The next decade held great challenges and struggles for Phelonise Haydel Dangluse and the grandniece she had adopted. Phelonise and Philomene remained loyal to each other in the midst of desperate circumstances. Their strong bond carried them through violence and suffering.
Mother and daughter’s return to the city was at first fortuitous and filled with promise. Phelonise purchased a lot in Faubourg Franklin (now St. Roch) on April 14, 1856. She paid $350 in cash to John Lorenzo Jr. Five days later, Philomene married Lorenzo.
At the time, it seemed like a good match. Philomene and John had similar backgrounds. Both were of mixed race. John’s father, John Lorenzo Sr., was a fruit merchant from Italy. He owned property on Decatur Street, several slaves, and had accumulated personal wealth. Originally his surname was Lorenchiti, but to adapt to the Creole city, he began referring to himself as Lorenzo, a Spanish surname. He had relationships with two different free women of color, which produced a son and daughter. Unlike Philomene, John Lorenzo Jr. was born free. He was also acknowledged by his father as his natural son and inherited property from him. John was employed as a clerk for his father’s business.
Philomene’s emancipation was formally acknowledged under law less than two months after her marriage. Marcian Belfort Haydel appeared before the Police Jury in St. John the Baptist parish and asked for a special allowance for Philomene and her sister Germine to remain in the state after they were freed. Haydel and his son George were also preparing to free Philomene’s mother and siblings. Yet she would always consider herself to be Phelonise’s daughter.
Marcien Belfort Haydel spent years trying to emancipate Phelonise and Germine. Here is the notice of the emancipation in both English and French.
Any optimism that Phelonise had felt at her adopted daughter’s marriage soon faded. John Lorenzo did not seem interested in working or supporting his growing family. Philomene, eighteen years old at the time she wed, became a mother within her first year of marriage. She had three children in four years. George was born in 1857, Jean Baptiste joined the family in 1859, and Leandre soon followed in 1861.
In addition to being a layabout, John Lorenzo abused Philomene. Every day she endured physical violence and abusive language. She struggled to raise her three young children and support them financially through her own labor. Her mother Phelonise was also subjected to ill treatment at the hands of John Lorenzo. Mother, daughter, and grandsons lived in turmoil, fearing for their lives. While the nation was in the midst of a Civil War, Philomene found herself fighting a daily battle in her own household.
Finally Philomene had enough. On July 25, 1864, she filed for divorce. She appeared before the Sixth District Court in New Orleans and presented her case, telling Judge Charles Lamont that Lorenzo had “abused [her] with shameful words,” making their continued living together “unsupportable,” and that the “brutal Acts. . .lately committed by her husband upon her person in beating and seriously wounding her” compelled her to seek the protection of the court by applying for a divorce.
While her suit was pending in court, Philomene made her home with her adopted mother Phelonise at 224 Columbus St. She also retained the custody and guardianship of her children. The court ordered John Lorenzo to pay Philomene $20 per month in alimony to support herself and their children.
Lorenzo’s response was typical of that era. He attempted to defile Philomene’s character. He told the court that he had been a “kind and affectionate husband and father and that his said wife had been false and unfaithful and disregarding her marriage vows.” He claimed she had acted in ways “unbecoming a wife and mother,” that she abused and abandoned him and their children. He even went so far as to claim that she had “frequented a house of ill fame” and been guilty of adultery. He wanted custody of the children and for Philomene to pay for all court costs.
The suit came before the Sixth District Court for a final hearing in November 1864. Philomene appeared in a public courtroom and stood before the judge. The desperation of her situation certainly motivated her. Yet it’s important to remember that countless women were in her situation and never spoke up. She showed remarkable courage and strength at a time when society would have preferred her to remain a victim.
Her testimony focused particularly on an incident that took place that summer. At six o’clock in the morning of July 5th, Lorenzo beat Philomene, leaving her face and nose covered with blood. She said, “He struck [me] so violently that the blood flowed from [me.] Previous to this he insulted [me], grossly accusing [me] of unchastity and told [me] [I] was a whore and a maquerelle [French for brothelkeeper].”
Philomene revealed that for five years, almost her entire marriage, and certainly years that were formative for her children, “the house [was] continually in an uproar.” Witnesses testified to Lorenzo’s violent behavior and aggression.
The court sided in favor of Philomene. They allowed her a separation of bed and board from Lorenzo. Yet Philomene did not adhere to the ruling. “Yielding to the obsessions of her husband. . .who continually beset her with the most flattering promises of good behavior and affectionate and tender deportment for the future,” on February 12, 1865, Philomene gave Lorenzo another chance. “She consented to wipe out the past and return to the cohabitation with her husband. . .he was not long in breaking most faithlessly his vows and protestations and resumed his former bad and shameful conduct, daily abusing her with the most shameful and unbecoming words.”
According to Philomene, John Lorenzo’s “conduct daily grew worse and threats took such a menacing appearance that fearing to be submitted to the maltreatments already committed by her said husband on her person and being subjected to the beatings received by her, and fearing for the safety of her life,” she left him on April 18, 1866. She “sought refuge” at the home of her aunts, the Misses Haydels. These ladies were actually her great aunts, sisters of her adopted mother Phelonise and grandmother Celeste, all born at Evergreen Plantation and now residing in New Orleans. This demonstrates the deep and abiding connections that remained long after they left the plantation and the continued importance of family that dominated the Creole experience, both slave and free.
Her Haydel aunts took her in as well as her children George, age nine, Jean Baptiste, age seven, and Leandre, the baby at five years old. Just a few months later, in September, her youngest song Leandre. Not only did she have to endure the loss of her young son, but she also continued to receive threats and abuse from her estranged husband. The situation had become unbearable. In November 1868, she again sought protection from the court when things reached a breaking point.
She told the judge that she had “always behaved as a dutiful wife and in the most tender and becoming manner towards her husband but to no avail---and that it is absolutely necessary that the bonds which unite her to. . .John Lorenzo be forever dissolved.” She asked that the court approve of her residence at her Haydel aunts’ home on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter. Philomene was in destitute circumstances, and John Lorenzo was ordered to pay $30 a month to support her and their children. She also asked that he pay all court costs.
Stanislaus Arnould, a neighbor of the Lorenzos, appeared as a witness for Philomene. He said that during supper one evening he heard a noise and commotion in the rooms occupied by Phelonise Dangluse, Philomene, and the Lorenzo family. Phelonise and Philomene were shrieking and crying for help. Arnould and the landlord hurried to the scene and found John Lorenzo beating and maltreating Phelonise and Philomene. Arnould had to use violence against Lorenzo to stop him from further harming his wife and mother-in-law. Arnould threw Lorenzo out of the house, but he continued to abuse his wife and mother-in-law “publicly on the banquette [sidewalk] applying to them the most abusing and insulting epithets, and it was only on the threat of the landlord to have him arrested that said Lorenzo went away.”
Arnould spoke of numerous occasions of Lorenzo disturbing the peace. Philomene always “politely requested him to go away. . .that she would have nothing to do with him since he could neither support her and his children, when he would abuse and insult her, repeatedly, even at night” coming around and banging on the door and threatening her. Arnould described Philomene as “a hardworking woman” with becoming conduct who “supported herself and children by her own exertions.”
Philomene’s brother Arthur Gayaut also appeared before the court and spoke of daily threats of violence, constant insults, and beatings. He made it clear that Philomene worked to maintain the family. Lorenzo “did not support his wife and children. . .it was [Philomene] who by her own exertions and work provided for his wants and those of their children and her own ones.” Gayaut shed even more light on Philomene’s experience. He said he had “never heard any person insult another more violently than [Lorenzo] did insult his sister.”
Once again the court found in Philomene’s favor. She was granted a divorce and custody of her children. Philomene’s ability to obtain a divorce can be traced back to the influence of French and Spanish civil law. While the rest of the country’s legal system was based on British common law, Louisiana still adhered to most of the tenets of civil law established in its colonial days.
According to Sara Brooks Sundberg’s study of women and property in early Louisiana, the state “contradicts accepted ideas about early American women’s ‘enforced dependence’ under the law.” Women in Louisiana had legal recourse against grievances from their husbands. They could go before the court and request a separation of property if their husbands mismanaged or endangered their inheritance. They could also sue for a separation of bed and board if abuse or adultery could be proven. However Sundberg’s study found that Anglo American women were less likely to benefit from these Louisiana laws due to ethnicity and custom. Creole women, aware of the laws and products of a culture that accepted the use of them, were far more likely to take advantage of the protections the law provided them. Many would assume that because she was a free woman of color, Philomene’s circumstances were more limited than a white woman’s. While this may be true in some cases, the reality is that because of her Creole heritage, she was more likely to use the court system to her benefit than her Anglo American counterparts.
The fact that Philomene was able to obtain a divorce in the 1860s was remarkable. In 1867, there were only 0.3 divorces for every 1000 marriages in the United States, totaling 10,000 divorces nationwide. Some states like Louisiana and Indiana allowed for divorce, but many others did not. South Carolina did not permit divorce of any kind. New York granted divorces only on the condition that neither spouse could remarry.
In fact, many judges across the country would have been unmoved by Philomene’s situation. In 1861, a New York judge refused to grant a divorce to a wife whose husband had beaten her unconscious, stating that “one or two acts of cruel treatment” were not proper grounds for divorce. The New York Times ran an article entitled “Wives Be Obedient Unto Your Husbands,” followed the next month with another piece called “Is a Black Eye Sufficient Ground for Divorce?” It featured an incident in which a husband tried to cut his wife’s throat.
Not only was Philomene educated and savvy enough to understand the law and utilize the court system, she also proved to be truly courageous. There was a serious stigma attached to divorce in that era. She was of limited means in a society in which men were expected to work and provide for their families. She also had young children depending upon her. Philomene must have truly feared for her life. She took the steps necessary to remove herself and her children from a brutal and terrifying situation. Philomene chose to live and to have a future even when the society around her at the time might have condemned her for it. Standing by her through it all, providing comfort, support, and refuge, were her adopted mother Phelonise, her biological mother Pamela, and her Haydel aunts. She came from strong women who had endured slavery and made new lives for themselves. She would not be broken.