Aimée Edwards

(1842- between 1882 & 1884)

Aimée was brought to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church to be baptized on April 21, 1844 when she was two years old. Her baby sister Clementine was also there to be baptized. It was a Sunday, and the girls’ mother Catherine, called Kitty, must have hushed her babies through the Mass before it was time to be baptized. Felicité Becnel Haydel, a wealthy widow who owned Kitty and her children, came from a devout Catholic family who had helped build the Church. Though Kitty came from the Upper South and was probably Protestant, her children were being raised as Creoles, speaking French and practicing Catholicism.

 Aimée was two years old when she was baptized. Her godparents were enslaved individuals named Joseph and Henriette. Aimée’s sisters had nearly identical names. Her older sister, Clemence, was 4, and younger sister Clementine, was 1. The sisters did not share the same father. Clemence and Aimée’s father was a white man. They had light complexions and were called mulatresses to reflect that they were of both African and European ancestry. All their younger siblings were referred to as negroes, indicating that they were of entirely African ancestry. This was the terminology used during that time period and appearing in legal documents.

 In 1847, Felicité Becnel Haydel died, and her estate was auctioned off on behalf of her heirs. Aimée, her mother, and her five siblings were sold to Lezin Becnel. Lezin Becnel was Felicité Haydel’s nephew and had recently acquired his grandmother’s plantation from his cousin. He paid $3760 for Kitty and her six children, Charles, age 9, Clemence, age 8, Aimée, 6, Clementine, 5, Pauline, 4, and Marie, 18 months. This would be the equivalent of approximately $119,000 today. Kitty was considered a domestic slave, working in the household at Evergreen Plantation under the direction of Lezin’s wife Fanny. She was described as an American mulatresse in the sale and had many skills.  She was a cook, washer, and ironer. Though her mother worked in the house, Aimée was sent to the fields to help plant and harvest sugar cane by the time she was a teenager.

 Ned Edwards arrived at Evergreen Plantation in the late 1850s. He had been born in Virginia and was torn apart from his family, friends, and home through the domestic slave trade. He was sold in New Orleans, the largest slave market in the United States.  He had to make his own family and create relationships that would help him endure slavery. Aimée caught his eye and helped him to adjust to life on a Creole plantation.

 Slave marriages were not considered legal in the state of Louisiana. Because slaves were property in the eyes of the law, they could not enter into a contract. Enslaved men and women began relationships that they considered legitimate even when those who owned them and who made the laws denied their validity. Sadly these unions were often broken, as slaveholders could sell enslaved husbands and wives away from each other. Despite having already suffered the loss of his family, Ned fell in love and chose to marry Aimée. He became a member of her Creole family, gaining brothers and sisters in law and a mother and father in law. They did not replace the family members that were gone forever from his life, but Aimée’s family did provide him with a new sense of belonging and community. Together they mourned the loss of Aimée’s eldest sister, Clemence, at only twenty years old. Aimée and Ned’s first child was born in October 1858, when Aimée was sixteen years old. Like his mother, he was brought to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church to be baptized on August 22, 1859, where he was christened Marcel. Just a few months later, tragedy again struck the family. Aimée’s mother Kitty died at the age of 50 and was buried in the church cemetery.

 Had Kitty lived just a few years longer, she would have known freedom. The Civil War shook the nation and forced the country to address the issue of slavery. Louisiana joined the Confederacy but soon came under Union control after the fall of New Orleans in 1862.  The first black troops to join the United States army did so in Louisiana.  More African American men from Louisiana enlisted in the Union army than in any other state.  Ned was one of them.  On August 20, 1864, Ned joined the 80th United States Colored Infantry.  His name was recorded as Edward Edmonds.  As a slave, he did not have a surname, so he likely took his father’s first name as his own last name.  Just a few months after his enlistment, Aimée gave birth to another son, Edmond. Aimée held the young family together while Ned fought for their freedom. In March 1867, he was mustered out of the army and returned home to Aimée and their sons.

 After the war, Aimée and Ned lived and worked for a while on Carroll Plantation. Also known as Johnson, it was the plantation just downriver from Evergreen. Aimée gave birth to many more children. Five lived to adulthood. The Edwards family returned to Evergreen for a while but then ultimately chose to go back to Carroll Plantation. Though they never separated and considered each other husband and wife, Aimée and Ned never legally married. They believed the commitment they made to each other during slavery was as meaningful as any government issued license. Aimée died some time between 1882 and 1884, when she was around forty years old. She was buried in the cemetery of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, where she had been baptized decades earlier.

 Ned remarried several years later. In his old age, he received a pension from the federal government for his service during the war. He was disabled due to a serious hernia that had gone untreated for decades.  In a deposition taken by a federal official working for the Bureau of Pensions, Ned spoke of his past and how he had arrived at Evergreen Plantation.

 I was Born in Virginia.  The slave trader brought me in Louisiana at the age of twenty.  I was a slave in Louisiana twelve years before the war.  My mother told me when I left the State of Virginia.  I was 20 years old. . .A slave could not keep any Records at all.  [All] I am able to explain is from my mother when I was sold from her.

 Ned Edwards died on November 18, 1908, and was buried the next day by Reverend Albert Washington in the Second African Baptist Church cemetery (now known as Young Cemetery). Though Aimée had maintained her Catholic faith all her life, Ned was a member of the Baptist Church.  

 Aimée’s children and grandchildren continued to live and work at Evergreen Plantation for decades to come.  She now has hundreds of descendants, many still living in Wallace and Edgard.  One of her grandchildren, Olivia Simon, lived to be 100 years old.  She was born at Evergreen and went on to have 10 children, 51 grandchildren, 148 great-grandchildren, and 88 great-great-grandchildren.

 Aimée’s youngest son Silas Edwards continued the Creole cultural heritage passed down by his mother. He and his wife had nine children. Like his father, he labored in the cane fields all his life. Like his mother, he knelt in the pews of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church until he was buried there in 1944. Silas’s family spoke both English and French. He named one of his daughters Amy in honor of his mother. Amy was born in 1898 and worked as a domestic servant. Silas and his wife raised her daughter Bernadette while Amy worked in New Orleans as a cook.

 Silas’s daughter Virginia married Louis Boudoin, a biracial Creole whose family had also been in St. John parish for generations. Virginia Edwards and Louis Boudoin shared a Creole heritage: their language, religion, traditions, cuisine, and folklore could be all be traced back to the first inhabitants of St. John parish. They also shared similar ancestry. Both Virginia and her husband Louis had white great grandfathers. Virginia’s never acknowledged her grandmother Aimée. But Louis’s grandfather Pierre Baudoin was named for his white Creole father Pierre Baudoin Sr, who married his formerly enslaved mother Valentine just after the Civil War.

 When Virginia was 75 years old, she was interviewed as part of an oral history project. She spoke of incidents in the Catholic Church during her childhood and of old home remedies. She was most forthcoming about the violence and intimidation directed at African Americans during the Jim Crow era. African Americans throughout the South were subject to lynchings and brutal threats. Her experience reflected this. “I done see two people that they hang—two colored people,” Virginia said. “They had one from Columbia (plantation). They hang him, but he was not dead. They put him in the coffin, and he was knocking on that coffin, bam, bam, bam. They put him in the ground, he musta smother, but he still was knocking in there. Them old people had take the law in their own hands. He had tried to mess up with an old lady. He din have no trial.”

 Virginia Edwards Boudoin died in 1988. She was laid to rest in St. John the Baptist Church Cemetery, surrounded by the graves of her father, husband, sisters, brothers, and children. This holy ground holds all that remains of her great-grandmother Kitty, her grandmother Aimée, and her father Silas, the final resting place for generations of her family and for so many Creoles born and raised on Evergreen Plantation.