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.
