4th of June, may have brought some instructions concerning the steps to be taken in the matter, but the first news must have reached the colony much earlier.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
business to the company or to continue it in the company's name. Furthermore, as this man, in spite of his refusal to carry out orders, was left undisturbed in his position,15 it happened that the German engagés in the meantime received help neither from one side nor from the other to bridge them over to the harvesting time of their first crop, but were forced to ask help of their only friends, the Arkansas and the Sothui Indians. Finally, when help from this last source failed, and small-pox broke out among the Indians and the Germans, they were forced to give up all and abandon the concession.
THE GERMANS LEAVE LAW'S CONCESSIONS EN MASSE, APPEAR IN NEW ORLEANS, AND DEMAND PASSAGE FOR EUROPE.
According to tradition, the Germans on the Arkansas re- solved 16 to abandon Law's concession and to go down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Only forty-seven persons remained behind, whom La Harpe met there on the 20th of March, 1722, when he installed Dudemaine Dufresne, but when La Harpe re- turned from his other mission, viz., the search for the imaginary "Smaragd Rock" in Arkansas, these too had departed.
The arrival of the flotilla of the Germans from the Arkan- sas River must have been a great surprise for the people of New Orleans. This city was at that time in its very infancy, and seems to have looked more like a mining camp than a town. The engineer Pauget, who went there in March, 1721, to lay out the streets, found in the bush only a small number of huts covered with palmetto leaves or cypress bark; and the Jesuit Charlevoix wrote from New Orleans on the 10th of January, 1722, i. e., immediately before the arrival of the Germans from the Arkansas, that New Orleans was a wild, lonely place of about a hundred huts, and almost completely covered by trees and bushes. He found two or three houses, it is true, but such as would not have been a credit to any French village, a large wooden warehouse, and a miserable store, one-half of which had been lent to the Lord for religious services; but, he said, the
15 He was replaced only in March, 1722, by Dudemaine Dufresne.
16 It seems to have been at the end of January or in February, 1722.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
people want the Lord to move out again and to accept shelter in a tent. Indeed, New Orleans contained at the taking of the census of November 24th, 1721, excluding soldiers and sailors, only 169 white persons, and the Germans who came down from the Arkansas must have outnumbered them considerably.
The surprise created by their arrival must have been a very unpleasant one for the officials of the Compagnie des Indes. Indeed, the Germans did not come to thank them for favors, and is it to be imagined that some very plain words were spoken by the Germans to the officials of the company ; in fact, it is said that Governor Bienville interceded, and when they demanded passage back to Europe, tried his best to induce them to remain.
The results of the conferences were : first, that the Germans from the Arkansas were now given rich alluvial lands on the right bank of the Mississippi River about twenty-five miles above New Orleans, on what is now known as "the German Coast," comprising the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist, where, in 1721, two German villages, of which we shall hear more, already existed ; secondly, that the agent on the Arkansas, Levens, was deposed; and, thirdly, that provisions were sent to the Germans who still remained there.
THE FAMILY OF D'ARENSBOURG.
The family of Charles Fred. D'Arensbourg is very important in the history of the German Coast, and as doubts existed until now as to its real descent, it will be treated here at some length.
The former Swedish officer who had charge of the German immigrants of the ship "Portefaix" and who became the com- mander of the German Coast, signed his name :
Darensbisung mm
and the tradition among his descendants is that he was a noble- man.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
Examining his signature, we notice at the end of the first letter a decided downward stroke, making it appear as if this downward stroke was intended to serve as an apostrophe, and that the man really intended to write "D'arensbourg", a form of name which would support the tradition of noble lineage.
The names of the older nobility being usually names of places, we shall now consider the only two places by the name of "Arensburg", which exist in Europe: one in the principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, Germany, and the other on the island of Oesel in the Bay of Riga, province of Livonia, Russia. As the principality of Schaumburg-Lippe is in Germany, and as the Russian province of Livonia was founded by Germans at Riga, in 1200, and belonged to the territory of the "German Knights" for centuries, and as the nobility of Livonia and the other Baltic provinces have kept their German blood pure to the present day, a noble family of that name would in either case be of the Ger- man nobility, and the original form of the name would be "von Arensburg".
As our Louisiana D'Arensbourg was a former Swedish officer, and as the town of Arensburg on the island of Oesel in the Bay of Riga, together with the whole province of Livonia, belonged to Sweden up to the year 1721, the year of Chas. Fred. D'Arensbourg's emigration to Louisiana, and as thirty other Swedish officers are said to have come with him to Louisiana in 1721, it might be assumed that our Louisiana D'Arensbourg be- longed to the Riga branch of the German noble family "von Arensburg", and that, at the cession of Livonia to Russia, in 1721, our D'Arensbourg, together with thirty compatriots, who all had fought on the Swedish side against Russia, preferred exile to Russification, and emigrated to Louisiana in the year 1721.
Wishing to obtain more definite, and, if possible, official in- formation as to the descent of this D'Arensbourg, the present writer addressed the Imperial German Consul in Riga, and this gentleman, "Herr Generalconsul Dr. Ohneseit", kindly submitted the questions to the chancellory of the "Livlaendische Ritterschaft, Ritterhaus, Riga", where the resident "Landrat" ordered re-
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
searches with the result that the name of "von Arensburg" could be found neither in the church records of Livonia nor in the records of the "Livlaendische Hofgericht", to whose jurisdiction the island of Oesel belonged during the Swedish dominion and even later. Both the archivist and the notary of the "Livlaen- dische Ritterschaft" write furthermore that no family by the name of "von Arensburg" can be found in the literature re- lating to the Swedish, the Baltic, the Finnish or the German nobility. This settles the question of noble lineage.
"Herr von Bruningh," the archivist of the "Ritterschaft," however, agrees with the author, that "D'Arensbourg" points to the island of Oesel as the home of the man. It was also sug- gested that the man may have added "d'Arensbourg" to his fam- ily name (which must have been "Karl Friedrich") in order to indicate his birth place, or place of last residence or garrison, or in order to distinguish his family (there being many Fried- richs) from other branches of the same name, "which was not seldom done." Indeed, there were even several Friedrich fam- ilies in Louisiana, and the census of 1724 mentions two of them, Nos. 2 and 42 in that census. In this case the change of name must have taken place before the departure from France, since the commission held by the Swedish officer was issued in the · name of "Charles Fred. D'Arensbourg."
The following is offered as a possible solution: The former Swedish officer "Karl Friedrich," a German and a native or former resident of Arensburg on the island of Oesel, having determined to emigrate to Louisiana rather than become a Rus- sian subject, applied to the Compagnie des Indes for a position in the colony, and in his petition, written in French, signed his name "Charles Friedrich," and added to it "d'Arensbourg" to indicate his birthplace, or place of last residence or garrison. The French officials, mistaking "d'Arensbourg" for his family name, issued his commission to "Charles Frederic d'Arens- bourg;" and it being thus entered on the books of the com- pany, and the man being known and addressed officially in that way, he was forced to adopt this as his family name.
The wife of D'Arensbourg, too, is said to have been a
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
Swedish lady, and her name, according to our historians, was "Catherine Mextrine." This is surely an error, for the author finds that D'Arensbourg was a single man when he came to Louisiana, in 1721. At least the census of 1724 mentions him as a bachelor, aged thirty-one, though the census of 1726 re- ports him as having a wife and one child. D'Arensbourg was, therefore, married in Louisiana, and we shall prove that his wife's name was neither "Catherine" nor "Mextrine," and that she was not from Sweden, but from "Schwaben" (Würtem- berg).
The last three letters "ine" of the name "Mextrine" alone betray her as a German woman. It is the suffix "in," which was formerly added to the family names of married ladies in Germany. We had a German poetess by the name of "Kar- schin," the wife of a tailor named "Karsch;" the wife of a Mr. Meyer used to be called "Frau Meyerin," and I still remember that old people used to call my good mother "Frau Deilerin."
The French officials in Louisiana used to add an "e" to the "in" in order to retain the German pronunciation of the suffix. Thus the church records of Louisiana have :
Folsine, i. e., the wife of Foltz,
Lauferine, i. e., the wife of Laufer, and Chefferine, i. e., the wife of Schaefer.
The "x" in Mextrine is a makeshift for the German hiss- ing sound of "z" or "tz," for which there is no special sign in French, "z" in French sounding always like a soft "s."
In proof of all this a facsimile of the signature of "Cather- ine Mextrine" is given here, which the author found in the mar- riage contract entered into between her granddaughter, Marie de la Chaise, and François Chauvin de Lery on the 23d of July, 1763 :
m: Matzerin
It will be noticed that she signed her name without the final French "e," just as a German woman of that time would have written the feminine form of the name "Metzer."
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
Her family name, then, was "Metzer," and according to family tradition she was from Wurtemberg. The present writer is inclined to think that she was the daughter of one Jonas "Mes- quer" (French spelling), who, according to the passenger lists, sailed with his wife and five children on the 13th of April, 1721, on board the ship "St. André" from L'Orient for Louisiana.
In the marriage contract of her eldest son, who married Françoise de la Vergne on the 18th of June, 1766, the mother of the bridegroom is called by the French notary "Marguerite Mettcherine." Here we also have her Christian name which corresponds with the initial of her own signature. It is not "Catherine" but "Marguerite," a favorite German name for women.
Karl Friedrich D'Arensburg served for more than forty years as commander and judge of the German Coast of Louis- iana, sharing alike the joys and hardships of his people, and on one occasion, at least, taking an important part in political mat- ters.
It is the proper place here to mention the part he, then a man of seventy-six years of age, played in the rebellion against the Spanish in 1768.
Ulloa, the Spanish governor, who had come to Louisiana in March, 1766, to take possession of the colony in the name of the King of Spain, to whom France had ceded Louisiana in 1763, had found the population very hostile; and, as he had only ninety soldiers with him, he did not formally take possession of Louis- iana, but requested the French commander to hold over and act under Spanish authority until more Spanish troops should arrive. This interim lasted until the 28th of October, 1768, when the people rose and Ulloa was forced to retire to Havana.
During this year Ulloa had taken from the Germans of the German Coast provisions to the value of 1500 piastres to feed the Acadians, who had but recently come into the colony, and were not able yet to sustain themselves.17
11 On the 28th of February, 1765, 230 persons, natives of Acadia (Nova Scotia) arrived in Louisiana. They came from San Domingo, where they had found the climate too hot, and were in great misery. Their whole for-
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
Hearing of the ferment all over the colony, and fearing that the Germans might make the nonpayment of their claims a pretext to join the conspirators, Ulloa, on the 25th of October, 1768, sent a man by the name of Maxant with 1500 piastres to the German Coast to settle the indebtedness of the Spanish government.
In a letter dated Havana, December 4th, 1768, one day after his arrival from New Orleans ("Notes and Documents," page 892) Ulloa says :
"In the early morning after Maxant's departure Lafrenière and Marquis sent Villeré and André Verret in pursuit of Maxant to prevent the remitting of the money to the Germans, fearing that if he should satisfy them they might no longer have any motive to join the cause of the conspirators.
"Maxant arrived at the habitation of D'Arensbourg for whom I had given him a letter and when he delivered it to him he found him to be so different a man from what he expected him to be-in spite of his great age determined to defend liberty and neither wanting to be a subject of the king (of Spain), nor the country to belong to the king.
"Maxant was arrested by Verret on the place of Cantrelle, the father-in-law of another Verret and Commander of the Acadians, where he was much maltreated. Verret declared later that he received the order to arrest Maxant from Villeré, Lafrenière and Marquis."
Ulloa in this letter expresses the belief that D'Arensbourg had been influenced by his relatives, Villeré, the commander of the German militia, and de Léry, the commander of the militia in Chapitoulas. It is true that Villeré was married to Louise de la Chaise, and François Chauvin de Léry to Marie de la Chaise, both granddaughters of D'Arensbourg, that de Léry was a first cousin to Chauvin Lafrénière, the attorney general of the col-
tune consisted of only 47,000 livres in Canadian paper, which the people of Louisiana refused to accept. Focault demanded permission from Paris to reimburse them, gave them 14,000 livres worth of merchandise and provisions, and sent them to Opelousas and the country of the Attakapas.
On the 4th of May, 1765, 80 persons from Acadia arrived and went to Opelousas.
On the 5th of May, 1765, 48 Acadian families arrived and were sent to Opelousas.
On the 16th of November, 1766, 216 Acadians arrived from Halifax. They were sent to "Cahabanoce," the present parish of St. James. These were the ones who received the provisions which the Spanish government took from the Germans on the German Coast.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
ony and orator of the rebellion, whose daughter was the wife of Noyan, the leader of the Acadians.
But it needed no persuasion to make D'Arensbourg take the stand which he took, for Ulloa himself had furnished more than sufficient grounds to make him do so :
Ulloa had forbidden the flourishing trade with the English neighbors (September 6th, 1766) ;
He had closed the mouths of the Mississippi, except one where the passage for vessels was most difficult and dangerous ;
He had refused to pay the costs of administration since the transfer of Louisiana to Spain (1763), and wanted to be responsible only for the obligations incurred since his arrival (March, 1766), thereby repudiating the salaries of officials, officers, and soldiers for three years ;
He had imposed crushing burdens on export and import-vessels from Louisiana must offer their cargoes for sale first in Spain, and only when there were no purchasers in Spain were they allowed to go to the ports of other countries, whence they had to return to Spain in ballast, for only there could they load for Louisiana ;
And, finally, by ordinance published May 3d, 1768, he pro- hibited commerce with France and the French West Indies.
This last ordinance was the most terrible blow of all for the colony. The flourishing lumber trade with San Domingo and Martinique was ruined thereby, and, with the ports of France closed, and only those of Spain open, the Louisiana products were at once thrown into direct and absolutely ruinous competition with those of Spanish America; for Guatemala fur- nished better indigo, the Isle of Pines more tar and resin, and Havana better tobacco than Louisiana.
All this tended to depress prices for the Louisiana products. Furthermore, would the colonists find a market for their goods in Spain as they had in France? Louisiana peltries received in trade from the Indians, the chief staple of the Indian trade, had less value in Spain, because they were used less there than in France; and the industries of Spain, much inferior to those of France, could not furnish the colonists with the class of goods which they needed to compete with the English traders in the Indian trade. Add to this the uncertainty as to the fate of the French paper circulating in Louisiana, and it will be easily un- derstood that values of all kinds depreciated fully fifty per cent.
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
In addition to these hardships it must not be forgotten that, if this ordinance had been put in force, every man, woman, and child in the colony would have been compelled to give up their beloved Bordeaux wine and drink the "vin abominable de Cata- logne."
All these reasons combined were surely enough to deter- mine D'Arensbourg, who before the publication of the ordinance prohibiting trade with France seems to have acquiesced in the Spanish dominion, to take the stand he took. Indeed he did not need the persuasion of his relatives. No other stand was pos- sible.
IT WAS ON THE GERMAN COAST THAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1768 BEGAN. D'Arensbourg, the patriarch of the Germans, defied the messenger of the Spanish governor; and it was surely D'Arensbourg's word and D'Arensbourg's influence that enabled Villeré to march two days later with 400 Germans upon New Orleans where the Germans took the Chapitoulas Gate on the morning of October 28th. The Acadians under Noyan, the militia of Chapitoulas under de Léry and the people of the town followed; and on the morning of the 29th they marched upon the public square (Jackson Square) before the building of the Superior Council to support the demand of Lafrénière to give Ulloa three days' time to leave Louisiana. The resolution was carried, and the people greeted the news with shouts of : "Vive le roi"! "Vive Louis le bien aimé!" "Vive le vin de Bordeaux !" "A bàs le poison de Catalogne !"18 Ulloa left on the Ist of November on a French vessel for Havana.
The success of the revolution was due chiefly to Lafrenière, the Canadian orator, to Marquis, a Swiss and the commander of the revolutionary forces, who wanted to found a republic after the pattern of Switzerland, and to D'Arensbourg and the Ger- man and the Canadian militia.
A few Spanish officers having remained when Ulloa sailed, and Ulloa's frigate having been left behind "for repairs," the colonists frequently gave vent to their hostility to the Spanish ;
18 Franz in his "Kolonisation des Mississippitales" (Leipzig, 1906).
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
and in December a petition to the Superior Council was circu- lated demanding the removal of both the Spanish officers and the ship. A resolution to that effect was adopted by the Council, but it was never put into effect.
Meanwhile the news expected from France, where a com- mission of prominent Louisianians had petitioned the king to take possession of the colony again, did not arrive, and the hopes of the leaders of the rebellion against Spanish rule began to waver. They did not wish now to risk an attack on the Spanish frigate, and when the Germans of the German Coast threatened to march again to New Orleans to drive out the Spaniards, Lafrénière himself became alarmed and persuaded them to desist.
On the 24th of July, 1769, the news reached the city that the Spanish general O'Reilly had arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi with large forces to take possession of Louisiana. Again Marquis called the people to the public square, and im- plored them to defend their liberties; and again the Germans from the German Coast entered the city to oppose O'Reilly's entrance. But most of the others had already resolved to sur- render, and so the Germans too had to give up their design.
Six of the leaders of the revolution were condemned to death, among them Villeré, Lafrénière, Marquis, and Noyan. Tradition informs us that O'Reilly intended also to have D'Arens- bourg included, but that the latter was saved through the inter- cession of Forstall, under whose uncle O'Reilly is said to have served in the Hibernian regiment in Spain.
D'Arensbourg was made a chevalier of the French military order of St. Louis on the 3Ist of August, 1765, and died on November 18th, 1777. His wife died December 13th, 1776. They left numerous descendants.
THE GERMAN COAST.
The district to which Law's Germans from the Arkansas River were sent after their descent to New Orleans begins about twenty-five miles (by river) above New Orleans, and extends about forty miles up the Mississippi on both banks.
The land is perfectly level; at the banks of the river, how-
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The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana
ever, it is a little, almost imperceptibly, higher, because of the deposit the Mississippi had left there at every overflow. At a distance from one to three miles from the river it becomes lower, and gradually turns into cypress swamps, so that on each side of the Mississippi only a strip from two to three miles in width is capable of being cultivated. For this reason land there is esti- mated only according to the arpent river front, to each arpent front belonging forty arpents in depth. This is what is called in deeds "the usual depth." An arpent is about 182 feet.
Large dikes, called "levees," now restrain the Mississippi from spreading over the lands in time of high water; but as the sediment deposited continually raises the river bed, the levees, too, must be made higher and higher. They are now from twenty to thirty feet high, the celebrated Morganza levee meas- uring even thirty-five feet. On this account, only the roofs of two-story houses can be seen from the middle of the river.
The crown of the levee, where a delightful breeze is found even during the hottest part of the day, is from six to ten feet wide, affording, besides a beautiful view of the Mississippi and the vast area of level land back to the cypress swamps, a very pleasant promenade where the people love to gather.
Along the inland base of the levee runs the only wagon road up the coast,19 and still farther inland, between majestic shade trees or groves, stand the palatial mansions of the planters with their numerous outhouses. Some distance in the rear are the sugar houses with their big chimneys; and from these a wide street, lined with a double row of little white cabins with two or four rooms each, leads to the fields. In the days of slavery this was the negro quarters, but now the free laborers and field hands, mostly Italians, live there.
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