Easter Baptisms 1860

Easter Sunday in 1860 fell on April 8. On that day Lezin Becnel III brought four enslaved people to Mass to be baptized and received into the Catholic Church. His family had helped found St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Edgard, just a few miles downriver from Evergreen Plantation. This church was where multiple generations of Lezin’s family, both black and white, as well as the enslaved workers he considered his property, were baptized and buried. It was the center of life in the rural Creole community.

We have many stories to tell about the people who shaped the history of Evergreen Plantation. Hundreds and hundreds of stories. Today we highlight the stories that have no proper beginning and ending, that are merely names on a page. For every biographical essay we can write, there are dozens of individuals who remain just a name in a document, seen once and lost to time. This is one example.

Enslaved Individuals Baptized in St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on Easter Sunday 1860:

Marie Rose, age 28 years, godfather Gilbert, godmother Rose

Pauline, age 25 years, daughter of Celina, godfather Robert, godmother Angelique

Victor, age 27 years, godfather Toussaint, godmother Josephine

Eugene, age 25 years, godfather Polin, godmother Josephine

We have no origin stories for Marie Rose, Pauline, Victor, and Eugene. We don’t know where they came from, if they were born on the plantation, born on a neighboring plantation and purchased, or bought at the slave market in New Orleans. Their names do not appear on any inventories before or after their baptisms. We have no sale documents for them. We don’t know where they went after the Civil War, if they stayed or left, or when they died.

These baptismal records are the only evidence we have that they existed, the only written trace left behind.

For every Catherine, whose story needs multiple posts from an extensive essay, there are dozens of Marie Roses and Paulines. For every Ned Edwards, whose life can be traced all the way to present-day descendants, there are scores of Victors and Eugenes.

This Easter, remember the hundreds of individuals who lived, loved, and died, who are now just fragments, letters on a page. They were so much more than just one document. Their lives were as full and robust as any of ours. They had stories, too; stories we may never know.

Easter 1860 was significant. One year later, the nation would be at war, a conflict that would ultimately result in freedom for Marie Rose, Pauline, Victor, and Eugene. We may never known their stories, but we can all hope they lived to see freedom.

CATHERINE Part Two: Emancipated from the Bonds of Slavery

One month after her son Charles’s death and less than a year after arriving at Evergreen Plantation, Catherine became pregnant with her second child.  She had not married anyone in the enslaved community on the plantation.  Her child’s father was the man who legally owned her and her unborn baby.

Lezin Becnel, forty-two years old and the proprietor of Evergreen Plantation, had lost his first wife Josephine in 1842.  He was left a widow with two young sons and soon remarried.  His second wife, Fanny de Baconnais, died just two years into their marriage in 1848.  In six years time, Lezin had been widowed twice.  Did he send his factor and agent Christoval Toledano to the slave market that fateful day to purchase a woman for companionship or something more?  Or did Lezin merely tell him he was in need of a skilled seamstress and was surprised by the connection that developed between them?  Catherine’s relationship with Lezin will be forever marked by the fact that she was enslaved.  As his property, she did not possess the right to consent.  He could do with her as he wanted.  Yet further evidence shows that whatever the origins of their relationship, Lezin grew to deeply care for her and the children they had together.

On October 17, 1852, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Virginia was born.  Catherine held her new daughter in her arms while out in the fields the enslaved laborers were beginning to harvest the cane crop.  Grinding season was the busiest time of year on the plantation.

Julian Vannerson, Unidentified Girl, likely Mary Mildred Botts Williams, 1855. Daguerrotype. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

The little girl would be known by several names, each a variant of the other.  It appears her mother named her for the home she had once known long ago, perhaps in remembrance of the family she had forever lost.  Records have her as Marie Virginie, Mary Virginia, Virginia, Marie Eugenie, and Eugenie.  The connecting link is “Ginny” or “Jenny,” a nickname for both Virginia and Eugenie.  This is probably the name most people called her, just as her mother was also known as Kate.

Catherine returned to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, the place where she had baptized and buried her son Charles, on April 7, 1853.  It is quite possible that this was not the first time she had entered the church’s doors since laying to rest her son, for that day she was prepared to be baptized into the Catholic faith along with her six month old daughter.  Had she gone willingly, embracing Catholicism as part of her new life and culture in Creole Louisiana?  Or had Lezin insisted on her conversion?  Was she persuaded, coerced, or wholly satisfied with her choice? 

It appears Catherine had been able to select her own godparents.  Adam and Pauline, both Creole slaves, stood beside her as she received the sacrament.  She forged bonds and made friends amongst the enslaved domestics.  Like Catherine, Adam and Pauline were both of mixed race and had always worked in the big house. 

Father Mina recorded the baptism of Lezin and Catherine’s daughter in the parish’s baptismal record book for slave and free people of color : “Marie Eugenie mulatresse born 17 October 1852 at 4 pm. . . Lezin Becnel is master of her and her mother and has declared her free.”  Her godparents were white cousins of her father’s, Irma and Pierre Roussel.  Lezin chose to acknowledge his daughter and take steps to free her.

Lezin and Catherine had second child together in December 1855.  They named him Edgard.  Is it mere coincidence that the daughter was named for her mother’s place of birth---Virgnia---and the son was named for his father’s---Edgard, Louisiana? 

After Edgard’s birth, racial tensions heightened in Louisiana and across the South.  Free people of color were held in increased suspicion, and a movement to strip them of their rights began.  There was a push to make any slave who was emancipated leave the state.  In an effort to limit the free black population of Louisiana, the state legislature prepared to enact legislation that would prohibit emancipation.  This new law would take effect on March 6, 1857.  Lezin would have been aware of this impending threat to the future of Catherine and his children.  He decided to take prompt action.

Lezin Becnel was required to publish his petition for emancipation in the official newspaper of the parish.

On March 4, 1856, the suit Lezin Becnel vs. The State of Louisiana came before the court in his home parish.  S. M. Berault represented him, and Emile Legendre, district attorney, acted on behalf of the state.  Lezin presented a petition for the emancipation of three slaves: Catherine, a mulatto woman age 24, Marie Virginie, a Creole quadroon age 3, and Edgard a 3 month old Creole quadroon boy.  The case was taken up for trial.  Twelve jurors deliberated on it, including several with the surnames Becnel and Haydel, Lezin’s relatives.  Lezin put up three bonds of $1000 each---one for each slave---and his first cousin Pierre A. Becnel acted as his security on the bonds.  The court also required the testimonies of two witnesses “as to good character and sober habits of said slaves.”

The jury delivered a verdict in favor of the emancipation of Catherine, Marie Virginie, and Edgard, and gave them permission to remain in the state.  The foreman delivered and read in open court in the now long gone original St. John the Baptist parish courthouse that Catherine and her babies were “hereby emancipated from the bonds of slavery and declared free.” 

The seemingly unimaginable had occurred.  Catherine, torn apart from her family and sold first as a young child, examined and analyzed like a beast of burden on the auction block, then later sold seven times in three and a half years---she was free.  The law recognized her as a human being, not a piece of property.  Catherine, who had held her baby son Charles in her arms as he died, enduring unspeakable loss, could now go to sleep at night knowing that her living children were free.  They could never be sold away from her, as she had been taken from her mother.  They would have a future with opportunities she could never have imagined. 

Then just nine months later, at the very end of grinding, when what was left of the cane was frozen to the ground due to temperatures in the thirties, Catherine awoke to discover that Lezin was dead.  On December 28, 1856, at the age of forty-six, the man who had given her freedom had died.  They had doted on their children together; she had known that he would always take care of them and provide for them.  With his death came not only sorrow but an ominous and uncertain future.

Marie Josephine Lennen Becnel: A Portrait

Little remains to document Josephine Lennen’s brief life. She left no letters, appeared only as a number on census records, and never had her name featured in a newspaper. Her children, only five and three years old at her death, probably held just a few cherished memories of her.

Josephine was born on September 21, 1816, and baptized at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on February 16, 1817. She was named for her mother, Josephine Marmillion. Josephine’s father, Michael Lennen, was a native of Ireland and practiced medicine. He wed Josephine Marie Magdelaine Marmillion in 1804, and this fortuitous marriage united him with the oldest and most powerful residents of St. John the Baptist parish. Josephine Marie Magdelaine, the daughter of P. E. Marmillion and Françoise Haydel, was named for her maternal aunt, Magdelaine Haydel Becnel, the matriarch of Evergreen Plantation. In fact, her aunt Magdelaine and grandfather Christophe Haydel stood as her godparents at her 1787 baptism.

Thus Josephine Lennen had ties to Evergreen Plantation from birth. The plantation had been established by her great-grandfather, was the childhood home of her grandmother, and later the home of her great-aunt. Her mother’s marriage to an outsider, an Irish immigrant, was of little consequence. As a member of the Haydel, Becnel, and Marmillion families, she was considered a Creole demoiselle, a young girl of the elite native-born planters.

When Josephine was eighteen years old, she married Lezin Becnel II. This match would have pleased her parents. Josephine and Lezin shared a great grandfather, old Christophe Haydel, the founder of Evergreen Plantation. Their grandmothers, Magdelaine and Françoise, were sisters and had a close relationship. Two years after their 1834 wedding at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, they brought their first child, a son named Lezin III after his father and grandfather, to be baptized there. Another son, Michel Alcide, was born in 1838.

Like most Creoles in St. John the Baptist parish, Josephine’s family lineage resembled more of a complicated web than a tree. Her husband Lezin’s father had died when he was very young, and and his mother Mathilde did not remain a widow for long. She married prominent plantation owner Valsin B. Marmillion, who happened to be Josephine’s maternal uncle. Thus Mathilde, Josephine’s mother-in-law, was also her aunt by marriage.

Though she left no diaries, papers, or many written documents, Josephine did leave behind one treasure that reveals much about her life: a fine portrait painted by Luigi Marie Sotta circa 1841. A native of Italy, Sotta came from a family of artists and studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. His work was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1833 and 1838, and one of his portraits was on display in Versailles. That Lezin Becnel commissioned Sotta to paint himself, his wife, and his mother says a great deal about the Becnels’ place in society.

In her portrait, Josephine appeares young and with a spare beauty, an almost modern simplicity. Her deep brown eyes hold much in their depths. She has fine cheekbones, dark hair, and at twenty-five, was still youthful. She appears to be dressed in mourning, wearing a black dress with fine lace around the collar and sleeves. Who she was mourning remains unknown, but in their portraits, her husband and mother-in-law wore black as well.

Of particular interest is Josephine’s necklace, comprised of a locket or pendant and then a diving bird with a heart in its beak. The color suggests jet black mourning jewelry that indicated a loss, and the locket or pendant could possibly have contained the hair of a lost loved. Yet it remains uncertain if the necklace was memorializing the death of a close family member or a solemn symbol of Josephine’s intense piety. It was a French Saint Esprit necklace; the dove represented the Holy Spirit. Similar necklaces appear in other portraits of Creole women of that era.

In selecting to wear it for her portrait, Josephine conveyed something about herself to future generations. She chose a piece of jewelry that could be worn for fashion, love, or remembrance. In an 1892 biographical essay profiling her youngest son, Michel Alcide Becnel, Josephine was described as “a devout member of the Catholic Church.” Having a Saint Esprit necklace would support this devotion.

Tragically Josephine died on June 13, 1842, at the age of twenty-five, soon after sitting for her portrait. Josephine’s strong Catholic faith, an integral part of her Creole upbringing, was embraced by her husband and children and remained an important part of their lives long after her death. Her husband Lezin II served as one of the church’s trustees, and her eldest son Lezin III wrote of his close friendship with a priest and his observation of holy days of obligation and confession even in the chaos of the Civil War. Her youngest son, Michel Alcide, was interred in St. John the Baptist Catholic cemetery, the same final resting place as Josephine. 1,800 people attended his funeral Mass, and their voices echoed through the same church that had once heard his mother’s whispered prayers.