as Lafayette! Tradition, that seldom keeps within bounds when it is set talking, says that Chateaubriand was also entertained here by Lavillebeuvre, but, unfortunately for Chateaubriand, this is manifestly impossible.
The great hunter was evidently a great lover of beautiful things, and a generous spender of money to procure them, for he left behind him a trail of reUcs to beautify the homes of his descendants. His daily table service was of silver according to the fashion of the rich men of his day. His crystal and silver epergne, with candelabra to match, silver dolphins supporting the crystal (also used at the Lafayette dinner), are still the handsomest of their kind in the city, which is celebrated for such bric-a-brac. A mammoth silver salver, that in old times was filled on fete days and anniversaries with cornucopias of bonbons for all the children of the family and all their friends, is still kept waiting in refuge in the house of a great-granddaughter, for the day when it will once again be refilled. Near it is the old carved mahogany mantelpiece that stood over the fireplace in the home of Jean Ursin—and still doing duty as a timepiece is the tall mahogany-cased clock that ticked the births and deaths during two centuries of the Lavillebeuvre family. There, too, is the round, gilt-framed convex mirror that, for all we know, may have once reflected the proud features of the great Lafayette.
The old father, son of the Indian Commissioner, had lived with his son Ursin through all the years that led from the cession of the colony to the Civil War, and through the Civil War into the ruin and sorrow beyond. At eighty-five his eye-
sight was unimpaired, and his wits, for he was ever a witty and refined ''joker." His devoted companion (a quaint memo y) was a goose who followed him about all day, and slept at his door at night. He died in 1863, four generations following him to the grave. His old servants remained faithful to him; Frangoise the cook, cooked his last dinner, for she had persisted in remaining a cook even after her husband attained the dignity of State Senator.
Ehe Lavillebeuvre, the son of Jean Ursin, married Mademoiselle Jeanne Roman, the daughter of Governor Roman. After the death of his father he returned to the old square of the city and Hved on Dumaine Street between Bourbon and Royal Streets, in a house that was always cited as a typical Creole home, with a handsome courtyard and great drawing-rooms on the second floor, with Louis XVI furniture. Here were given from time to time receptions that united the best society from the old and the American population, Elie Lavillebeuvre and his wife always receiving the guests and presiding over the dances.
The name is extinct. Charles, the only son of Ehe, died without children. Of his two daughters, one, Anna, married Thomas McCabe Hyman, son of a late Judge of the Supreme Court of Louisiana; the other, Ida, is married to Monsieur Lezin Becnel.
CHAPTER XXV GRIMA
THERE is no name more at home, so to speak, in the city of New Orleans than that of Grima. The first bearer of it in Louisiana was Frangois Albert Xavier Grima who came into the colony about 1780, bearing, if the crudity of the expression be permitted, his patents of nobility not with him but in him.
Albert was the son of Jean Marie Grima, from the Island of Malta, and nothing, practically, is known of his history there. He enters Louisiana history through his marriage with Marie Anne Filiosa, daughter of Sylvain Filiosa, the hero of one of its pretty stories.
A gentleman of Paris, Sylvain Fihosa, came into the colony as a soldier in a troop of French cavalry, which was stationed at the Natchez settlement, and was there in 1727 at the time of the celebrated massacre of the French by the Indians. The massacre was so well plotted and carried out that the surprise of the French was complete, and their defense useless against the great horde of savages that had been assembled against them. Fihosa, with his troop, was cut off and surrounded; and their annihilation seemed inevitable when he, on the inspiration of the moment, seized a pair of cjonbals and, jumping on his horse, beat them; leading a charge against the howling, blood-drunken, attacking pack. In fact, he played upon the cymbals so masterfully,
that the Indians stopped short to gaze, fearfully, terrified at the new weapon used against them. *
The savages retired in dismay and thus the command was saved by ^'le fort Timballier/^ or ^'le beau TimbaUier/' or ^'le vaillant Timballier/' as he is called in the various accounts of the affair. Louis XV, to whom it was reported, with his ready politeness always spoke of Fihosa as ''Le Sieur Timballier/'
The Frenchmen were all slaughtered, but the women and children w^ere captured alive, to be reserved for worse torture and slavery. The family of the Sieur de Foucault were destroyed, with the exception of one young girl who one would like to think was saved by ''le beau Timballier,'' but truth compels the admission that she was rescued by that middle-aged pioneer, Le Sueur, who, as we know, at the first cry of alarm from the Natchez settlement, hastened to the relief of the French with a great force of Choctaws, and he it was who delivered the captive women and children from the hands of the Indians, and took them to New Orleans. There the orphan children and the young girls were received by the good-hearted Ursuline nuns and given a home in their convent. Marie Anne Foucault lived vdth them and was educated by them, until she was given in marriage to Sylvain Filiosa.
Later in life, ''le Beau Timballier'' followed the peaceful avocation of farming on one of the islands of the Gulf of Mexico lying about the mouth of the
* From the family notes kindly furnished by Alfred Grima, Esq.j grandson of Felix Grima. The dictionary gh^es Kettledrum as tho proper translation of "timballe" and Filiosa may have used a kettledrum, which would have been just effective against the Indians,
Mississippi. According to tradition, it was given to him by the French Government in concession. All that is certain is that he hved there and that the island is still called TimbaUier after him.
In 1785, Albert Grima bought the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon Streets, a part of the ground upon which the French Opera House stood until it was biu-ned recently. In 1795, he bought the adjoining lot on Toulouse Street, where the family Hved until about 1840, when Felix Grima purchased the house on St. Louis Street. For three generations that has been the home of the family.
Albert had two sons: Bartolomeo, who settled in Mexico; and Felix, who remained to found the New Orleans family. Felix was born in New Orleans in 1798. He was taught, as was Gayarre a few years later, in the school kept by Lefort, whom Gayarre has rescued from oblivion in the reminiscences of his childhood. Like Gayarr^, his great contemporary, Grima attended the College d'Orleans, then in its brilliant first days. He studied law in the office of the great jurist of the old Louisiana Bar, Etienne Mazureau, and was admitted to the Bar in 1819. Mazureau, who was Attorney-General, appointed him Deputy Attorney-General; and, in 1828, he was commissioned by Governor Henry Johnson, Judge of the Criminal Court of New Orleans. He married, in 1831, Adelaide Montegut, the daughter of Joseph Montegut ''fils'' and Gabrielle Hose Nicolas de St. Ceran, a member of one of the fine old St. Domingo families, who, to the enormous benefit of the city, emigrated thence to New Orleans during the Revolution. Her father was a Judge at Port au Prince on the island: her mother, Genevieve de Linois, belonged
to a Breton family, which g;ave several captains and one admiral to the French Navy. She was married to Montegut ^'fils" in 1805, on the same day and at the same ceremony which united her first cousin, the beautiful JNIadame Morcau, to the great lawyer and patriot, Edward Livingston.
Montegut, who was at one time an officer in the Spanish service, became afterwards a planter and died quite young in 1815. Montegut ^^pere^' was a native of Rocos Armagnac, France, and was the son of Rajmiond de Montegut. He came to Louisiana about 1760, and after the Spanish transfer became an intimate friend of Galvez. He was the chief surgeon of the Charity Hospital as early as 1775; and in 1800, under Claiborne's administration, became Secretary of the Treasury of Louisiana. His wife was Frangoise de Lille Dupart, the granddaughter of Pierre de Lille Dupart, who owned a great concession on the outskirts of New Orleans. One of the ancestral Duparts was burned at the stake by the Indians during the Natchez war. Pierre de Lille Dupart left liberal bequests to the Charity Hospital in his will, which is still extant, dated 1775.
One of the daughters of Montegut ^^pere,'' Soli-delle, married Joseph de Roffignac, son of the famous Mayor of New Orleans; another daughter of de Lille Dupart married Mandeville de Marigny; a third married Don Bartolomeo MacNamara; a fourth, Don Juan Arnoult. Her father dying young, Frangoise de Lille Dupart was reared by her aunt, Madame Mandeville de Marigny. A very interesting painting, in the Museum of the Historical
Society at the Cabildo, represents Dr. Montegut and his family, including Madame de Marigny.
Grima's learning, abihty and conscientious work procured for him influential clients and he became attorney for mmierous prominent banks and business firms. He was in full course of a lucrative professional career when the Civil War, Hke a cataclysm, overturned the peace and prosperity of the country. His devotion to the State and to the principles of secession exposed him to the rigors of General Butler's administration, and he was menaced with expulsion from the city, but he was saved by the influence of a devoted friend in the opposite political camp.
This influence, however, was unsuccessful under General Banks, the successor of General Butler; and Grima was banished on a twenty-four hours^ notice. He went with his family to Augusta, Georgia, and maintained himself during his exile by teaching school and giving private lessons. In 1865, he returned to his home and from the ruins of his profession estabhshed anew his practice which netted him again a large fortune.
He was a sound scholar, a linguist and a lover of good literature—and from time to time he made contributions to the French pubHcations of the city, one of which, '^Les Souvenirs d^un ExiW^ is still cited with interest and pleasure by lovers of native Louisiana literature. He was noted for his social relations with his professional brethren, particularly for his long friendship and intimacy with Frangois Xavier Martin, the great Chief Justice of Louisiana. The chaste and imposing monument erected over Martin in the St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 (on Claiborne Street) was made from the design selected by
Grima. The Grima house on St. Louis Street is forlorn now in its old aristocratic neighborhood; its neighbors have deserted it, forced to retreat before the contaminating advance of lower society. The fine old street with its saintly and kingly name is, sad to say, retrograding into a decadent quarter, but the house stands like a dowager of the old nobihty, dignified and self-possessed in her handsome middle age, before the encroachments of undesirable intruders. The most careless passer-by could hardly fail to notice and admire it, a typical sample of architecture produced by the blending of French and Spanish taste. The windows are wdde, the front door is surmounted by an elliptical arch with fanlights, with slender columns on each side. It opens with a generous sweep into a great hall that runs the length of the house. From the hall rises majestically a stately, curving stairway, whose newel posts are of brass. On each side of the hall are the four great gala rooms, de rigueur in colonial days, with w^alls frescoed on canvas—where, so the memory of it runs, were given the most beautiful balls of their day in the city; and beautiful they must have been to be worthy of their setting. To one side is the garden, as broad as the front of the house—so sheltered behind a tall brick wall that from the outside only the tops of trees and shrubbery are visible; but on the inside filled with pretty conceits, walks and parterres, where still grow the bright, variegated, old-fashioned flowers of a half century ago. It is the kind of garden that used to be planted and tended by the knowing hands of an old slave gardener under the eye of a flower-loving mistress.
For the first time in eighty years the noble old
house is empty and deserted; its hospitable rooms as useless as withered breasts. Its young families moved away from it. The ^'Silent Chariot" bore away others. The last of its daughters, Adelaide, was carried out of the old portals only a few months ago to a last station in the Cathedral, and then to her last resting place in the cemetery. She was charming and well beloved, the very incarnation of the grace and spirit of old New Orleans. Heaven had endowed her with its choice blessing, a beautiful voice, that ministered to the dehght of society. But while it was still fresh and in its full beauty, she withdrew it from the world and consecrated it to the service of the church—to gaunt old bare St. Augustin. It is pleasant to remember that the poorest and not the richest church, the humblest and not the proudest congregation in the city was chosen by Adelaide. Sweet singer, dear friend, Requiescat in Pace.
A.
&* Tv c. o li vj a. X O
Vestibule of Grinia House—Newel Posts of Brass, Balustrade of Mahogany.
CHAPTER XXVI FORSTALL
THE Forstalls lie like a stratum of rich ore under the soil of New Orleans society. Scratch the surface under any prominent name, and you tap a Forstall. The vein is pure and true, and it has yielded in the past a good profit to the city.
The record* of the family leads back, not to France, but to England, the name being originally Forestier, Forster, Forestall. A William de Fores-tier, a Norman knight, crossed the Channel with WilUam the Conqueror in 1066. Among the great Anglo-Norman famihes which became established in Ireland in the twelfth century was that of Forestier, or Forestall, which possessed a great estate in Kilkenny. The first of the name in Ireland was Lawrence le Forestier, one of the companions of *'Strongbow," Earl of Pembroke, when he invaded the country in 1169. According to the register in
* Taken from the papers kindly loaned by Rathbone de Buys, Esq. The documents and the genealogical record that accompanies them, proving the descent of the family as narrated, are attested "as in every respect true and genuine by the Archbishop and Primate of Ireland, the Archbishop of Juam, the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, the Bishop of Cloin and Ross, in Dublin, October 12th, 1758." The attestation is further guaranteed by the Apostolick Prothonotary, who certifies that "the antecedent lodges and arms of the Forstalls are true and genuine, as recited in the antecedent Genealogy: Signed by Fr. Thomas de Burgos, doctor in divinity and prothonotary Apostolick. 9th of November. 1758."
the office of Ulster King of Arms in Dublin Castle, the Forstalls of Louisiana descend from Peter Forstall, Esq., one of the descendants of this Lawrence, and are entitled to the same armorial devices—the three broad arrowheads on a shield.
Peter Forstall, whose will was proved in 1683, married Mary, daughter of Nicholas Aylward, Esq,, of Shankill. He left several children. His eldest son was Edmond Forstall (the name so well known in New Orleans), who married Eleanor Butler of Dangan, of the noble house of Ormond. All of his three sons became Knights of Jerusalem.
Edmond Forstall entered the mihtary service of France and became Captain of Dragoons under Louis XIV. He married, in Ireland, Ehzabeth, daughter of Henry Mead, Esq., of Kilkenny. Their eldest son, Nicholas, emigrated from France to Martinique, taking up his residence in the town of St. Pierre, where he married, in 1725, Jane, daughter of John Barry, K.C. Their eldest son, Michel Edmond Forstall, born in Martinique in 1727, removed to New Orleans and estabhshed himself in business there; and in 1761 married Pelagie de la Chaise, granddaughter of the Chevalier d'Arens-bourg, of the Cote des Allemands. In the Cathedral records Forstall is registered simply as "a. merchant of this city.'^
Two years before, P^lagie's sister, Louise, had married Joseph Roy Villere, the patriot who was killed by the Spaniards in 1769. Forstall took no active part in the rebellion against the Spaniards, but it is stated authoritatively that he used his influence with O'Reilly, whom his family had known in Spain, to save the life of his father-in-law, the
old Chevalier d^Arensbourg who, heart and soul, despite his age had taken part with the revolutionists, and therefore had been hsted by O'Reilly for punishment with Lafr6niere and Villere.
When the Spanish Government was organized' Nicholas Forstall was chosen Alcalde for several succeeding terms and was in office when the French took possession of the colony in 1803. He had five children by his marriage with Pelagie de la Chaise: Edmond Pierre Charles; Felix Edmond; Fehx Martin; Elizabeth Louise, who married J. B. Poeyfarre, in his day a noted planter and citizen whose name is preserved on a street that runs through the site of their old plantation. Their old plantation house is still standing on the street, a venerable reminder of a past day. They left no descendants. Emerante, the youngest daughter, married Jacques de Lery, one of the noteworthy Chauvin family and a first cousin of the famous Lafreniere.
Edouard Pierre Charles Forstall married Celeste Lavillebeuvre, the daughter of Jean Louis Verrault de Lavillebeuvre, Chevalier de Garrois. The six children born of the marriage formed what may be called the Forstall dynasty, that reigned over the social and financial world of New Orleans for a half century. Edmond Jean married Clara Durel. Pla-cide married Marie Borgia Delphine Lopez y Angulla de la Candelaria, the daughter of Don Ramon Lopez y Angullo, an officer holding high rank in the service of Spain, and of his wife Delphine Macarty, who was a woman of such great beauty that when she went to Spain to solicit the protection of the Queen of Spain for her husband, who had incurred a mill-
tary punishment, she did no more than kneel in a garden where the Queen took her morning walk. Her long black hair was unbound and hanging about her shoulders, her lovely eyes raised in supplication. The Queen stopped at sight of her, so young and so beautiful, and approached her with the words: *^Your petition, whatever it is, is granted, you are so beautiful!'' It may be said also of her that her daughters and granddaughters to the third and fourth generation merit the same tribute of admiration for their remarkable beauty. The daughter of Delphine Macarty, Delphine Lopez y Angulla, was born on board the ship on the young mother's voyage from Spain, to which circumstance the child owed the nickname of ''Borquite" (from hord), which she bears even in the memory of the present generation.
The other children of Charles Edouard Forstall and Celeste de Lavillebeuvre were Felix Jean, who married Heloise de Jan, and Louis Edouard, who married Mathilde Plauch^, the daughter of General J. B. Blanche, who distinguished himself at the Battle of New Orleans.
It is of tradition in New Orleans that the two young sons of Nicholas Forstall were put in the office of Panton, the great merchant, to learn business methods. It may be remembered that De Lino de Chalmette wished to do the same thing with his charge, Bernard Marigny, and thereby rather harmed than benefited him. The story is different about the two Forstalls. Panton's clerks, according to the rule of the house, lived with him, but had a separate table assigned them for their meals. The great head of the firm, however, noticing that the young For-
stalls were superior in station and manner to the other clerks, had places for them at his own table, at which they thenceforth always had their meals. This apprenticeship was the foundation of the business development of the Forstall brothers and, it may be said, of New Orleans. The history of the house of Panton Leslie is yet to be written. Its rise to the ascendancy it acquired over the entire commerce of the Louisiana colony, holding in subjection as a collateral the trade of the great Indian tribes that still belonged to it, has but been glanced at by Gayarr6 and other historians, and the character of Panton himself only hinted at. He did more than any political power of his time to hold the vast country together in a common interest of trade, and he ranked with the Spanish Governors as a dominating influence. Panton impressed his type upon the Forstalls, and they transmitted it to the generation beyond them—the type of the great financier who accumulated great wealth while maintaining the ideals of a grand seigneur.
It does not take the memory of an octogenarian to-day to recall the type of the merchant prince of New Orleans—the patron of opera and theatre, distinguished by perfect courtesy of manner, not only in the world of society, but also in his business office: a dilettante of the fine arts, a linguist, speaking with ease, French, Spanish and English, a man who used his wealth as musicians do their instruments to produce results of art, who traveled to London and Paris as their successors to-day to New York and Chicago, bringing back with them the standards of Paris and London to apply to their own life.
Nine children were born of the marriage of Placide
Forstall with Delphine Lopez. To belong to good society in New Orleans is to know them and their connections. Anatole married Pauline Gelpi Octave, Louise Forstall, his cousin. It was the daughters of the family, however, who carried its prestige in the nineteenth century. Women they were of such beauty that they became a proverb, and of such charm that its memory outlasts even the financial reputation of the men of the family. Celeste became the wife of Henry Alanson Rathbone; Emma married Emile de Buys; Pauline, Eugene Peychaud; Laure, Felix Ducros; Julia, Robert J. Taney, grandson of the Chief Justice of the United States; Delzire married Z. B. Canonge; Delphine never married but reigned a belle, even in her aged spinsterhood, not only in her native city but in Paris.
Henry Alanson Rathbone, who married Celeste Forstall, was the son of Samuel Rathbone of Stoning-ton, Connecticut. John Rathbone, his ancestor, was one of the original purchasers of Block Island from Governor Endicott in 1660, and had a seat later in the Rhode Island General Assembly as representative of Block Island. Henry Alanson Rathbone came to New Orleans after the close of the War of 1812, and he is commemorated in social chronicles as one of the few Americans who was received with distinction in Creole society. He was a man of fine intellectual attainments, charming manners and brilliant conversation. His wife, Celeste Forstall, retained her beauty to old age. Her stately home on Esplanade Avenue, surrounded by a great garden, maintained its standard of old-fashioned elegance and its luxurious appointments long after the Civil War, which
ended the old standards of living as well as the old regime in New Orleans. She left only daughters: Emma, who married John B. de Lallande de Fer-rieres; Pauline, who married Peter Labouisse, Esq.; Stella, who became the wife of James Gaspard de Buys;* AUce, who married WiUiam Phelps Eno of New York; Bita, who married Edgar de Poincy. Edmond, the eldest of the four sons of Edouard Forstall and C(^leste Lavillebeuvre, is the one whose name is most often repeated when the family is recalled. From 1832 until 1872, when he died, he held the agency for New Orleans of the Baring Brothers of London, and Hope and Company of Amsterdam, from whom at one time he negotiated the sale of bonds issued by the State in favor of the Citizens Bank, amounting to one million dollars. He was also instrumental in framing the law for the incorporation of free banks in Louisiana. In short, to quote the current account of him in the newspapers when he died, he was the leading spirit in all financial banking and insurance companies in New Orleans for half a century. And it must never be omitted from his history that he fought in the Battle of New Orleans, as corporal of the celebrated (or once celebrated) Battalion d'Orl^ans. This was Blanche's battalion, which ran the whole distance from Bayou St. Jean to Chalmette to join the column of attack. Many of the battalion were delicate young Creole boys, yet they bore their heavy muskets and knapsacks with as much ease as practised veterans. As Alexander Walker, the laureate historian of the battle, says to them: ^'With their gay
*RathbDne dc Buys,Esq., the eminent architect of New Orleans 13 their son.
and varied uniforms, characterized by that good taste and regard for proportion and effect which distinguished the French race, with their bold, handsome countenances and uniform size, the Orleans battalion was certainly a corps of which any conunander might be proud."
Forstall also owned and cultivated a large sugar plantation in the parish of St. James, a plantation that is still cited as one of the great plantations of the State in ante-bellum days when sugar plantations were, so to speak, in their glory. Upon it he adopted —one of the first Louisiana planters to do so—the advanced scientific discovery of the vacuum process of making sugar. It was a costly experiment and it needed the daring of independent wealth to carry it through satisfactorily, as Forstall did, thereby proving himself to be, like Bor^, one of the great benefactors of the sugar interests of the State.
He proved himself, too, a benefactor in other interests not profitable financially. As has been said in the life of Charles Gayarr^, Edmond Forstall made a valuable contribution to the Historical Society at the time when Gayarr^ revived it and inspired it by his own brilliant example. When Frangois Xavier Martin, the historian, was elected president of the society, Gayarr^ headed the Executive Committee. Under him were, besides Forstall, de Bow, the owner and pubhsher of the best of all magazines ever attempted in the southern country,* J. B. French, the publisher of ^Trench Historical Collections," and John Perkins, that rich lover of Louisiana history, to whom primarily historical students are indebted for the superb work of Pierre Margry,
*De Bow's Review, afterwards the Southern Quarterly Review.
published in the United States by act of Congress.
Never has such a brilhant group of workers in the historical field ever been gathered in the fold of the society, and never, it is to be feared, can there ever be such a group gathered in the future. It was Forstall who caused to be made the first and, in fact, the only analytical index of the whole of the pubhc documents relative to Louisiana deposited in the archives of the ''departement de la Marine et colonies'^ and ^'Bibliotheque du Roi," at Paris. An amazing piece of work as we see it to-day, accom-pHshed in full perfection of form and detail! The index was published in the proceedings of the society by J. B. French in his Historical Collections, and were afterwards reprinted in De Bow^s Review (Vols. I and II). In addition, Forstall contributed many interesting articles on agricultural and commercial subjects to the Review.
By his marriage with "the beautiful Clara Durel,'' to give her her proper local title, he had four sons and five daughters: Eugene, married to Lize Can-trelle; Victoria, to de Lavillebeuvre; Henri, to Mathilde Plauche; Ernest, to Mathilde Taney; Oscar, to a Demoiselle St. Maurice Berault. Desir^e, the eldest daughter, became Madame Charles Roman; Eugenie, Madame Valerien Chopin; Helena, Madame Adolphe Shreiber; Leda, Madame Charles Ohvier; Anna, Mrs. Arthur Polk.
The old home on St. Louis Street was built for a large family with its numerous attendants: a princely estabhshment, it was called, in the language of visiting strangers who traveled to the Creole city to enjoy its foreign aspect and pleasures. The simple.
plain exterior was the ideal of the architect of the time, an ideal that enjoined the contrast of a severe external appearance with great interior luxury: an ideal that no one better than Edmond Forstall knew how to flatter, with his great library of handsome books, his bronzes and pictures. No article, no piece of furniture that was not fine and of perfect taste, could pass his portal.
He weathered, like a well-built hip, the storm of the Civil War, and by an honest seamanship that has never been questioned brought his large fortune through intact. Four sons volunteered for active service. Eugene was compelled by illness to resign from it; he died during the war. Henry also was forced to resign on account of ill health; he died on the day of the Battle of Shiloh. Ernest, more fortunate, fought during the four years and was twice wounded. Oscar fought during the duration of the war.
Note. —Taken from the published record of the Forstall family, written by Charles Patton Dimitry.
From the marriage of Jean Felix Forstall (fourth son of Edouard Pierre Charles and H^loise de Jan) were born: Arthur, Paul William Suzanne (Mrs. Duplantier), Ang^le (Mrs. Emile Duplantier), and Mrs. Octave Forstall.
Delzire Forstall (Mrs. Z. B. Canonge) left: Rosa (Mrs. George Binder), residing in France, and Cora.
Eliza Forstall (Mrs. Delphine Viller6) left two children: Edouard, who married Marie Bouhgny, and Placide Villere, who married Miss Cantrelle.
Felix Edmond Forstall married Marie Adelaide Josephine de Morant, daughter of Charles de Morant and Catherine Amelot. Their children were: Coralie (Mrs. Gustavo Durel), Helmina (Mrs. Anatole Viller6).
FeUx Martin Forstall married Marie Celeste d'Aunoy, daughter
of Charles Favre d'Aunoy and Catherine Macarty. Their children were: Charles Edouard, who married Mailomoiselle de Poincy, daughter of Rossignol de Poincy. Their only son, Charles Oscar Eugene Forstall, resides in Paris.
The wife of Comte Seminiatclli, of Italy, belongs to the de Poincy branch of the Forstall family; her mother was Madame Edouard Le Beau.
Anatole Forstall, his cousins, William Forstall (son of Felix,) and Placide (son of Octave), Victor Ernest and Adolphe Forstall resided till their death in New Orleans.
Eugene Forstall, the son of Charles Edouard, lived in France, where he was in the employ of the French Government.
Theobald was the son of Alfred Forstall, a graduate of Yale. He inherited the intelligence and executive qualities of his family and was noted for his administrative ability. After occupying the position of Superintendent of the New Orleans Gas Company for several years, he was offered the same position in Chicago and accepted it, He died there in 1901, leaving several children.
CHAPTER XXVII j
MACARTY I
THE good old Creole name of Macarty has become only a memory in New Orleans. The male mem-j bers of the family are extinct, but the female members have carried the Macarty traits and qualities into. the other old families until there is hardly one thatrl does not bear a representative in their genealogical' record.
The family (originally Macarthey-Mactaig) was'? a noted one among the great Irish families, whof preferred exile to the religious and political tyranny of their EngUsh conquerors. In the seventeenth century Bartholomew Macarty, of the Albemarle Regiment, sought refuge in France, where he gained promotion in the navy and died a Chevalier of St. Louis and Major-General of Division in the depart-, ment of Rochefort. His two sons, Jean Jacques?' and Barthelmy, came to Louisiana in 1730, the^ former as commander of a marine detachment, the^ latter as a lieutenant in the same command underr' him.
Jean Jacques married Dame Frangoise de Tr^-i pagnier, and his two sons returned to France, wherei they took service in the royal army: the one in the marine, the other in the Mousquetaires or household I troops of the King. The latter married in New.' Orleans Jeanne Chauvin, and at her death passedl again into the service of France and became aide to:|
368
Count d'Estaing on board the "Fendant.'^ He died in New Orleans in 1793. Both brothers were made Chevahers of St. Louis.
Barthehny de Macarty (as he was called) cast his hfe in New Orleans, where he married Dame Frangoise H^lene Pellerin, who bore him eight children. From a lieutenant he rose to a captaincy in 1732, and four years later filled the responsible position of Aide Major of the city.
The Natchez massacre of 1727 had put an end to the old easy-going days; the Company of the West under the threat of the impending destruction of the prosperity of the colony by an Indian war, hastily remitted their charter to the royal government, and Louisiana returned to the wardship of the King. Governor Perier was at once recalled and Bienville put in power again, as the only man available to cope with so serious a situation. He immediately set out to punish the Natchez and their aUies, the Chickasaws and Choctaws, using what miHtary force the colony furnished, and calHng on the home government for reinforcements. Macarty accompanied him on his first futile effort to bring the Natchez tribe to submission and later took part in the fatal expedition against the Chickasaws in their village in upper Alabama, which resulted in the bloody defeat of the French and the final and lasting disgrace of Bienville in the eyes of the French Government and his recall from Louisiana.
He included Macarty in the list of officers serving under him: '^Chevalier de Macarty came into colony in 1752, Aide Major of New Orleans. Conduct good. Understands detail and discipHne Attached to the service and doing well."
Vaudreuil succeeded to Bienville. He also led an army against the Chickasaws and was no more successful than his predecessor had been. War having been rehghted in Europe between the English and French, the colonies of the rivals sprang also to arms in America. Travehng along the Mississippi became a perilous adventure and hfe in the river settlements most insecure.
Vaudreuil was made Governor of Canada and Kerlerec sent to Louisiana to replace him. Macarty was put on duty as commander of Fort Chartres on the Mississippi, above the Ohio, the chief seat of the French influence among the Indians. Here he remained until the final triumph of the English. The historian, Villiers du Terrage, quotes a spirit^^d letter from him to Kerlerec in which he gives the account of the capture of Fort Niagara by the English. Du Terrage praises his clear and accurate judgment and exclaims sadly: ''It is a pity for France that this brave and efficient officer was not given more opportunity for displaying his capacity."
Macarty's presage of defeat was confirmed during the summer following, when the news came of the surrender by France of all her American possessions, except the Orleans territory, to the English. Macarty returned to the one French post remaining, and died in New Orleans about the time the news came of its transfer to the Spanish. He left four sons and four daughters. They were not the only bearers of the name in Louisiana. The Chevalier Jean Jacques de Macarty, his elder brother, who had married Dame Frangoise de Trdpagnier, left two sons and three daughters, all born in New Orleans. Only one son, however, Augustin Guillaume of the
Empire Work Table of St. Domingo Mahogany and Brass.
Mousquetaires du Roi, who married Jeanne Chau-vin, left descendants.
The sons of the ChevaHer Barthehny Macarty, who married Frangoise H^lene Pellerin, were as follows: Jean Baptiste Frangois, who married Helene Charlotte Fazende (daughter of R6n6 Gabriel Fazende and Charlotte Dreux, daughter of Mathurin Druex). Barthelmy Louis, the second son, married the Widow Lecomte; his daughter was the beautiful Delphine Macarty, who married Don Ramon Lopez y Angullo and became the mother of the no less beautiful Marie Frangoise de Borja de Lopez y Angullo ("Borquite")j who married Placide Forstall and became the mother of twelve children from whom descend the great New Orleans families of Forstall and Rathbone.
Augustin Macarty, the son of Augustin Guillaume and Jeanne Chauvin, became, under the American Domination, Mayor of New Orleans for several terms. Gayarre has left a description of him that obtrudes itself whenever his name is mentioned
"Macarty is of an ancient and high-toned family. He has served several times as Mayor of the city and is uncompromisingly conservative in all his views and feelings—the embodiment of the old regime. It was he who, in his official capacity as reporter, and backed by public opinion, caused the first cargo of ice brought to New Orleans to be thrown into the river as a measure of public safety, because cold drinks in summer would affect throats and lungs and would make the whole population consumptive."
His first cousin, Jean Baptiste Macarty, always a supporter of the American Domination, became colonel of a regiment of militia and a member of the Legislative Council, and served under Claiborne as Secretary of State. He died in 1808 and was buried
with military honors, "an excellent citizen and faithful officer," writes Governor Claiborne to the commander of the war vessel in port, asking that minute guns be fired by the vessels of war in port during the funeral ceremony.
It was not the men of the family, however, but the ladies who, as we may say, irradiate the pages of the chronicles of New Orleans; the daughters of the Chevalier Barthelmy Macarty and Frangoise H^lene Pellerin. They were: Frangoise Brigitte, Marie, Catherine, Adelaide, Celeste Eleonore, Louis El^o-nore, and Marie Marthe.
Frangoise Brigitte was the Madame Nicolas d'Aunoy whom the Baron de Pontalba celebrates as the most charming of all the charming aunts of his wife. She lived in the city in a large house facing the river and was the center of Hfe and gayety of the family. Marie Catherine Adelaide became Madame la Coihtesse Fabre de la Jonchere, whose plantation opposite the city was the stage for innumerable gay social functions in the time of Governor Carondelet.
Jeanne Frangoise, according to the Cathedral register, was married to "Messire Jean Baptiste Cesaire le Breton, son of Messire Cesaire le Breton, ecuyer et Seigneur de Boussou, Charmeau et autres lieux, conseiller de la cour Souvereigne de Paris, and of Dame Marguerite Chauvin de Lafr^niere." (It may be recalled here that the first husband of Marguerite de Lafreniere was Noyan de Bienville, executed by the Spaniards). The daughter of Cesaire le Breton and Frangoise de Macarty became the wife of Baron Delfau de Pontalba.
But the most brilHant marriage of the family was
that of Celeste El^onore Elizabeth with Governor Miro, the successor of Galvez. She it was, more than her worthy husband, who reconciled Louisian-ians to the Spanish Government. She was young, beautiful and all Irish by her quick wit. Passionately fond of theatricals, she played the principal roles herself in the little dramas given in her hotel to which she invited all the ^Ute of the population, and she was indefatigable in her bright stratagems to while away the dull cares that oppressed the minds and made heavy the hours of the Spanish officials. New Orleans had never been so gay as under her husband's or rather her administration with the opera, theatre, balls, card parties and pleasure jaunts to the suburb of Bayou St. Jean or across the river to the plantation of her aunt, Madame Jonchere. She knew as a good society woman how to turn it all to such good account that New Orleans began to be known all over the American continent as the city upon it most w^orth living in by pleasure seekers. The great conflagration that had apparently wrought only ruin and desolation during her husband's administration proved a blessing in disguise, as the small, homely French buildings were soon replaced by stately edifices of Spanish architecture; the Cabildo, the market, the Cathedral, the large courtyard houses with their cool alleys, great stairways and spacious living rooms, their decorative knockers and grill work enclosing their galleries. When Miro obtained at last his permission to retire to Spain, he left Louisiana not only reconciled to Spain, but even endeared to it and beautified by its domination. Madame Miro accompanied her husband to
Spain in 1791, and when he died she was so brokenhearted that her niece, Madame de Pontalba, hastened to her and remained with her until de Pontalba could join them, when they journeyed to France. Madame Miro did not separate again from the Pontalbas but accompanied them to France and passed the rest of her Ufe with them at Mont I'Eveque, near Senlis. A sister, Frangoise, also joined her and remained with her until death, which came to her in her eighty-eighth year. Madame Miro survived Frangoise but a few years. Both are buried in the parochial church of Senlis.
Which of the Macarty sisters it was who gave the rebuke to O'Reilly we do not know. Gayarre relates it, not mentioning her name, but we can identify her by the fact of her living on a plantation up the river, as the same lady whom he describes as a friend of his grandmother. He says that O'Reilly's carriage, escorted by a few dragoons, was frequently seen driving at a rapid pace up the coast, where he used in his moments of leisure to visit ""a family residing a few miles from town, in which he found himself in an atmosphere reminding him of the best European society. One day when according to his habit he had provoked a keen encounter of wits with the lady of the manor, being stung by a sharp repartee, his hasty temper betrayed him and he forgot himself so far as to say, with a tone of command, ''Madame, do you forget who I am?" ''No, sir," answered the lady with a low bow, "but I have associated with those who were higher than you are, and who took care never to forget what was due to others; hence they never found it necessary to put any one in mind of what they were." Nettled,
O'Reilly departed instantly but returned the next day with a good-humored smile and apology.
Speaking of his grandmother's friend, Gayarrd introduces her thus:
"The plantation above the de Bor6s', which extended over Audubon Park, belonged to Pierre Foucher (de Bor6's son-in-law); the next place belonged to the unfortunate Lafr6niere. It was at that time the property of Mademoiselle Macarty, who was Madame de Bora's intimate friend as well as neighbor, and who, like her, had been educated at St. Cyr."
It was one of the great pleasures of Gayarr^^s friends to hear Mademoiselle Macarty described by the historian, then in his nineties, and see one of her visits to his grandmother, three quarters of a century before, acted. Her carriage, a curiosity unique in the colony, was called a chaise; it was like a modern coupe but smaller, with sides and front of glass. There was no coachman; a postillion rode one of the spirited horses, a little black rascal of a postillion who always rode so fast and so wildly that his tiny cape stood straight out behind Hke wings. When in a cloud of dust the vehicle turned into the Pecan Avenue the little darkies stationed there to look out would shriek in loud excitement to get the announcement to the great gates ahead of the horses: ^'Mam-selle Macarty a pe vini." And there would be a rush inside to throw open the gates in time. With his cape flying more wildly than ever, his elbows beating the air more furiously, the postillion would gallop his horses in a sweeping circle through the great courtyard and bring them panting to a brilliant finale before the carriage step. M. de Bore would be standing there ready with his lowest bow to open the carriage door and hand the fair one out and lead
her at arm's length with a stately minuet step up the broad brick stairs and through the hall to the door of the salon, where they would face each other and he would again bow and she would drop a curtsy into the very hem of her gown—her Louis XIV gown—for from head to foot she always dressed in an exact copy of the costume of Madame de Mainte-non; that is, with the exception of her arms, which were in Mademoiselle Macarty's youth so extremely beautiful that she never overcame the habit, even in extreme cold weather and old age, of exhibiting them bare to the shoulder. The mystery of why with her great wealth and great beauty she had never married remained a vivid one—even when old age had effaced everything except the fame of her radiant beauty.*
/ Gayarr^, who always looked at the history of J Louisiana with romantic eyes, looked also at the romance of Louisiana with historical eyes. We are not surprised, therefore, to find in the pages of an old number of Harper's Magazine a little story in which he gives an authentic account of the Macartys in the early years of the last century, t
"Mademoiselle Macarty lived near the de la Chaise plantation, once well known on account of its brickyard, but now divided into streets and lots that have become a part of New Orleans. She was in affluent circumstances, possessed houses in the city and owned a number of slaves. She had a beautiful and productive garden of which she was very proud, superb orange trees and a well cultivated orchard, and acquired considerable reputation for the skill with which she manufactured all sorts of condiments, sweetmeats and other dehcacies. In this she was assisted by a dame de compagnie.
* "New Orleans: the Place and the People." Grace King, t Barthelmy Macarty's Revenge." Harper^s Magazine, 1887.
"Mademoiselle Macarty left all her fortune to her nephew, Augustin Macarty, who subsequently became Mayor of New Orleans and died childless. She had another and more distant relative called Barthelmy do Macarty. . . . His son, Barthelmy, had been thoroughly educated and gave promise of a brilliant career. When still very young he had been selected by Governor Claiborne for his Secretary of State. Handsome, possessed of those clean-cut features which characterize the patrician of long descent, rich and distinguished in every way, the youthful secretary was a cynosure of society.
The two brothers, Augustin and Barthelmy, are mentioned prominently in the reports of the Battle of New Orleans, and in the measures taken to prepare the city against the English. Augustin was appointed on the Committee for Public Defense and was among the citizens who subscribed ten thousand dollars toward securing it. The Macarty plantation shares with the Chalmette and the de la Ronde places the hoiior of furnishing the field for the glorious battle. Jackson estabUshed his headquarters in the Macarty house, a handsome house built in the new, at that time, chateau style with galleries extending all around it, supported on brick pillars. The trees and foHage of the garden screened it from the road, and it was from the gallery of the old mansion, whose garden lay just within the American line of entrenchment, that he on the afternoon of January 7th, 1815, observed the movements in the British camp, two miles down the river, and came to the conclusion that they were preparing to attack him. About one o'clock that night an aide. Bent to make a report to the General, found him sleeping on a sofa in one of the front rooms; his staff were stretched out on the floor about him. Having heard the report, he looked at his watch and
exclaimed: '^Gentlemen, we have slept enough. Arise. The enemy will soon be upon us.'' All immediately left the house for the camp. They had hardly done so when a cannon ball, fired from the British lines, crashed into the room where Jhey had been sleeping.
A last memorable scene connected with the old house must not be omitted. On the morning of the 19th, and when the armistice had drawn to its end the exchange of prisoners had been effected and speculation was rife as to what the British Army would do further; a rumor circulated through the American camp that it had retreated. Officers and men collected in groups to survey the enemy's camp, and much discussion arose as to whether the army had really gone or was only lying in wait to entice the Americans from their entrenchments. General Jackson and his staff, stationed in the window of Macarty's house, gazed at the camp through powerful telescopes. It presented the same appearance as usual; flags were flying, sentinels posted. The General was not satisfied that they had gone. His aides thought as he did. At last the French General, Humbert, standing near, was called upon for his opinion. Napoleon's veteran took one look through the telescope and immediately exclaimed: ''They are gone." When asked for his reason he pointed to a crow flying near one of the sentinels which showed that they were stuffed dummies. The British had stolen away during the night.
A pretty pubhc square in the old part of the city, called Macarty Square now, commemorates the upper lines of the Macarty plantation. In it has been erected a handsome memorial arch to the heroes of the late war.
CHAPTER XXVIII DE BUYS
THERE is a tradition that this good old typical Creole family was among the early French settlers of the colony, and that its head was present with Bienville at the laying out of the city of New Orleans.
The first de Buys known in the records of New Orleans, Gaspard Melchior Balthazar, the son of Pedro de Buys and Micaela Lion (in the Spanish of the Cathedral records), was born in Dunkirk in 1789. His forebears were seafaring folk who had sailed their ships under letters of marque from Louis XIV and fought as privateersmen in the wars against England. Gaspard, so the story goes, was captain of a man-of-war under the Count de Grasse during the war for American Independence but, having caught the yellow fever in the West Indies, he resigned from the navy and came to New Orleans, then in the peaceful days of the Spanish Domination. Here he shortly afterward married Eulalie de Jean or de Jan, daughter of Antoine de Jan of Bordeaux and Angele Monzey de Mont jean, a native of New Orleans.
The mother of Angele de Mont jean, according to the family record kindly furnished by Mrs. Lucien de Buys of New Orleans, was saved from the Natchez massacre by her nurse, a young Indian girl, who bravely tramped her way through forests and Indians and brought the infant in safety to New Orleans.
She grew up in the city and married Claude de Jan about 1750. He had been established in business in New Orleans for some years. They had six children: Eulahe, Antoinette, Marie Frangoise, Man-ette, Jean Baptiste and Claude.
Madame Mont jean lived, says the record, to be over one hundred years old, and was visited in her home at Santiago, Cuba, by one of her great-granddaughters of New Orleans. The de Jan children married in New Orleans and ramified in France and in England, where many of their descendants still live.
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 important political problems to solve as that first Legislative Council of Louisiana, and none have ever received so little recognition of the value of the services they rendered.
Gaspard Melchior de Buys and Eulalie de Jan had four children: Pierre Gaspard, WilHam, Manette and Adele. 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 Mont jean, barely escaped extermination by massacre. They came originally from Lorraine 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 pohtical 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 burning titles amid cheers and plaudits.
The other children—Marie EHzabeth Eugenie, Paul, Emile, Marie Antoinette Odile, Eugene, Lucien, Napoleon—showed in their names at least a broadening catholicity of pohtical convictions. De
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 heSiVLty or to politics, asked his aide-de-camp, de Buys, who a certain very beautiful lady was. He answered that she was his T\dfe, 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 daughter Eugenie.
In the resolutions passed by the Legislature after the victory in 1815, there is this handsome compliment 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 companies 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 faithful 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, WiUiam 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 forr governor to succeed Governor Roman, and he proved! a sharp competitor for Isaac Johnson, who was: elected.
He lives in memory, however, still more vividly/
perhaps as commander or general of the Louisiana Legion. This was, as should be explained to readers foreign to New Orleans, a famous military organization 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'Orl^ans,* that corps d'^Ute 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'Orleans stepped into the field of action fully armed and equipped and proved themselves trained veterans under fire—Jackson himself praising their prowess and efficiency.
After the war, the battalion increased in strength and stabihty so rapidly that it was necessary to incorporate it into a Legion, which was conmianded in succession by such generals, in repute, as Augustin CuvelHer, 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." Castcllanos.
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, Gaspard Melchior de Buys and Eulahe de Jan, their eldest daughter Manette married Pierre Victor Amedee Longer of Rouen. She is ever cited in New Orleans as a woman of wonderful accompHsh-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 quahties 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
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 children 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. Eulahe became Mrs. Samuel Bell; Adele married Florian Hermann; Odile, Michel Musson; Armide married Amed^e de Saules; Am^lie, James Behn; Angele, Evan Jones McCall; Heda, Charles Kock; Helena, Charles Luhng. Mrs. Luling's daughter is Lady Alice Ben, wife of Sir Arthur Ben, M.P., London.
Gaspard de Buys died in 1827; his daughter, IVIadame 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, reUcs 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 assembled 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 Guerronniere, of Haute Vienne, France. The General's sisters and brothers, the children
of Pierre Gaspard de Buys and Elizabeth Viel, were: Marie Elizabeth, who married twice, her first husband 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 McAhster of Georgia.
Paul Emile, the son of Pierre Gaspard and Elizabeth 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 distinguished 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; afterwards to Foster Elliot of New York. Children and grandchildren of both husbands survive. ' Pierre Victor Amedee married Cecile Denis, daughter of Henri Denis of New Orleans. They had two children: Alfred, who lives in New York, and Am^Ue, who married the late George C. Pr^ot of New Orleans, a distinguished Htt6rateur 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
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 husband'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, ^'wsls the Marquise de Jusseau. Her husband 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 Jusseau, Elizabeth Ren^e, 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-
mother, who was a widow for the second time, having married her cousin, M. de Montag6, left St. Domingo and went to St. lago, Cuba, leaving her wealth behind her, invested in a sugar and a coffee plantation. Thirty devoted slaves followed her. My father (J. F. Canonge) was reared in Marseilles by his uncle. Major Canonge, a ChevaHer 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 Marseilles and returned to St. Domingo, but was driven away again by the insurrection of slaves and took refuge in St. lago. 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 conmiercial career, he turned to the law and studied under the celebrated jurist Duponceau.
After receiving his diploma, he naturally gravitated toward New Orleans, where the French element was still the predominating one in social and professional Hfe. 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
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 EngHsh were both used on the floor of the House of Representatives. Canonge filled the position of clerk of the House for several sessions. Possessed of an incomparable memory, he took no notes of discussions 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 hterally. 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 conversationaHst, and when he talked men gathered around him to Hsten; he was also a ready rhymester and astonished, on two occasions, his audience by delivering addresses in verse. And to add to his accomphshments, he translated the Georgics of Virgil into St. Domingo Creole patois.
His success at the Bar secured for him the appointment 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, distinguishing himself by his enlightened legal views
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 College Louis le Grand. Alphonse, following in the footsteps of his father, became an eminent laTsyer and was prominent as the Superintendent of Pubhc Schools. Hypolite Canonge, also a brilhant 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.
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 roles 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 Alfted 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 accomplishments. 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 Brunetiere's was distorted from ''what is not clear is not French," into "what is not charming is not Canonge."
CHAPTER XXX
DUBOURG
DuBOURG— Charest de Lauzon — Bringier
TUREAUD
NOT 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 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, in the eighteenth century by Pierre Frangois 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 Chateau de Morville branch of the family, the Seigneurs de Rochemont, near la Louvere, whence arises the Louisiana branch of the family.
The parent Une 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 Frangois Dubourg,
ecuyer 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 Frangois 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 Frangois 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. Frangois Charest de Lauzon and of Demoiselle Perrine Therese de Goarnay, 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. Abbe Dubourg, who lived in Baltimore, taking with them their Httle daughter Agla^, then about nine years old. Leaving the child in Baltimore to be educated under the supervision of her uncle, the abb^, Pierre Frangois Dubourg and his wife returned to New Orleans about 1800, and there
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 fortunes. 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 position 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 Gayarr^, 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, 'Tlaisance," it was called, which is the origin of the name of the Pleasant Street of to-day. Louis-
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 i daughters were reared in the family home on Dumaine Street. No^mie married General Horatio Davis* of the Delaware family. EHza 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. Adele 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.
educated for the church. At the time of the Revolution he was at the head of a Sulpician school at Issy, near Paris. He escaped from it, in disguise, to Paris, going to the superior branch of the school, rue Cassette, where it is still recalled that his disguise caused great amusement. The day of his arrival there, the revolutionists invaded the comnmnity on the rue Cassette and, seizing the head of it, flung him into prison and executed him shortly after. Dubourg was in hiding at a friend's when the dreadful massacres took place. Again fleeing in disguise, he made his w^ay out of Paris and proceeded to Bordeaux, where he found his family; but being doubly odious in the eyes of the revolutionists as a cleric and as an aristocrat he fled again, this time to Spain. He sailed to America and landed in Baltimore in 1794, about the time when the negro revolt in St. Domingo was driving his family to America and destroying their fortune. Two years after his arrival in Baltimore, he became President of the Georgetown College. He gained for it a brilliant reputation among the universities of the United States. George Washington honored it during Dubourg's term with a formal visit.
The abbe founded St. Mary's College and had it raised by the Legislature of Maryland to the grade of university. As spiritual director of the famous Mrs. Seton, he assisted her in the founding of the Order of Sisters of St. Joseph (popularly known as the Sisters of Charity). He entered the ecclesiastical history of Louisiana in 1803, when the colony was separated from the spiritual jurisdiction of Havana and placed under that of the diocese of Maryland, then under Archbishop Carroll, who finally, after
several years of troublous, unsuccessful efforts, selected the brilliant, energetic Abbe Dubourg as the Administrator Apostolic of the so-called (in ecclesiastical histories) "unhappy diocese'^ of Louisiana.
This opens the chapter famous in Louisiana history of the controversy between the administrator apostolic, the duly appointed ecclesiastical spiritual authority over the St. Louis Cathedral, and Pere Antoine de Sedilla, the beloved and revered authority de facto over the hearts of the congregation. The episode is one of the most interesting in the history of Louisiana and has been made the subject of special study by a number of brilliant writers. Suffice it to say that as time passes and the brilliant students pass with it, Archbishop Dubourg emerges from the vexatious conflict with his indomitable antagonist, preserving his dignity and the undiminished respect of his flock, although Pere Antoine still, in history, reigns supreme over their hearts. -
Dubourg became the spiritual guide of the Ursu-line Nuns while in New Orleans and, as he had assisted Mrs. Seton in her work in Baltimore, he helped them to estabhsh their convent below the city.
At the time of the British invasion in 1812, he rendered such services to the people as to win their admiration and gratitude, despite even the antagonistic influence of Pere Antoine de Sedilla.
On the day of the battle, in the chapel of the Ursulines before a congregation of frightened nuns and civilians, he celebrated a solemn mass, of supplication for the Almighty's protection and aid, the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor being displayed on the altar. The guns of Chalmette could be heard above the chanting of the holy office.
At the moment of the elevation of the Host, when all hearts and eyes were bowed in devotion, a courier from the battlefield, rushing into the church, proclaimed in a loud voice 'Hhat the Americans were victorious."
In commemoration of this, by privilege granted by Pope Pius IX, an annual mass of thanksgiving is celebrated at the Ursuline Chapel. The Superior of the Convent of the Ursuhnes at the time of the Battle of New Orleans was, in the world, Victoire Olivier de Vezin, a direct descendant of the union of the Du-verge and Olivier families, among the very oldest in Louisiana.
The Mother Superior not only made a solemn vow to commemorate within the convent walls the God-given victory, but with her own hands ministered to the wounded on both sides. She turned the convent into a hospital, and with the other sisters tore up the convent linen for bandages for the wounded Kentuckians. The Kentuckians, as a token of their gratitude to her for the succor their wounded had received, wxre wont for many years afterward to send baskets of fruit to the convent on the anniversary of the battle.
When, a week later, the city held its official ceremony of celebration for the victory. Bishop Dubourg —robed in his vestments and followed by the priests and altar boys of the Cathedral—appeared at the great portal while from the choir inside resounded a great hymn of praise, and presented General Jackson with a laurel wreath, pronouncing an address that was then and is still considered a classic of history. In response. General Jackson, for all that he was a plain Methodist, made, in words that are also considered
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classical in their chaste eloquence, a pious return of ; the compliment, waiving reverentially all claim to the i victory, ascribing it to divine Providence. !
While in Rome in 1815 Dubourg was consecrated ' Bishop of New Orleans, the first Bishop of American ; New Orleans, and in France he estabhshed the i Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Louis j XVIII placing a vessel at his disposal, he returned to America, and proceeded to St. Louis, where he founded a college and ecclesiastical seminary at I the Barrens on the Missouri. In 1818 he began I the erection of the Cathedral of St. Louis and opened ' the St. Louis College in 1819. He also founded the St. Louis Latin Academy. i
In St. Louis he spent much of his time in the j sparsely inhabited frontiers and in the wilds of the ; Indian settlements. It was said of him that he was I as much at home with the Indians in their forest life ' as he was in the archepiscopal palaces of Europe. I
Visiting Washington thereafter, he prevailed on i the government to co-operate financially vdth him in ameliorating the condition of the Indians in his diocese.
On his return to New Orleans about 1823, the Ursulines gave him their convent for his official residence, and he remained with them until he went to France in 1826, w^here he was successively made Bishop of Montauban and Archbishop of Besangon. He died in France.
According to his directions his heart was sent to the Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans. It is still piously preserved in its receptacle in a niche in their: chapel.
A third son of Francois Pierre Dubourg and
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Marguerite Vogliizan, Joseph, known as ''le beau Dubourg," came to America and visited New Orleans, but did not remain there. The fourth and last son, Thomas Patrice Dubourg, had two daughters, who were married in Jamaica, and one son, Arnould Dubourg, who, after being educated by his uncle in Baltimore, came to New Orleans to live. He studied law and was appointed judge in Plaquemines Parish in 1815. Later, he held one of the judgeships of the city. The only souvenir of him is a stray number of an old paper dated May 6th, 1820, preserved as a curiosity in the Museum of the Cabildo, ^TAmi des Louis, the Friend of the Law— printed in English and French, according to the ascription, by A. Dubourg and Louis Cherbonnier." The first number of the paper must have dated back to 1809, as the copy in the Museum is number 2514, Vol. XL How long Arnould Dubourg was joint proprietor of the paper is not known. He died unmarried in New Orleans in 1829.
CHAPTER XXXI CHAREST DE LAUZON
FRANCOIS CHAREST DE LAUZON, of New Orleans, was the son of the last Seigneur de Lauzon. His father was the proprietor of the great Seigneurie de Lauzon in Canada, which embraced a lordly territory on the St. Lawrence River opposite Quebec. He was a young man at the time of the English-French War in America, and his home at Point Levis was a storm center during the fierce struggle.
The British occupied the Seigneurie and erected batteries at various points to bombard Quebec. Those who were living there at the time witnessed across the river the battle waged in the vast amphitheatre of the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe's army achieved the victory that gave Quebec to the EngHsh. According to the tradition of the family, Wolfe's body, after the fight, was brought across the St. Lawrence and laid in the home of the Charests to await its shipment to England for final burial.
The Seigneur de Lauzon who, with others of his family, had borne an honorable part in the struggle, determined not to live under British rule. He sold the Seigneurie to the new British Governor of Quebec, James Murray, in 1765, and with his family proceeded to France, where he received high honors from the King in recognition of his services. He established a new home at Loches in Touraine. Three of his sons, Etienne, Frangois and Philippe,
went to St. Domingo and bought estates there. The estate of Etienne was called Charest; that of Frangois, Lauzon; hence one brother was knoA\Ti as Charest de Charest, the other as Charest de Lauzon. Philippe was called Charest de Levis.
In Louisiana the family of Frangios was known exclusively as de Lauzon, but this was considered merely as "si nom de terre," apparently, for the epitaph of his wife, in the old St. Louis Cemetery, bears only the family name as follows: ''Ci-Git Elizabeth du Buisson, veuve de Charest, N^e au Cap Frangois (Isle de St. Domingo) le 30 Aout, 1730. Deced^e le 13 Novembre, 1816.''
Charest, the eldest brother, was slain in the massacre of the whites by the negroes during the revolt at St. Domingo. Frangois Charest de Lauzon and his family escaped to Jamaica, his youngest child, ]\Iarie Antoinette, usually called Adele, being smuggled out of the house in a hogshead.
Frangois Charest de Lauzon married Perrine de Gournay, the eldest daughter of Chevalier Michel Isaac de Gournay who, according to his burial certificate, was born in Brittany in 1728, and was descended from the ancient baronial house of de Gournay of Normandy (a branch of which was estab-hshed in England in the time of William the Conqueror) . Although he lost a part of his fortune in the insurrection, he yet preserved abundant means to take with him to Jamaica. His youngest daughter, PauUne, married ''le Comte Roland Onfroy de Verres." The marriage contract, preserved in the archives of Jamaica, contains a page of titles and nobihty ascriptions on both sides. Many of de Gournay's slaves followed him to Jamaica. He died
there in 1813, and was buried in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Kingston, Jamaica.
Frangois de Gournay, the son of Isaac, came to New Orleans and settled there. He married and had a large family, and his blood is represented in many branches in New Orleans. His granddaughter, the daughter of Charest de Lauzon, married Michel Dubourg de Ste. Colombe in Jamaica, who came also to New Orleans and lived with his father-in-law in the house on Dumaine Street.
The house is still standing, but it is indistinguishable from the others erected about the same time. Dumaine Street at that time was the aristocratic center of life in the city, as Orleans Street became later. Of all the streets of the ^Tieu Carre,'' Dumaine has best preserved its original appearance. A stroll along its "banquettes" from Eoyal to Dau-phine Street is like reading a page from an original manuscript written during the last days of the Spanish Domination and the first days of the American. If ghosts ever haunted the old dwelKngs of a city, they would hover around Dumaine Street, but straining eyes discover naught but the reaUty of to-day—the tenements and shops of Italians and Spaniards, who are camping, as it were, amid the tombs of an ancient cemetery.
Frangois de Charest de Lauzon lived until 1819 and was buried in the old St. Louis Cemetery: '^Ci-git Frangois de Charest de Lauzon nee a Quebec au Canada le 12 d^cembre, 1744; deced6 le ler. f^vrier, 1819."
His death, as related in the family, was a pathetic one. Of his three children who had accompanied him to Louisiana not one was with him. His eldest
daughter, Etiennette, who had married du Bourg, had died in 1811; his only son, Bien Aim6, had been killed in a duel; and now his youngest daughter, Marie Antoinette, or ''Adele," had gone to join her husband, Jean Baptiste Thibaut, in Cuba.
The ship on which Madame Thibaut and her children had sailed was detained at the mouth of the river by unfavorable winds for so long a time that tlic journey was at last abandoned and it returned to the cit}^ There were no conveniences, then, of telephone or telegraph, and Adele had no thought but to reach home and her father as quickly as possible. He was seated in his armchair in the courtyard of his home in Dumaine Street, when she suddenly appeared before him. He struggled to his feet to embrace her—his face, his whole demeanor, expressed overwhelming joy, and then he fell back in his chair—dead. Adele set out for Cuba again and reached her plantation near Santiago just in time to see her husband expire. After residing there a short while, she returned to New Orleans, leaving her plantation under the management of her uncle, Frangois de Gournay.
Bien Aim6 de Lauzon was born in St. Domingo and was brought by his parents to New Orleans and Uved with them in Dumaine Street. He has unfortunately left but one record of himself in history— the duel in which he lost his life. He had taken his sister to a ball at the old Salle d'Orl^ans, where the briUiant society balls of a century ago took place, The room was crowded, and to procure a chair for his sister (the ladies after each dance returned to their places in a row of chairs extending round three sides of the room), Bien Amie seized one a few paces
away, and passed it over the head of a young lady sitting there. She, starting up, affected great nervousness and alarm (the ladies of Bien Aim^'s family insist upon the affectation, for there was no occasion for nervousness or alarm), and the gentleman who had escorted her to her place felt called upon to interfere. His remarks about the trifling incident were such that Bien Aime at once invited him to the balcony in front of the ballroom, where words ensued that were followed by the gentleman brushing Bien Aim6 across the face with his glove. A duel after this was inevitable—in fact imperative. It was arranged for the next day. The ladies of the family had, naturally, been kept in ignorance of it. On the next afternoon, Madame de Lauzon, the mother of Bien Aim^, and others of the family were seated on chairs placed before the house on the *'banquette,'^ as was the Latin custom of the day, in order to enjoy the fresh air. From passers-by in the street, Madame de Lauzon heard these words:
^That is sad about Bien Aim6 de Lauzon.'*
''What's the matter?''
''Haven't you heard? He has been killed in a duel, and they are bringing in his body."
The shock almost killed the mother. No one had the courage to tell Adele. She was to attend a ball that evening, and was allowed to make her preparations in ignorance of his fate. She actually went to the ball, no one daring to break the news to her.
The Salle d'0rl6ans is still standing on Orleans Street. It is now a convent for colored ''Sisters." Little alteration has been made in the place. A balcony, as a century ago, runs across the front (the
i
balcony to which Bien Aim6 and his antagonist retired).
The act of burial of Bien Aim6 is not recorded in the Cathedral. Its absence is explained by the fact that the last rites of the church were accorded only to those who had received the sacraments, and Bien Aini6 fell dead at the first fire of his opponent. He was buried, however, in consecrated ground in the St. Louis Cemetery. Even the date of his death has not been preserved. But in the burial notice of his sister, Madame du Bourg de Saint Colombe, in 1811, it was stated that "ses cendres ont 6te expos^es preiscelles de son frere."
In the old cemetery, the frequent inscription, ^']\Iort sur le champ d'honneur" or 'S^ictime de rhonneur" show that the family of those killed in duels considered this mode of death an honorable one. All that was told by the witnesses of the affair was that Bien Aim^ fell at the first fire, shot through the heart, and that he had fired wildly. The dueling pistols used still exist in the family. They are of the finest English make. They w^ere lent, it is said, for three different duels, with the result of death in each duel. After Bien Aime's death they were boxed and never used again. They are now the property of Charles Thibaut, Esq., Harvard University.
Madame Lauzon lived after her son's death to an advanced age, dying when about ninety. Like her husband, she died in her chair. At the time she was the guest of her grandson, Arthur Thibaut, having just arrived from her daughter's plantation, the Hermitage. An informal entertainment was being given and refreshments were served. The old lady
partook of them and, laughingly remarking as she held up her hands that her fingers were sticky from eating bonbons, retired to her room to wash them. Her maid accompanied her and left her while she went downstairs for warm water. On her return she found Madame Lauzon in her chair, asleep, as she thought. In truth she was dead. Her tomb also is in the old St. Louis Cemetery.
CHAPTER XXXII BRINGIER
THE Bringier family, whose name runs like a golden tracery over the society of New Orleans during the nineteenth century, came into the colony during the very latest years of the Spanish Domination.
Emmanuel Marius Pons Bringier,* of La Cadiere, near Aubagne, was the first to settle here. From a letter written by the '^Chanoine Jean Baptiste HypoHte Bringier," of the Marseilles Cathedral, to a Louisiana nephew, we learn that the Bringier family of Louisiana descends from Ignace Bringier, a Judge of Limagne (ancien pays d'Auvergne), who was the father of Jean Bringier. He married Marie Doura-don, daughter of Baron Douradon of Auvergne. They were the parents of Pierre Bringier, the father of Emmanuel Marius Pons. Pierre Bringier had an enormous family, which gave rise to the jeu d^esprit that he was the ^'father of nineteen sons and one canon." The canon of the Marseilles Cathedral was the younger brother of Emmanuel Marius Pons, and had been an Emigre during the French Revolution.
Emmanuel Marius Pons left France in 1780, sailing in his own vessel with his young wife, Marie
* Taken chiefly from the manuscript notes of Trist Wood, Esq.i a descendant of Marius Pons Bringier, who kindly loaned them to the author.
Frangoise Durand, to Martinique, where he and his brother Vincent became associated in business on a plantation. But not agreeing well as partners, they separated. Vincent lost his life in a shipwreck. Marius Pons, quitting Martinique, embarked again in his own vessel with his wife, slaves and household effects, and came to Louisiana. He acquired a plantation in the rich Tchoupitoulas district above New Orleans. Abandoning the place shortly afterwards, on account of the crevasses, Bringier moved to the Parish of St. James in 1785, where he bought, successively, five plantations and, throwing them into one, formed the famous Maison Blanche or White Hall plantation, which according to all accounts must be pronounced to be incontest-ably the greatest plantation Louisiana ever held.
What would be to-day a most valuable record of it, and a precious document in every way, has, to the enduring regret of local historians, been lost. This was the ''Memoir" of Augustin, one of the old Bringier slaves, which he dictated to one of his mistresses, Madame Aurore Trudeau, who wrote it down in his patois, just as he spoke it. Only a vague reminiscence of it exists.
As traveling in the early days was done entirely upon the highroad running along the river bank, and no inns were in existence for the accommodation of wayfarers, the custom was for them to turn into any plantation they were passing and ask for hospi-taUty for the night—hospitaUty that was never refused. Bringier, who could not but do things magnificently, improved upon this custom, as Augustin related it. He had outhouses built for the accommodation of passing strangers, with beds pre-
II
pared and meals ready and slaves in attendance for them. Any stranger was made welcome. The rule at White Hall was not to ask his name or seek in any way to discover his identity, unless he chose to divulge them. He came and went as an unknown bird of passage might, but departed, rested and refreshed, his clothes cleaned and brushed, his linen washed. The enormous amount of provisions laid up in the plantation storehouses for this wholesale entertainment at Maisou Blanche became a byword among the negroes, whose pride in it led them to exaggerate its quantity until, in truth, it became laughably absurd in its proportions.
The town house of the Bringiers, to which they came every winter, was on Canal Street; one of the three old houses, still remembered, built ahke with massive Corinthian columns in front, called ''the Three Sisters." One of these was subsequently converted into ''The Grand Opera House." The Audubon Row occupies now the site of it.
^'Melpomene" was their next place of residence in town. It had been owned previously by Seaman Field, the brother-in-law of Aglae Dubourg Bringier. The name w^as always known as Melpomene (pronounced in French), strangely enough before the street received its name in the due series of the Muses. Carondelet at that time was Apollo Street, a mere road through the bare country, with but one or two houses built on it. "Visiting the city" was the term used for going to Canal Street.
The eldest son, Michel Doradou Bringier, born on the plantation, was sent to Paris for his education. On his return to America he passed through Baltimore and was married to Aglae Dubourg, who.
as we have seen, had been placed in the convent there under Mrs. Seton for her education, and who was but fourteen years old. The marriage took place in Baltimore, where it created a great sensation on account of the remarkable beauty and the extreme youthfulness of the bride, but it was understood that it had been arranged by her uncle, the abbe, during a visit to New Orleans, with the full agreement of both families.
Doradou Bringier had never seen his bride before the ceremony except once, when, as a very small girl, she passed through New Orleans on her way to Baltimore. He declared then that she was the most beautiful child he had ever seen, and that he had fallen in love with her. Hermitage plantation was given the couple, and as a wedding present the bride received a beautiful doll. She remarked that she did not know whether it was meant for her or for her first baby.
The marriage turned out to be a very happy one. Agla6 lived to an extreme old age, preserving her charm and beauty to the last. She died in 1878 in her town house, ''Melpomene," surrounded by her children and grandchildren.
The eldest daughter of Agla6 and Michel Doradou Bringier, Rosella, married Hone Browze Trist, the kinsman and ward of Thomas Jefferson; he became first American Collector of the Port of New Orleans; the youngest, Myrthe, married Richard Taylor, son of President Zachary Taylor, who became during the Civil War the dashing General Dick Taylor.*
* "Dick" Taylor, the son of Zachary Taylor, was born in'Louisiana in 1826. After the Battle of Baton Rouge, in the Civil War, he was appointed to the command of the District of Louisiana, having
Octavie married General Allen Thomas, at one time United States Minister to Venezuela. Louise married Martin Gordon, of New Orleans.
Nanine, the third daughter, married the Hon. Duncan F. Kenner who, looked back upon from the present times, looms up among the men of his day as a giant in intellect and force of character. He had a large family, but only two daughters and one son reached maturity. His eldest daughter, Rosella, married General Joseph Brent, of Baltimore. Their daughter, Nanine, is the wife of Thomas Sloo, Esq., of New Orleans.
One of the daughters of Marius Pons Bringier, Frangoise, married ^^Christophe Colomb,'' who claimed descent from the great discoverer. Living in France, he had become involved in some plot during the French Revolution and had made his escape to St. Domingo disguised as a cook. But the insurrection and massacre there forced him again to fly. He came, as all the St. Domingo refugees did at that time, to New Orleans, and, as Trist Woods describes it, gravitated to St. James Parish and to White Hall plantation. He there married Frangoise Bringier and became the proprietor of Bocage plantation, but instead of cultivating his fields, he spent,
already served with distinction in Virginia. His campaign in Upper Louisiana and on Red River was one of the brilKant mihtary episodes of the Confederate War. After the close of the war he returned to New Orleans and lived with his family in the old Melpomene Street house. He had three daughters; one of them, Bettie, married Walter R. Stauffer; her sister, Myrth6, Isaac H. Stauffer—sons of the prominent and wealthy merchant and philanthropist, Isaac Stauffer, of New Orleans. The children of both sisters still proudly maintain the prestige of their blood and name in New Orleans. Louisette, the eldest daughter, died unmarried.
we are told, the rest of his life cultivating the Muses. On moonlight nights he would betake himself to his boat or ornamental barge, ordering his men to row him up and down the Mississippi and, reclining on cushions beneath a fringed canopy, would pick his guitar and sing serenades to the moon. His wife, on the contrary, with the Bringier talent for business, mounting her horse at daylight, would ride over the plantation directing the work of the slaves. But husband and wife got on together famously, says the story—he wooing the Muses, she managing Bocage.
CHAPTER XXXIII TUREAUD
THE Tureaud family were originally Huguenots, but they became Catholics before emigrating from France. The first Tureaud known in Louisiana was Augustin Dominique, born in St. Sauveur Parish, la Rochelle, in 1764, the son of Jacques Tureaud, "courtier," and of Frangoise Guillon. He received a collegiate education, was dashing in conduct, talented and good looking, and, consequently, as we might say, became involved in a love scrape which brought about his being sent by his father to St. Domingo to take charge of a plantation he owned there.
In the revolt of the negroes and the bloody massacre of the whites, Tureaud was saved by the ingratiating quahties that distinguished him through hfe. His housekeeper, a mulatress, the wife of one of the ringleaders of the revolt, who knew therefore in advance what was impending, led him to the shore, where she had secreted a boat, and embarked in it with him and her two children. The cold was intense, the boat was an open one and all were thinly clad. They suffered cruelly. One of the children died on the second day out. The mother threw it overboard, and the little skiff drifted about at sea until it was picked up by a vessel bound for Baltimore. Tureaud by this time was lying unconscious in the boat. He always said that he had no idea
what could have influenced the mulatress to save his Hfe except an act of unconscious poUteness on his part. When he came from France, ignorant of the customs of Martinique, he addressed the housekeeper as ^'madame/' and although he does not say-so, he most hkely treated her with the consideration due a ^'madame."
A commission house in Baltimore received the refugee and communicated the fact to Tureaud's father in France, who remitted funds for his son's expenses, asking the firm to keep him in America. The surviving child of the ringleader and mulatress, although free, served in the Tureaud family, and his children were given European educations and subsequently returned to New Orleans, where they held good business positions.
Tureaud, after settling in Baltimore, made a number of voyages. In his diary he tells of being shipwrecked in the Pacific and residing with the Baron de Cambefort at the Mole of St. Nicholas, but unfortunately only one section of his diary has been preserved, that relating to 1801 and 1802. This is full of the exciting adventures, love affairs, etc., that befell amateur knight-errants on the Gulf of Mexico at that time. Once he was captured with his vessel by the English, once drifting about with a crew helpless from yellow fever, he put in to Vera Cruz for relief and, being refused by the authorities there, he sailed for New Orleans where his greatest adventure yet awaited him, for he met Marius Pons Bringier, who invited him to his plantation. White Hall, taking him up to it in his cabriolet. There his visit having terminated, he was about to leave when a heavy rain fell flooding the roads and de-j
taining him a few days longer. His host, more and more pleased with his agreeable guest and more and more reluctant to part with him, yielded at last to temptation and one day a propos of nothing offered him the hand of his daughter Fanny. Naturally, according to French customs, there were preliminary conditions connected with business to be arranged, but they were settled in a satisfactory way and the young man, duly accepting and accepted, was, as he wrote in his diary, raised to the seventh heaven of bUss over his good fortune. Fanny was only thirteen and, he confesses, not beautiful, but she was the daughter of the owner of magnificent White Hall! Tureaud returned to New Orleans where, he writes, congratulations were showered upon him. He went back to Baltimore and a year later presented himself to claim his bride.
Fanny did not keep a diary, but her account of the affair has come down to us nevertheless. She was in her room dreaming, as girls do, of her ideal in love and indulging in the usual romantic visions of marriage, when her father summoned her to his presence, and informed her that her hand had been promised to Monsieur Tureaud. She went almost into a state of collapse, but managed to stammer out that she bowed to the will of her father. Then, hastening to her room, she gave herself up to the wildest grief and indignation that she was to be given away to an old, gray-haired man. Tureaud was then thirty-eight years old, but this was, of course, aged to the eyes of thirteen, and his hair had turned gray when he fled from St. Domingo.
The marriage was celebrated at White Hall in 1803. While preparations for the ceremony were
being made, the rebellious little bride spent her time weeping in her room, but in spite of her fears the union turned out to be the ideal one she had dreamed of.
Her father gave her ^'Union'^ plantation (so named for the happy event) as a wedding gift. The Ufe spent there for both was a very happy one. Tureaud became a judge in the parish of St. James and during the Civil War served as Captain of Cavalry. But the bold, high-spirited daredevil of the diary suffered miserably in his old age from the effect of a wound supposed to have been received in a duel. He died at ''Union'' plantation in 1826.
He had sent to France for his nephew, Jean Fran-gois Theodore Tureaud, to join him in Louisiana.
Theodore, born in Rochefort in 1791, had served in Napoleon's army, and was in the Treasury Department of the Marine in 1812. He arrived in Louisiana in 1814, and was followed, a year or two later, by his mother and two sisters. He became a Notary Pubhc in New Orleans, and married Claire Conand, daughter of Dr. Joseph Conand of the same city. They founded a second Une of Tureauds in Louisiana.
CHAPTER XXXIV
GARRIGUES DE FLAUGEAC—DE ROALDES
■p^E FLAUGEAC'S name has been written in the J-^ history of Louisiana by the hand of General Jackson himself. In an order of the day after Chalmette, Jackson cited him particularly ''for disdaining the exemption afforded by his seat in the Senate, and offering himself for the service of his country. He continued in this subordinate but honorable station, and by his example as well as exertions has rendered essential service to the country." As Gayarr^ describes it:
"A little before daybreak, on the eighth of January, as soon as there was sufficient light for observation ... a congreve rocket went up. It was the signal for attack. The British, giving three cheers, formed into close column of about sixty men in front and advanced in splendid order, chiefly upon the battery commanded by Garrigues de Flaugeac, which consisted of a brass twelve-pounder, supported on its left by an insignificant battery with a small brass coronade; on the right was the artillery commanded by United States officers. An obhque movement was made to avoid the terrible fire of the Flaugeac battery, from which every discharge seemed to tear open the column, and sweep away whole files."
The gallant Frenchman, we are told, was a born fighter. Before coming to Louisiana he had drawn his sword under RepubUc, Consulate and Directory; and had sheathed it and come to Louisiana only when
424 OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
there seemed no further prospect for its use in France. He settled in Opelousas, one of the most beautiful and fertile parishes in the State, married there and devoted himself to the development of a large plantation. This was during the halcyon days of Louisiana, before poHtics infested the ways of public life, and a man^s worth to his State was not measured by party balances. Thus, such a man as de Flau-geac was elected to the Legislature as Senator.
The House was in session when the British effected their landing in Louisiana, and with their gunboats dominated the lake and commanded all approaches to the city. There was a moment of panic and demorahzation in the city. The Governor sent a message to the Legislature suggesting the expediency of adjourning for a specified time. The House considered an adjournment inexpedient and highly dangerous. Jackson, suspicious at this time of the Creoles, was anxious not only for the adjournment but for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The House was firm in its belief that this would be unsafe, and Jackson issued a general order putting the city of New Orleans under martial law. It was in this moment of tension that de Flaugeac settled the question for himself by resigning his seat to volunteer on the field of battle; commending himself, as we have seen, in the best way to the good opinion of the general in command. After the battle he disappeared from the city and merged his life again in the interests of his plantation.
De Roaldes was his nephew, the son of his brother-in-law, who had been persuaded by de Flaugeac^s letters to leave France for Louisiana. De Flaugeac had married a de Roaldes. The wife of de Roaldes
was Coralie Testas de Folmont, of the Chdteau de Folmont, near Cahors, whose family had been known in France since the Crusades.
After a short trial of country life, de Roaldes left Opelousas and came to New Orleans, where he practised medicine for thirty years. His eldest son, Arthur, he sent to France for his medical education. The young man was engaged in his studies when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and volunteered in the Sixth International Ambulance Corps. He was in the service of the Red Cross, in a deserted mill used as a hospital, near the River Meuse, and in close proximity to a pontoon bridge over which Mac-INIahon's corps was retreating before the rapid advance of the Prussians, who were firing across the bridge regardless of the hospital work in the factory, filled with wounded and dying men. In his official report, the Surgeon-in-Chief gives the best account of what followed:
"Mons. de Roaldes charged himself with the perilous mission of planting our flag upon the roof of the house; a heroic action, which caused the enemy to stop firing against us, at the sight of the international colors."
For his gallant conduct the French Government offered de Roaldes the Cross of the Legion of Honor, but at that time it was considered to be the duty of Americans to wear no foreign decorations and the young man dechned it.
He returned to New Orleans, equipped for his profession with a brilfiant record as a man of nerve and action. He devoted himself to the special study of the eye, ear, nose and throat, and soon made himself known as a specialist of brilliant abilities in the medical world.
De Roaldes lived in the part of the city inhabited principally by French, Spanish and Italian immigrants, and he was brought face to face with their teeming families whose children and babies were in sore need of special treatment beyond the means and intelHgence of their poor, ignorant parents, with no relief possible except that offered by the general treatment of the overcrowded Charity Hospital, with its care for all the sick and wounded of three neighboring States.
De Roaldes, by degrees, was turned more and more into the highways and byways of charity, opening his office, and giving his rare surgical skill and his great gift as a diagnostician to the helpless and miserable mothers who brought their children to him.
The numbers that came or were brought to him soon overspread the limit of one man's time and attention. He associated others with him—young students who were glad to assist him for the opportunity of studying under him. With his hand to the plow, never looking back or releasing his hold, he traced the furrow that led to its predestined stopping place—the organizing of a scientific institution for the treatment of diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat, where the poor, without pay, could seek and find the care and advice usually reserved to the rich.
The furrow was a long one and the years were heavy with work and fatigue before the end appeared; he was forced to appeal for money to accomplish properly what he had in mind. The money came, as he knew it would come, for the heart that conceives great designs is the heart that never despairs. At first, it came in scant driblets. The poor about
him, knowing him, brought their mites. The country parishes responded, for they had sent their aihng children to him in the past. The negroes gave too— and it was the first time in history that they recognized their responsibihty toward maintaining civic institutions. By the time the rich felt the urge to give their large donations and legacies, the foundations were assured; that is, a building had been rented. A great and adequate building, with full surgical equipment, now stands in the heart of the city.
But the story ends in the saddest of all tragedies, as human eyes see it. The Healer himself went unhealed. He who had restored the eyesight to countless others suffered himself years of hopeless blindness. At first, with his clear knowledge and unerring skill, he was able, as he said, to see with his fingers; and he still remained at his post, directing consultations; going to the hospital, which in truth was called ''his hospital" every day; working for it until paralysis fell upon him; and as he could no longer see, now he could no longer move.
To mention family distinction after such a record is paltry. But although good wine needs no bush, a bush that produces the best of wine merits acknowledgment.
The de Roaldes belong to one of the old families of France always known for loyalty to Church and King. The chateau at Cahors, the family home, is still the family home, but on account of its great historic and artistic value it has been classified by the government as an historic monument, and taken over by it for preservation.
Frangois de Roaldes was reputed the greatest
scholar of his time (1519-1589). His cousin and pupil, Frangois II de Roaldes, had so great a reputation that colleges disputed for the honor of possessing him, Toulouse finally gaining the prize. In the ''Memoires Historiques" * is preserved the following letter from Henry IV:
"Mons. de Roaldes, the name whicfo you have won among men of letters, makes me desire to know you otherwise than by mere reputation, and to testify to you how much pleasure it affords me to make known to you and all persons my good-will toward yourself. In the assurance of which I pray you to give faith to what the Sieur de Pira will say to you in my name.
"Adieu, Mons. de Roaldes. I pray you may continue in His holy keeping.
"From Pau, 20th, October, 1584.
"Your well assured friend,
"Henri."
The tablet of the handsome tomb in which Arthur de Roaldes' mortal remains were buried holds the list of the many decorations and medals awarded him by foreign governments for his good work among their subjects; but in truth he needs no such decorations or medals, or even the letter of the King of France. His monument and enduring record is his hospital and the memory of him that is preserved in New Orleans.
* Facsimile of Henry IV's letter is in the historical collection at the Cabildo.
CHAPTER XXXV PITOT
TACQUES PITOT DE BEAUJARDIERE and ^ Joseph Roffignac, two young gentlemen of the nobihty, fled from France during the Reign of Terror and came to Louisiana, settling in New Orleans where, strange to say, both in time filled the high and honorable office of Mayor.
They related on their arrival in the city the story of their last experience in their own country. Passing through Paris, they heard in the streets a rumble as of a great crowd approaching, with all the outcries and vociferations of a riotous mob. They stopped to see the cause of it. A surging, furious mass of people swept by them, filling the street, carr3dng on a tall pike the beautiful head of the Princesse de Lamballe, the hair dressed in court coiffure. Transfixed with horror, Pitot exclaimed aloud involuntarily and began to give expression to his outraged feelings, when he was touched on the elbow and a low voice whispered in his ear: "Mar-chez, marchez, monsieur; vous vous compromettez." And a plain laborer, ^'un homme en blouse," glided quickly from his side. This was more than enough; the two young men sped from the death behind them and disembarked from their native land the next day.
On arrival in the new world, they dropped their
titles in order to conform to the republican spirit. Pitot was from Rouen and a thorough Norman in enterprise and energy. After witnessing the taking over of the colony by France from Spain and its hurried cession to the United States, he grasped the golden opportunities for business about him under the American regime, and was soon ranked with the prominent and wealthy merchants of the place. It is said that he established the first cotton press known in the city (on the corner of Toulouse and Burgundy Streets).
Etienne de Bore, as has been related, acceding to de Laussat's appeal to his patriotism, had filled the office of Mayor of New Orleans during the short episode of the second French Administration, but he refused to continue in office under the government of the United States, to which he was in principle opposed. The city with the territory was then under the rule of a Legislative Council appointed by the President. Laussat had abohshed the Cabildo and established for the government of the city a Municipal Council, composed of a Mayor and twelve members. The council continued in office after the transfer of the colony to the United States, and it was re-established by Claiborne, who presided at its meetings, at which were present all of the original members with the exception of three who, with de Bor6, for political reasons had resigned. Pitot was among the nmnber chosen to replace these. On June 2nd, 1800, he was elected Mayor by the Council, with the approval of Claiborne, who afterwards was sworn into the office of Governor by Pitot.
New Orleans in her career has been honored or
Toulouse Street, Near ''Old Levee" Street
dishonored by many kinds of Mayors. But the example of Pitot could produce only the Mayor that honored the city. Claiborne in his voluminous correspondence never lets his pen run over his name without a commendation of him.
The duties of the office of Mayor at that period were not Hght or easy. The citizens were in an ugly mood over the scamping, as they saw it, by the United States of the treaty with Napoleon, and they were in a state of constant ferment and indignation against the injustice put upon them by Congress. Public meetings were held, with violent orators denouncing the United States and clamoring for the rights of Louisiana. Pitot himself presided at one of these meetings and was on the committee that drew up the protest that was presented by a delegation to Congress. He presented the paper himself to Claiborne. Claiborne, always timid before the irrepressible nature of the Creoles, seemed never quite sure that they did not meditate some such coup d'etat as they engineered against Spain; but in a letter to the Secretary of State, Madison, he writes:*
"I place much confidence in the good intentions and prudent conduct of Mr. Pitot, the Mayor of the city, whose influence is considerable, and who assures me that the peace of the city shall not be disturbed."
He added:
"The Louisianians are a zealous people and their lively support of measures, nay, their enthusiasm, may be easily excited; but I find they readily listen to good advice and are generally pacific and well disposed again."
* "Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne." Vol. II, pp. 137-9.
It was to the Mayor that the good Protestant Governor referred the complaint of the Lady Abbess of the UrsuHne convent that a play was being produced at the theatre that cast ridicule on her convent. The play was withdrawn.
It is significant of the esteem in which Pitot was held in that he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Orleans, as the parent of the old College d'Orleans was grandiloquently called at its foundation—one of the first effects of the enhghten-ment of the American Domination.
Pitot resigned the office of Mayor in the summer of 1805 and was appointed by Claiborne Judge of the Probate Court of the Parish of Orleans, whose jurisdiction extended from the Balize to Baton Rouge.
Armand Pitot, his son, was a distinguished lawyer of the Louisiana Bar, and became clerk of the Supreme Court. He married a daughter of Monte-gut ^^fils/^ sister of the wife of Felix Grima. Mr. Gustave Pitot, the third generation of the name in New Orleans, was for many years a manager of the Citizens Bank, one of the oldest financial institutions in the city. The family group of the Montegut family, by Amans, in the Historical Society Museum, was an heirloom of the Pitot family. They have confided it to the keeping of the Louisiana Historical Society.
CHAPTER XXXVI ROFFIGNAC
COUNT LOUIS PHILIPPE JOSEPH DE ROFFIGNAC was a native of Perigord. He was of noble birth and had been a page to the Dowager Duchesse d'Orleans, the mother of Louis PhiHppe. At seventeen he received his commission from Louis XVI as a Lieutenant of Artillery, and served in Spain under his father who held an important command in the French Army. At twenty-four he was promoted on the field of action, for gallantry, to a captaincy in the Queen's Regiment of Dragoons.
He came to New Orleans, as has been related, with Jacques Pitot, having been compelled to fly from France to escape the guillotine. Avaihng himself of an article in the Treaty of Cession which allowed French subjects equal privileges, including naturalization, with those conferred upon actual residents of Louisiana, he became automatically upon his arrival in Louisiana an American citizen. His appreciation of this high honor, as he considered it, he proved during his long Hfe. --
He does not seem, like so many of the new citizens at that time, to have opened his eyes to the money-making opportunities spread before him, but he undertook at once the serious fulfillment of civic duties. He entered the Legislature and served as State Senator for twelve years. Gallantly
responding to the call of patriotism when New Orleans was threatened by the British, he became a soldier again and he was made a Colonel in the Louisiana Legion.
Roffignac was elected a director in the State Bank of Louisiana when the choice signified acknowledgment of mental ability and moral qualities as well; and finally he was elected Mayor of the city and was maintained in the office eight years.
It was a proud day for the city when he assumed office. He was, par excellence, the Mayor for New Orleans: an aristocrat, a gentleman, a man of letters and a clear-headed executive of ability.
Roffignac restored the finances of the city, strictly enforced the cleaning and policing of the streets, improved the public squares, and encouraged the estabhshment of institutions of education and charity. It was during his administration that in the Place d'Armes, along Esplanade, Rampart and Canal Streets, the sycamores and elms were planted, which gave to the city its foreign aspect for so long a period. The dear old trees, so kindly in the summer with their good shade, and so beautiful in the spring with their diaphanous white flowers, under which the old inhabitants used to promenade on Sunday afternoons, were destroyed eventually in one of the unsentimental and ignorant expressions of what was termed (as such attempts are always termed) civic progress and improvement.
The first contract to pave the mud streets with cobblestones covered with sand and gravel was made under Roffignac, and a regular system of fighting the city was introduced by means of large lamps with reflectors, hung from ropes fastened to high
posts at the corners of the streets—an innovation hailed with delight by the citizens, who hitherto had been forced to furnish their own illumination by carrying lanterns on dark nights.
The city needed then just such an administrator. It was enduring then the roughest period of its existence. A never-ceasing influx of strangers poured through its streets—mostly traders from the wild West who came down the river in barges and flatboats, laden with flour and grain and immense quantities of cured beef to sell. They filled the streets at night with the noise of their drunken brawls. In their wake followed a horde of gamblers and disreputable men. Licensed gambling was permitted; the gambling dens were kept open all night. The night poUce were inefficient and too few in number for the size of the territory they had to guard. Assaults, robberies, crimes of all kinds were committed under the very eaves of the Cabildo; incendiary fires were of daily occurrence.
But all menaces to peace and order Roffignac met with the energy and courage of a soldier; and he imposed upon the lawless barbarians a regard for the dignity of the city. It was, however, toward the close of his administration that occurred a great civic misfortune—the terrible fire that consumed the State House. This was only a plain building on the lower corner of Toulouse and the Levee, with a broad gallery in front overlooking the river. A Httle garden at the side held a parterre of flowers and bouquets of tropical shrubbery. To the people, however, it was the stately ^'Hotel du Gouverne-ment" of the French and Spanish administration, and consecrated as the stage of all the great political
events of the colony's history. In it every Act of Cession of the colony had been registered, every ^^ordinance," or ''Bando de Gobierno/' promulgated. Under its roof was signed the warrant that condemned Lafreniere and his followers to their glorious death. Within its walls Governor Claiborne and General Wilkinson held their conference to thwart the designs of Aaron Burr; and there General Jackson had followed up his victory over the Enghsh by conceiving his high-handed design of dispersing the State Legislature at the point of the bayonet to get rid of the ''traitors/' as he considered them.
It had been built in 1761, under the French regime, and at the time of the disaster was the official residence of Governor Pierre Derbigny. In its upper chambers were held the Legislative Assemblies (the legislators and senators mounting to them by a rickety stairway that was always threatening to collapse). The State offices occupied the ground floor. Adjoining them was the public library, possessing, in truth, but a scant collection of books, but rich in irare and valuable manuscripts and historical records (to-day they would be considered beyond price). All were consumed, including an entire edition of the Code of Practice, and all but a hundred volumes of the new Civil Code.
On the day after the fire, the Legislature, which had been is session, assembled on the invitation of Mayor Roffignac in his public parlor to consult upon the selection of another building in which to continue their deliberations. It was decided to take the Orleans Ballroom, offered by that good citizen, its proprietor, John Davis.
Not only did Roffignac make the city proud of his
' -^;£.^N«»Q<w^7d.
Porte-Cochere on Chartres Street.
administrative ability; he flattered it by his undoubted position as a man of letters. He maintained frequent communication with the leading statesmen of France and an unbroken correspondence with Lafayette, who in 1825, when he made his ever-famous and glorious visit to the city, was received by Roffignac under a great arch in the Place d'Armes with a speech that outshone Lafayette's reply.
He lived on Chartres Street between Dumaine and St. PhilUppe, in close proximity to the Hotel de Ville and the Cabildo. He had married very happily a daughter of the good old family of Montegut.
In 1828 he wrote his farewell address to the President and members of the City Council. It was a noble letter, which to-day, nearly a century later, moves the heart with its genuine and lofty sincerity, and true vision of the proper government of a city. His retirement from office w^as keenly regretted; he had devoted eight years of his Kfe to the service of the city, and thirty to that of the State. "
Roffignac retired to France, where he had inherited from an aunt a considerable fortune; but he never could be induced to resume his title. To the solicitations of his wife and children he would reply invariably that he w^ould remain plain Mr. Roffignac in France as he had been in America. He was cordially welcomed in Paris, and invited to luncheon at the Tuileries by Louis Philippe, who remembered he was Madame de Roffignac's godfather, and that Dr. Montegut had entertained him hospitably in the old days of his exile in New Orleans.
Roffignac's daughter married the secretary of the King's sister and his two sons married into families of distinction. His wife, ''an excellent and chari-
table woman/^ says Gayarre, lived with her daughter in Paris.
He retired to his chateau, near Prigueux. There Gayarre visited him, when he was over eighty years old, describing him thus:
"He pressed me tenderly in his arms, but alas wept bitterly. In the course of conversation I saw that he was an incurable sufferer and that life had become to him an insufferable burden. He deplored that he had ever left Louisiana, which had become his real home, while his native country had ceased in his eyes to retain that character after so long an absence from it. Now it was too late! too late to go back! His face was woebegone when we parted; he pressed my hand with energy and said in a voice that sounded like a sob: 'My dear friend, if you wish to meet a friendly eye on your deathbed—buy a dog.' He died shortly afterward, in his chair, from the accidental discharge of his pistol that he was handling."
CHAPTER XXXVII ST. GEME
THE memory of St. Geme is preserved in two historical records. Gayarre, in a historical sketch of Pierre and Jean Lafitte, writes:
"Shortly after the war (1812), there was between two citizens of Louisiana an affair of honor which produced considerable excitement. Pierre Lafitte was the second one of them, and St. Geme of the other. St. Geme had no superior in New Orleans as to social position. He had distinguished himself under General Jackson as the captain of one of our uniformed companies, and was considered by the whole population as a sort of Bayard. Would St. G6me have consented to meet Lafitte in the capacity I have mentioned, if the latter had really been looked upon as a pirate?"
The other record leads us to the years before the Battle of New Orleans, when General Victor Moreau, condemned to exile by Napoleon, who was accused of being jealous of his brilHant rival, came to the United States, and in the course of his travels paid a visit to New Orleans, where he met with a reception of the best New Orleans kind.
The Governor, the military, the civil authorities, as well as the people themselves, turned out en masse in his honor, although the American authorities regarded him with a suspicious eye. He mingled freely with the French people, and was most cordial in greeting the French veterans in the city, many of whom had seen service in Egypt and on the Rhine. He played piquet with Pitot, discussed law with
Derbigny, sipped wine with Claiborne, and played billiards with Marigny; and in every way made himself agreeable to the enthusiastic citizens. He was fond of horseback exercise and would make short excursions in the surrounding country. It was during one of these jaunts that, in the company of Major St. Geme, a man who had seen service in Jamaica, he was struck by the peculiar fitness of a piece of ground which formed a natural bulwark against an invading land force from below the river. Sitting erect upon his horse he critically examined the spot and descanted with warmth on the many advantages the locahty offered if fortified as an intrenched camp.
His companion never forgot the incident and related it to Livingston who, in turn, related it to General Jackson on the memorable night of December 24th, 1814, when the first clash took place between the British and American forces. That spot was Rodriguez Canal, which Jackson selected and fortified—and immortalized by his heroic defense. 'This,'^ adds the author, '^is a historical fact.'^*
The family of Henri, Baron de St. Geme, Marquis d'Ustou Montaubon, Chevalier of St. Louis, ascends to the year 1590. When St. Geme came to New Orleans is not recorded. It is known, however, that in the city he married the widow of Jean Fran-gois Dreux, who was a Demoiselle Delmas, and that they went to France where they lived in the Chateau de Barbazan. They had but one son, Henri. The connection with New Orleans was resumed in later years when this son married Eugenie de Puech, the daughter of Louis de Puech and Althee d'Aquin, who
* Henry Castillanos, "New Orleans As It Was."
was born in New Orleans and baptized in the old St. Louis Cathedral. The marriage took place in Tarbes, France.
The Puechs belonged to an old Huguenot family who, after the Edict of Nantes, emigrated to Boston and from there went to St. Domingo, where they acquired vast property. They were driven out by the insurrection of the negroes and took refuge in Philadelphia.
The three children of Louis de Puech were registered at the French consulate in Philadelphia as French subjects, and were sent to France for their education. Ernest was admitted to the school of St. Cyr, and was there when the Revolution of 1848 overthrew the republican government for that of Louis Philippe. He returned to New Orleans and thenceforth was counted among the foremost citizens of the place. He was the organizer and the first president of the Cotton Exchange. He enUsted in the Civil War and became a major of the Garde d'Orleans, and took part in several engagements. His age alone prevented his flying to France and offering himself in the last war. At his funeral, military honors were accorded him by a file of his old comrades of the Confederate Guards.
The Vicomte Henri de St. Geme died in 190L His widow survived him many years. They had no children and she adopted Lucile, the granddaughter of her brother, Ernest de Puech of New Orleans, and who at present is Madame Albin La Fonta.
CHAPTER XXXVIII ALLAIN
FRANCOIS ALLAIN, a native of Brittany, was the first of his family to come to America. He had been an officer in the French Army and had fought in 1745 at the Battle of Fontenoy. Why he left his country for Louisiana is not known nor why he selected a home in Baton Rouge, ^'le poste des Attakapas," as it was called.
He brought with him two daughters and two sons, one of whom, Augustin, Captain of Grenadiers, founded the branch of the family known in New Orleans. Two sons were Val^rien and Soathene. Valerien, the better known of the two, married Celeste Duralde, the daughter of Martin Duralde, a Spanish officer stationed at the Poste de Attakapas. Of the three Duralde sisters, one married John Clay, the brother of Henry Clay; another, Soniat du Fossat; and the third (Clarisse), C. C. Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana.
The mother of the Duraldes was a Perrault. She was from Canada and a descendant of Charles Perrault, the immortal author of the Fairy Tales.
Valerien and Celeste Duralde had one son, Valerien, born and baptized in 1799, and three daughters, who became Mesdames Ursin Soniat, Valerien Dubroca, and George Eustis. Mrs. Eustis was the mother of Allain Eustis, who married Anais de Saint
Manat. Her sons were James Eustis, late Ambassador to France; and George Eustis, in his day the ''Beau Brunmiell" of New Orleans, who married Louise Corcoran, daughter of the Washington philanthropist. The daughters of this last couple were Mathilde, who married an Englishman and liv^ed abroad; and Celestine, still living, who is to-day cited as the ''fine fleur" of what ante-bellum New Orleans could produce in the way of a grande dame. To the grace of the Creole she adds the intellect of a woman of letters, and she is the author of several books connected with the life of her family in New Orleans, the profits of whose sale she has given in charity.
Val^rien, the son, was sent to France to complete his education. He spent some ten years abroad, most of the time in Paris, where he frequented the society of men of letters and indulged his cult for the stage. It is not surprising that, on his return to Louisiana, he found life on his father's plantation insupportably dull and resolved to Hve in the city, where he married Armantine Pitot, the daughter of Jacques Pitot de Beaujardiere, the first American Mayor of New Orleans.
It was the day in Paris when gastronomy was an intellectual pleasure, and a good cooking a fine art. Gaj^arre used to say that the nearest approach to Parisian dinners that he had seen out of Paris were given by Valerien Allain. Fortunately he lived at a period when the old French market in the city and his father's plantation could supply the viands necessary. He seldom came home without two or three chosen friends to dine with him; and his wife, not to be taken unaware, was in the habit of stationing her butler in an advanced post of observation to give