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.

Phelonise Haydel Dangluse. Part I: 1800-1850

Phelonise was born into slavery around the year 1800 at Evergreen Plantation. Her mother, Jacinte, was one of the first people enslaved on the plantation. Jacinte had also been born on there and baptized at the nearby Catholic Church in 1780. She and her mother Marianne were the property of Christophe Haydel. Records indicate that Marianne may have been from St. Domingue (present-day Haiti). Thus when Phelonise was born, multiple generations of her family had lived on the plantation. Her family and the family that owned hers---the Haydels---had been the first to establish the plantation on the banks of the Mississippi River during the colonial era, a time fraught with disease, warfare, famine, and constant labor. Not only had the two families been inextricably linked from the beginning, they were now in fact each other’s family, related by blood. For Phelonise’s father was a Haydel. Whether her father was Christophe’s son George, his brother Jean Jacques, or his nephew Jean Jacques Jr. has not yet been determined. Phelonise adopted the surname Haydel, as did her siblings, just as any daughter would take her father’s name.

Though all her life she was called Phelonise by her family, she appeared on plantation inventories and other documents as Arthemise. This was a common naming trend during an era when plantation owners often gave the enslaved Greek and Roman classically inspired names. Slaves often rejected these names when associating with their own families and communities.

Phelonise was raised to be a domestic, cleaning the house ,serving her white relatives, and catering to their every need. Phelonise and all of her siblings were of mixed racial ancestry and worked in the big house. When she was fourteen years old, she served as godmother at her sister Germine’s baptism. Her brother died in infancy, but her five sisters lived to adulthood and were all known as the Misses Haydels.

Christophe Haydel died shortly after Phelonise’s birth. The plantation, as well as Phelonise, her mother, and her siblings, were inherited by Christophe’s daughter, Magdelaine Haydel Becnel. Magdelaine ran the plantation for the next three decades, until her death in 1830, when the property went up for sale. The proceeds were to be divided amongst her heirs. This meant that Jacinte and her children would be sold apart. Phelonise and her sisters were each purchased by a different Haydel or Becnel family member. Phelonise became the property of Jean Jacques Haydel Jr., Magdelaine’s first cousin as well as son-in-law, for he was married to her daughter Clarisse. He purchased Phelonise for $400. She was described as a Creole mulatto domestic slave. She spoke French, was a member of the Catholic Church, and was both culturally and genetically connected to the man who owned her. She left Evergreen Plantation, where she had been born and raised, the only home she had known for thirty years, and was brought to Jean Jacques Haydel’s nearby plantation. But she would not remain there long.

Four years after she left Evergreen, Phelonise was freed by Jean Jacques Haydel. It was 1834, and she was around 34 years old. Though she had no children of her own, she remained very close to her sisters and especially her niece Pamela, the daughter of her sister Celeste. Records indicate that it is likely that Pamela was the daughter of Marcien Belfort Haydel. Their relationship illustrates the tangled web that characterized the Haydel and Becnel family trees, both free and enslaved. Marcien Belfort Haydel was Jean Jacques Haydel Jr.’s son. Like his father before him, he owned his own daughter. Pamela had a relationship with a man named Jean Gaillot, who had also married into the Haydel family. The couple had many children together. They could not marry, because interracial marriage was illegal in Louisiana and because slaves could not enter into a marriage contract. Even though their father, Jean Gaillot, was free, Pamela’s children remained enslaved, for all slave children had to take the status of their mother.

After she gained her freedom, Phelonise moved to New Orleans. This urban center had the largest population of free people of color in the South. The majority of them were Creoles like Phelonise. In this community, she found a sense of belonging. She began a relationship with Jean Baptiste Montplaisir Dangluse, a native of St. Domingue (present-day Haiti) who had arrived in New Orleans after the revolution there. Dangluse was a veteran of the War of 1812 and fought at the Battle of New Orleans. On December 19, 1814, he joined Major Louis Daquin’s Second Battalion of free men of color from Haiti. These soldiers played a crucial role in the victory on the plains of Chalmette. Their commanding officer urged them forward, calling out, “March on! March on, my friends, march on against the enemies of the country!” in French. They surprised the British force and weakened them in preparation for the major battle to come, prompting General Andrew Jackson to tell them, “You surpass my hopes.” In the midst of the actual battle, they were commanded to stay in reserve but pushed forward to the British line and proved themselves once again. Recalling the performance by the Second Battalion and the death of British General Edward Packenham on the battlefield, Andrew Jackson said, “I have always believed he fell from the bullet of a free man of color.”

For the rest of his life, Dangluse spoke frequently of his military service in defense of the city at the time of the British invasion. It was clearly a defining moment in his life. He was particularly proud that he had been accepted into the grenadier’s company because he was so tall. Dangluse was closely tied to the Haitian Creole community in the city, further expanding Phelonise’s contacts in the community of free people of color. Yet she never lost touch with her niece Pamela and her grand- nieces and nephews in the country.

A decade after her own manumission, Phelonise succeeded in freeing her grand- niece and namesake. Marcien Belfort Haydel was willing to emancipate Pamela’s daughter Phelonise, likely his own granddaughter. Though the little girl was named after her great aunt, she was called Philomene all her life, possibly her middle name. Philomene was described in the sale and emancipation documents as a six-year-old quadroon, indicating ¼ African ancestry. Phelonise purchased her for $120, with the understanding that she would care for the child while Marcien Belfort Haydel sorted out the bureaucracy required to emancipate her. The laws were always changing, making it harder to free slaves, and at only six years old, Philomene did not meet the age requirement.

By entering into a contract for Philomene’s freedom and taking in the child, Phelonise essentially adopted her. Her grandniece became the child she never had and was raised in her home. Philomene considered Jean Baptiste Dangluse to be her father and took on his surname. She was present when her adoptive parents were married on March 29, 1847, at Annunciation Catholic Church on Marais Street in New Orleans. The Dangluses lived just blocks away from the church on Spain Street. But soon they would move across the river to Freetown, an area settled by free people of color that would later be called McDonoughville.

The reason for the move was a result of Dangluse’s military service. He received a bounty from the federal government, which he used to obtain the land in McDonoughville. By 1850, the small family had established a home there, and Philomene was attending school. She would be the first generation of her maternal line to be literate. It was forbidden by law to teach a slave to read and write. Now that she was free, Philomene could have an education.

Jean Baptiste Dangluse died on May 27, 1851, at three o’clock in the afternoon. He was around fifty-seven years old. Phelonise reported her husband’s death at the recorder’s office and made her mark on the death certificate as she was unable to sign her name. On this document, as on all legal documents, she declared her maiden name as Phelonise Haydel, an indication that her father was one of the white Haydel men related to the woman who had owned her.

Now in addition to being free, Phelonise Haydel Dangluse was a widow of property. For the first time in her life, she owned land and a house. Along with the forty- acre bounty that her husband had received, Phelonise was given an additional 120-acre bounty as a widow of a veteran of the War of 1812.  Unfortunately a crevasse, a break in the river levee, inundated the property and caused such significant damage that Phelonise chose to sell the land to a broker. She and Philomene moved back to the city in the 1850s in reduced circumstances.

To be continued in Part II.

CATHERINE Part One: Sold as a First Rate Seamstress

All her life Catherine said she was from Virginia. Even at her death, she still identified that state as her home. It was a fact she carried with her through every sale and every decade. Her Virginia roots were something she made known to her children. Yet the farthest back Catherine can be traced through written records is Mobile, Alabama. The paper trail on her stops, but it is probable that she was sold south from Virginia as a young girl, a common practice at the time. Louisiana had laws preventing the sale of children under the age of ten, but Virginia and other states did not. She could have been taken from her family and sold at a very young age. Or she may have been brought South by a slave trader once she entered her teenage years and purchased by James Crawford.

Crawford, a commission merchant, who worked as a factor and agent for cotton planters in Alabama, brought Catherine to the New Orleans slave market to be sold on August 8, 1847. Crawford had her “imported into the state,” and the sale was conducted by Elihu Cresswell, representing Crawford and acting as his agent. Elihu Cresswell was a well-known slave trader with a slave depot on Common Street, where Catherine was probably held. She was purchased by Charles Van Dyke, a ships’s captain, and his wife Nathalie. Catherine was sixteen years old, and this was at least the second time she had been sold. It would not be the last.

Common Street in New Orleans, once the location of a slave depot.

Image courtesy of www.neworleansslavetrade.oncell.com

Catherine had been the property of the Van Dykes for a year and four months when they decided to sell her. Just before Christmas 1848, Jean Pierre Barrere bought her from them. Barrere was a butcher and a very violent man. The Daily Crescent reported on May 11, 1848 that he had slapped a man and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Catherine had arrived in his household just one month before he married his wife Pauline, who a few years later went before a court of law and stated that Barrere was “guilty of ill treatment and outrageous conduct toward her.” He had assaulted and beaten his wife regularly and “menaced her of killing her.” Once he tried to murder her with a sword until a passing neighbor intervened. He had also “broken to pieces” all of the furniture in their bedroom to use to harm her. If this man behaved like this toward his wife, how might he have treated Catherine, the enslaved woman who was his property? It is likely that Catherine was also a victim of abuse during her time with Barrere. At one point Barrere sold her to Louis Cantin, but then Cantin sold her back to Barrere. It’s possible this was to prevent her seizure due to debt.

Catherine’s second purchase by Barrere occurred on February 12, 1849. She was sold as “a first rate seamstress, good washer and ironer, good house servant.” She also spoke both French and English.

Six months later, Barrere sold her for good, this time to Juan Ferran. She was sold with her three and a half month old son Charles. Ferran only owned her and her baby for a year and four months before selling them. Catherine encountered a familiar, though probably unwelcome figure: Elihu Cresswell, the slave trader who had acted as agent for her former owner and oversaw her first sale in New Orleans. On December 21, 1850, Cresswell purchased Catherine and her son Charles for $675. She was described as “a mulatress slave. . .aged about eighteen years sold as a first rate seamstress together with her child. . .a mulatto aged about three and a half months.” Throughout the seemingly endless cycle of buying and selling that Catherine endured, her age and that of her child were estimated and sometimes erroneously recorded.

Elihu Cresswell held Catherine and her infant son in his slave depot for only two months before he would again sell her. This would be the seventh time Catherine was sold in three and a half years. This bears repeating. In just three and a half years she had endured the sale process seven times. In the course of her entire lifetime, she had probably been sold eight or nine times. On February 7, 1851, Cresswell met with the agent of Lezin Becnel, owner of a sugar plantation in St. John the Baptist parish, to finalize the sale. Becnel paid $900 for Catherine, an eighteen-year-old mulatresse, and Charles, her mulatto baby again presented as three or four months of age. This would be the last time Catherine would ever be sold.

Final bill of sale for Catherine

New Orleans Notarial Archives, Achille Chiapella, Sale of Slaves Elihu Cresswell to Lezin Becnel; February 7, 1851, Vol. 22 #89. Courtesy of Chelsey Richard Napoleon, Clerk of Civil District Court, Parish of Orleans.

Elihu Cresswell died on May 29th of that same year. Had he held on to Catherine for three more months, she would have been freed. In his will, Cresswell freed all slaves in his possession at the time of his death. The executor of his will brought them up North to live in New York, a free state. Not only were they no longer enslaved, but they were in a place where their children and grandchildren would never experience the future Jim Crow South.

Catherine joined the Becnel household on Evergreen Plantation, a big change from the urban location in which she had lived for three years. Her son Charles was baptized at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in December. One week after his baptism at the church, he was buried in its cemetery. The priest noted in the record for the funeral that Charles was “around fifteen months old, son of Kate.” It was a name she would often use, perhaps the name her mother had called her long ago. It is likely her thoughts turned to the mother from whom she had been taken. Now she endured the tragic loss of her own baby son.

CATHERINE Part Two will explore her life on Evergreen Plantation and introduce her children and her relationship with Lezin Becnel.

A German's Perspective of Louisiana's Côte des Allemands in 1802

The Heidels (Haydels), founders of Evergreen Plantation, were among the first settlers of Louisiana’s German Coast. Located upriver from New Orleans, the Côte des Allemands, as the French called it, was home to Germans attracted to Louisiana by John Law’s campaign to help settle the struggling colony in 1721. John Law was the head of the Company of the Indies, which was overseeing colonial Louisiana. In an effort to help settle the colony and make it economically viable, Law sought agricultural workers to farm his landholdings, known as concessions. Law distributed pamphlets that described Louisiana as a paradise, a land of opportunity where newcomers could thrive. This appealed to a struggling population in areas of Germany, Switzerland, and Alsace-Lorraine, an area that had both German and French influences. They had been demoralized by war and their land forcibly taken from them. They looked to Louisiana to start a new life.

Unfortunately Law’s idyllic portrait of Louisiana proved false. From the start, the Germans faced serious hardship. Disease and death characterized their journey aboard the “Pest Ships” that transported them to Louisiana. Six thousand Germans left French ports for Louisiana. Only two thousand survived the voyage. Upon arrival, they discovered that Louisiana possessed a brutal climate, was disease-ridden, and lacked basic food and supplies. Law was a fraud, and the Company of the Indies a failure.

Yet the Germans made the best of things and set to work establishing small farms that would ultimately be successful. They soon began bringing their produce to market in New Orleans. Many believe that the Germans’ food supply prevented residents of the city from starving. Without their hard work, the colony would not have survived.

A letter written by a German immigrant in 1802 provides a glimpse of life on the German Coast just prior to the Louisiana Purchase. It is unique in that it was written by a German drawn to the colony long after the initial wave of Germans had arrived. Johann Joachim Lagemann, born in Germany in 1757, emigrated to America in 1785. His brother Heinrich Peter Lagemann had been charged with paying for Johann’s university studies, but the money did not arrive regularly. This made it impossible for him to continue his studies and probably led to his decision to travel to Louisiana to seek other opportunities. He found an already well-established community on the German Coast, where the early settlers had intermarried with French and later Acadians.

Several years after he arrived in Louisiana, he wrote to his brother of his marriage, his new home, and his impressions of Louisiana. What follows is a transcription of his letter.

From Mathew Carey's "General Atlas;" one of the first maps of Louisiana after statehood in 1812, Louisiana State Museum Historical Map Collection.

Beloved Brother, and remaining relatives and friends;

One other thing I must let you know: that I am still alive, where I live and that (thank God!) My present circumstances are very bearable.  I live on the Mississippi, 13 hours over New Orleans. (Lat: 30N, Long: 2.16 E).  Northside of the river, Cote des Allemans [German Coast], paroisse St. Jean Baptiste [St. John the Baptist parish].

February 28, 1800 I was married to Catharina Vickner, widow Marchand, with two children: Johann Baptist, age 7 and Catharina age 4 and a wealth of 15000, and what’s more, we live in unity and happiness together.  Nov. 28 my daughter Magdalene Celeste was born.

My wife’s father Adam Vickner, her mother Margareta Tracgern, both are out of two of the first and most numerous families here.

As I write this, we are subject to Spain, free from all taxes and tributes, and are bothered by nothing, since all are a member in the militia for our own safety, because of the blacks, for there is degradation of the human soul here: slavery-----we have only 5 black slaves, who work the fields, and 4 little ones, some have hundreds.

The fields yield: rice, Indian corn, Indigo, sugar, cotton, fruits, as you know it in Germany there is none, only oranges, peaches and figs.  Garden-produce is available year-round.  Caterpillars and other damaging insects are great inconveniences.  The great heat in summer, the quick change of the weather are dangerous to health and life, especially to foreigners.

All tradesmen are free, everybody does what he can.

The only salvation providing religion is only a shadowplay here of the true Roman Catholic.  No other church has public service; but freedom of conscience goes into the widths, even into the crazy.

The true spirit of commerciality reigns supreme!  The right and moral value of a person is measured by the size of his moneybag—the scoundrel who can deceive and cheat most is called a “Homme bien poli” that is, a man, who knows hot to live.

What is called rightfully pressing poverty, does not exist, thank God!  Everyone can make enough to get by,—slavery is barbarical enough, but not as tyrannical as the unfortunate serfdom in the civilized Holstein by far.  For the nights and the Sundays are for them, and necessary clothing and board have to be given them, yet happy is the land that knows no slavery, for it is a pest for morals, insolence, stealing, and all shame and vice are rampant among the people—they are slaves and make their masters into slaves too, or relentless, unmerciful barbarians and avengers.

The main language is French, English, Spanish, German, Cathalone is spoken too.

I never did write, and I suppose I have been forgotten long ago, but I still mean to take a trip to Germany, but I am and will never be well at sea—so I fear my illness more than the sea, and my wife shows much reluctance—the otherworld will reunite us. . . .

Aux Allemans

March 1, 1802

Johann Joachim Lagemann

***Johann Joachim Lagemann’s letter can be found in the Manuscripts holdings of the Louisiana Division at the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library.

Tomb of Anastasie Lagemann Rodrigue, Johann Lagemann’s daughter, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church cemetery, Edgard, Louisiana.

The Arrival of the First Africans in Louisiana

The first slave ships from Africa arrived in Louisiana in 1719, only a year after the founding of New Orleans.  Twenty-three ships brought slaves to Louisiana in the French period alone, almost all embarking prior to 1730. The need for labor on the large concessions proved so great that officials found themselves unable to satisfy the colonists’ demand for slaves. Thus, the large number of slaves brought over to supply colonists with free labor soon resulted in enslaved Africans outnumbering free whites.  In 1741, four African slaves lived in the colony for every 1.2 free white.  Although by the end of French rule, the ratio had balanced out to 4.6 slaves for every 3.7 free people, slaves still existed as the majority and would continue to make up a large percentage of Louisiana’s population for the next century.

This imbalanced population combined with high mortality, the threat of conflict with Native Americans, shortages of food and goods, and isolation produced a colony in which African, French, and Spanish cultures blended to create a unique culture known as Creole.  Because most of the Africans who first arrived in Louisiana were of one nation, the Bambara, they succeeded in preserving their language and culture and, through their solidarity, ultimately acted as an Africanizing influence on Louisiana.  European colonists, aware of their precarious position in the colony, were inclined to work together with slaves and afford them some rights under the Code Noir.

While the system was certainly brutal for African slaves, the harsh conditions of life in Louisiana resulted in difficulties for all settlers.  Since many of the colonists were themselves rejected by French society and forced into exile in Louisiana as criminals or debtors, historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall states, “Africans arrived in an extremely fluid society where a socio-racial hierarchy was ill defined and hard to enforce.” Hall expertly sums up the situation in colonial Louisiana, writing, “Desperation transcended race and even, to some extent, status, leading to cooperation among diverse peoples.” Though the arrival of Anglo-Americans with the Louisiana Purchase resulted in stricter laws governing slavery and narrower views in terms of race, Louisiana society would remain more diverse, fluid, and racially ambiguous than the other Southern slave states.

NOTES:

Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo.  Africans in Colonial Louisiana.  Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA: 1992, 57, 59, 64, 10, 131.

The Code Noir was established in 1724 to regulate slavery in colonial Louisiana.  The Code Noir stated that slaves were to be instructed in the Catholic faith, given food and clothing allowances, and allowed to rest on Sundays and the right to petition a public prosecutor if they were mistreated.  Also, young children had to be sold with their mothers.  The Code Noir prohibited slaves from owning property or testify against whites.  For more on the Code Noir see Schafer, Judith Kelleher.  Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana.  Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA: 1994, 1-2.

Other historians, such as Peter M. Caron and Gilbert C. Din challenge Hall’s assertion that the Bambara tribe from the Senegambia region made up the majority of slaves sent to colonial Louisiana.  Instead, Caron and Din state that bambara was a term used throughout Africa and that often Africans in colonial Louisiana were imprecisely labeled with the generic term bambara.  However, even if the origin of slaves was more diverse, the profound influence of Africans on Creole culture cannot be denied.  See Din, Gilbert C.  Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in  Louisiana, 1763-1803.  Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX: 1999, 5-6.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE SLAVE COMMUNITY

Evergreen Plantation provides an excellent model of the evolution of Louisiana’s slave society from the colonial era into the early national and then antebellum periods.  In 1790, upon the death of her husband Pierre, Magdelaine Haydel Becnel opened his succession.  An inventory was made of the Becnels’ property.  Surviving records document a total of fourteen slaves.  All of the Becnels’ slaves were described as negroes (black) with the exception of twenty-six year old Therese, listed as a metis, or of an indeterminate mixture of European and Native American ancestry.  Though worth 350 piastres, Therese was “granted her freedom by the authority of a judge due to her Indian heritage,” in keeping with Spanish laws of the time.  By 1790, Indian slavery was illegal and was nearing an end in practice. 

The Becnels’ also had a family group of slaves, including a mother, Marie Joseph, and her two sons and two daughters, worth together 650 piastres.  As ordered by the Code Noir, Marie Joseph and her children were inventoried together and could not be sold separately, as the children appeared to be under the age of ten. Eight male slaves were included in the inventory, valued at a total of 2850 piastres.  All possessed French names, with the exception of Tetemac, and ranged from twenty to thirty years of age.  None of the men were Creole, or born in the colony. Two were Bambara, two Fulbe/Pular, and the rest of various African groups, including Mandingo, Moor, Soso, and Konkomba.  Four shared the Mande dialect or language, while the other four spoke another West African language.

By 1810, Magdelaine Becnel significantly increased her wealth through sugarcane production, a burgeoning new crop due to Etienne de Bore’s successful crystallization of sugar on a commercial scale in 1795. According to the St. John the Baptist parish census of 1810, Magdelaine Becnel owned forty slaves, making her the largest slaveholder of the parish’s twenty-five households headed by women. In the 1820 census, she appeared as “Widow Becnel and Son,” indicating that she had made her son a partner in a plantation that included ninety slaves, seventy-three of whom were engaged in agricultural labor.  Thirty of the fifty women on the plantation and twenty-five of the forty men there were between the ages of twenty-six and forty-five.  There were ten children of each gender, and ten women over forty-five as compared with only five men over forty-five.

Upon Magdelaine’s death in 1830, a significant portion of her inventoried estate consisted of ninety-four slaves.  With twenty-seven female slaves and sixty-seven male slaves on the plantation, the sex ratio was severely skewed.  While most of the men worked in the cane fields as carters, plough hands, or laborers, most of the women functioned as domestics, serving as cooks, children’s nurses, washerwomen, and maids.  Some of the slaves were afflicted with entropied limbs, including Albert and Lenhem, whose right hands were damaged, and Cloe, whose feet did not function.  Several American male field hands were listed as being “fourteen years in the country” or “eight years in the country,” suggesting that they were familiar with the labor associated with a sugar cane plantation and had adapted to life in Creole Louisiana.  This detail may have been mentioned to entice buyers to pay more for them, as Creole slaves often fetched higher prices than American. 

Of special interest is Sally, a thirty-year-old American negresse who was “good for nothing” and worth only 5 piastres, the lowest priced slave under the age of sixty.  Perhaps she was physically or mentally handicapped, considered defiant, or a habitual runaway.  Magdelaine’s estate inventory contained another aberration: Sam, a thirty-year-old American griffe listed with his two-year-old child, together worth 400 piastres.  Usually slave children were inventoried with their mothers and when a mother was absent due to sale or death, the child was listed alone as an orphan.  This child, whose name was omitted in place of the classification “orphan,” was estimated with his father, indicating that they would remain together as a family unit.

Nearly three decades later, Magdelaine’s great-grandson, Lezin Becnel, and his brother Michel were operating the plantation, which now had a work force of ninety-six adult slaves and twenty-one slave children, for a total of 117 enslaved individuals.  With sixty-seven adult male slaves and twenty-nine adult female slaves, the sex ratio on the plantation was still skewed in favor of women.  In contrast, there were six male children and fifteen female children.  Sixteen of these slaves served as domestics, probably managed by Amelia Becnel, Lezin’s wife.  Of these sixteen, ten were women, emphasizing that house slaves were typically female.  While the slaves’ names remained primarily French, some names indicate the Anglo-American influence and the influx of American slaves, who often had last names from previous owners, including Starling, Tom Brown, and William Boone.

 On the eve of the Civil War, the Becnels had amassed $150,000 in real estate and $125,000 in personal property. Evergreen had grown into a major plantation complex and could be considered representative of a typical Creole plantation of its time.           

Survivors of the Middle Passage: Marie Joseph and Macré

Marie Joseph and her husband Macré survived the Middle Passage and were brought to Louisiana in the late eighteenth century. Marie Joseph, born around 1760, was of the Mina nation. Macré came from Senegal. They were purchased by Pierre Becnel and brought to St. John the Baptist parish. When Becnel died in 1791, Marie Joseph was the mother of four children, two sons and two daughters. Because they were born in Louisiana, her children were considered Creoles.

Macré, Marie Joseph, and their children became the property of Becnel's widow, Magdelaine Haydel. They spent several decades on what is now Evergreen Plantation. During their lifetimes, they witnessed the Becnels and Haydels evolve from subsistence farmers to indigo planters to sugar planters.

In an inventory of the estate made after the death of Magdelaine Haydel Becnel in 1830, Macré and Marie Joseph were listed together as husband and wife. This was a rare acknowledgement in a legal document of an marital relationship among the enslaved. Slave marriages were not considered legal unions by the state of Louisiana, and couples could be sold apart and separated at any time. Yet the Becnels recognized the bond between Macré and Marie Joseph, possibly because they were now elderly and infirm. At ages 75 and 70, their appraised values were only around $100 each, and they could do very little work.

Pierre Aime Becnel, Magdelaine’s grandson, purchased Macré and Marie Joseph for $300 with the intention of freeing them. On June 2, 1832, he presented a petition for this purpose before the Police Jury, the governing body of the parish. He informed these elected officials that Macré and Marie Joseph “had always led a regular and honest life and conduct without having runaway or committed any robbery or having been guilty of any crime or misdemeanor.” During two meetings that summer, the Police Jury unanimously approved the emancipations.

The next step in the process involved the Sheriff. Pierre Aime Becnel had to make a decree of his intention to emancipate to the sheriff. In February 1833, this decree was written in both English and French and posted at the church and the courthouse. Anyone who objected to freeing these slaves could notify the parish and halt the process, possibly even stop Becnel from manumitting them. Fortunately no objections were made.

On April 3, 1833, Pierre Aime Becnel appeared before Judge Terence Leblanc and in the presence of witnesses, declaring that he wished to reward his slaves Macré, age 75, and Marie Joseph, age 70, for their good conduct and service by giving them their freedom. He acknowledged that he had gone through all the steps of the process designated by law in emancipating the enslaved. There was no opposition from the court. Macré and Marie Joseph were now legally free.

The couple continued to live together on Pierre Aime Becnel’s plantation. On April 22, 1836, Macré's body was brought to the priest of St. John the Baptist Church. Pierre Aime Becnel asked the priest to perform funeral rites for him. Marie Joseph survived a little over a year after her husband's death. She died on the morning of September 14, 1837, on Pierre Aime Becnel's plantation and was buried at St. John the Baptist Church cemetery.