Julienne

(1815 - 1851)

Julienne was born into slavery on Evergreen Plantation around 1815.  She was a Creole of mixed race and raised as a French-speaking Catholic.  At her baptism at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Edgard on October 30, 1818, the priest noted that she was three years old and listed her godparents as Honoré and Celeste.  Julienne’s sister Esther, born just four days prior, was baptized on the same day.  Her godparents were Maximilien Haydel, a cousin of Magdelaine Becnel’s, and Zélamire Haydel, Magdelaine’s granddaughter.  Elvire, the girls’ mother, was a mulatresse, indicating that she was of half European and half African descent.   

Upon Magdelaine Haydel Becnel’s death in 1830, her estate, including her large plantation and numerous slaves, was inventoried and sold.  Debts were settled, and the profit was divided between the heirs.  The Widow Becnel’s family was so interconnected that their family tree overlapped; Haydels and Becnels routinely intermarried, partnered with each other on various plantation ventures, and inherited slaves from each other. Magdelaine’s son-in-law Jean Jacques Haydel Jr. also happened to be her first cousin.  He witnessed the inventory being made, assisted in the settling of the estate, and participated in the auction that followed.  Jean Jacques Haydel Jr. purchased several slaves from Magdelaine’s succession, including Julienne.    

Jean Jacques Haydel brought Julienne, described as a fourteen year old Creole mulatresse, just up the road to his plantation, where she would serve as a domestic.  Her mother Elvire, a fifty-year-old American mulatresse, was inventoried and sold with her husband Elick, a sixty-year-old American mulatto.  Though Elick possessed valuable skills as a blacksmith, he suffered from cancer, greatly reducing his value.  It is unclear whether Elick was Julienne and Esther’s father, or if Elvire became his spouse later in her life.  Also records have yet to indicate whether or not Julienne and Esther shared the same father.   

Esther, appearing in the inventory as an eleven-year-old Creole mulatresse, was sold separately from her family.  Placide Perret purchased her for $785.  For the first time, the sisters would be forced to live apart.  As the Perrets would eventually relocate to St. Mary parish, it is likely that Esther and Julienne would eventually endure permanent separation.

By May of 1834, Jean Jacques Haydel Jr. and his son Belfort had over extended their credit.  An inventory was made of their plantations and presented to their creditors.  The Haydels would attempt to apply for an extension of their credit.  Julienne was included in this list.  Now eighteen years old, Julienne’s value had increased from the $400 Jean Jacques originally paid for her to $900. 

Julienne gave birth to her first child on February 21, 1841, at eight o’clock in the evening.  She named her Elvire after her mother, who died just a few months later, on April 3, 1841.  Julienne’s next child, Edouard, was born in April 1843, and was baptized at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.  His baptism was recorded in the records of St. John the Baptist Church in Edgard on June 7, 1843.  His godparents were Leonard and Babée, both free people of color.  Often baptisms occurred several months after the birth of the child.  Edouard’s early baptism at the Cathedral indicates that Jean Jacques had brought Julienne to New Orleans and also that Edouard may have been sickly at birth.  Three years later, on March 25, 1846, Julienne gave birth to another daughter whom she named Constance.  Less than a year later, on January 25, 1847, at four o’clock in the morning, she had another daughter, Esther, who was described as a “mulatresse quadroon” upon her baptism one year later.  This child was named for the sister Julienne had lost through sale seventeen years before.  Julienne’s last child, Ursin, was born on February 6, 1849, at eleven o’clock at night. 

Certain details—the fact that the exact time of the birth of her children were recorded, that the godparents for her children were in many cases white or free people of color, that she was in New Orleans with Jean Jacques Haydel at the time of the birth of one of her children, and that her children were listed as quadroons or griffes on various documents—indicate that Julienne’s children were in all likelihood fathered by a white man, quite possibly Jean Jacques Haydel himself.

On the night of January 11, 1851, Julienne died, leaving behind children ranging in age from ten to not quite two years old.  The next morning she was interred in the cemetery of St. John the Baptist Church in Edgard in the presence of Jean Jacques Haydel, Ursulus Faure, and others.  Listing those present at the funeral of a slave was uncommon and usually occurred only upon the death of a slave who was important to the family or the community.  The priest noted that she was 35 years old at the time of her death.  Ursin, Julienne’s youngest child, died on March 10, 1853, a little over two years after he lost his mother.  His funeral record described him as the son of the late Julienne, age 4.   

Jean Jacques Haydel sold his plantation after a devastating cholera epidemic killed a substantial number of his slaves.  He then relocated permanently to New Orleans.  By that time, he had accumulated many debts.  His wife Marie Laure died of cholera at the same time that the plantation’s slaves were suffering from the disease.  As a result, her succession had to be filed and her assets divided among her heirs. On November 22, 1855, the court in St. John the Baptist parish ordered Jean Jacques Haydel to settle the estate he shared with his wife.  This led to him selling his slaves at a series of auctions conducted by certified New Orleans auctioneers St. Clair Guimault and Norbert Vignie beginning in January 1856. 

The sale had a profound impact on Julienne’s children.  Edouard was sold to John Lyall of New Orleans.  Her daughters Elvire, listed as a sixteen-year-old griffe, Constance, listed as an eleven- year-old mulatresse, and Esther, listed as a ten-year-old orphaned mulatresse were sold to Pierre Lefebvre and Gustave Sabatier of New Orleans for $875, $795, and $555 respectively.  They left the only home they had ever known, the plantation in the countryside and the enslaved community in St. John the Baptist parish that their family had been part of for generations, to live in the bustling metropolis of New Orleans.  Perhaps the sisters took comfort in being sold together, a fate their mother and aunt had not known.  If they survived the next decade, they would experience emancipation due to the Civil War.  Finally free, the family might be able to reunite and begin to repair the bonds broken during slavery.