Merritt Thomas

(1825-prior to 1900)

 Merritt Thomas was born in Virginia around 1825. He was called Merritt Holland in his youth, indicating that the man who first enslaved him was named Holland. When Merritt was around 21 years old, he was sold to Mr. E. Myers of Richmond, Virginia. Myers’ agent was Luther Libby, a Virginia slave trader who forced Merritt aboard the brig Orleans to sail for New Orleans. Merritt was being sold South to work on one of the vast cotton or sugar cane plantations of the Deep South, an unfortunate yet typical experience for enslaved individuals in Virginia as they came of age. The ship’s slave manifest referred to him as Merritt Holland, age 21, shipped by Luther Libby to Thomas Boudar of New Orleans. Captain William Smith was in charge of the vessel that embarked for New Orleans on December 4, 1844, carrying Merritt along with 38 other enslaved people intended for sale. They arrived at the Balize, the mouth of the Mississippi River, on Christmas Eve, where they were examined and their papers checked before they proceeded to New Orleans. Notorious slave trader Thomas Boudar was waiting for them at his slave pen on Moreau Street in the heart of the slavetrading district. Boudar worked with a network of traders and was one of the wealthiest and most well known dealers.

Lezin Becnel, the owner of Evergreen Plantation, examined Merritt in early January of 1845. Merritt was around 21 year old and stood 5 feet 4 ½ inches tall. He was destined for labor in the fields of a sugar cane plantation. On January 9, Lezin Becnel bought Merritt along with a group of eight other slaves, including a woman, children and other men, from Boudar. He paid $4,150 for them, which would be approximately $142,000 today.

When Merritt arrived at Evergreen Plantation, he was a stranger in a strange land. He had been separated from his family and his home. He had lost his language (English) and had to learn some French to get by on this Louisiana Creole plantation. He knew nothing of sugar cane farming but was forced to learn quickly. His support system had been stripped away from him, and he had to find a way to become part of the enslaved community. Sophie, an enslaved teenage girl, was Creole, and she would be his way in. Sophie spoke French and practiced the Catholic faith; her ancestors had been in Louisiana for generations. It appears Lezin Becnel purchased her from a planter in St. Landry parish. In the early 1850s, Merritt and Sophie became husband and wife. Their eldest daughter, Josephine, was born in 1856. Sophie would give birth to a child on average every other year for the next two decades.

Merritt and Sophie worked in the fields at Evergreen Plantation until the arrival of Union troops during the Civil War. It was a tumultuous time. The plantation owners had left to fight for the Confederacy, and the Union army took over the plantation. On March 7, 1863, the couple’s three-year-old son Alexander died and was buried in St. John the Baptist Church Catholic Cemetery. After that, Merritt and Sophie took their children and moved upriver to see if there were better opportunities elsewhere. They settled in neighboring St. James parish in a small community of formerly enslaved individuals called Moonshine. Merritt adopted the surname Thomas, which had likely been his father’s name. The family continued to be active in the Catholic Church, probably due to Sophie’s influence, until the late 1880s.

Merritt and Sophie had at least 11 children. Several left for New Orleans in search of work that didn’t involve labor in the cane fields. Those children who remained lived close together. In his old age, Merritt was surrounded by family and was part of a community that included relatives and friends, a sharp contrast with the young man who had been ripped from the bonds of family and home.

Josephine, the oldest Thomas child, married Octave Arceneaux, a Creole of mixed race, when she was seventeen. She had three children with Arceneaux before his death. She remarried a second time but was soon widowed again. Her final marriage was to Bazile Gardiner, a Civil War veteran. Bazile had served in the 84th United States Colored Infantry. He had learned to read and write while in the army and had achieved the rank of sergeant. He saw action at Port Hudson and during the Red River campaign. Because of his service, Bazile was entitled to a federal pension. Josephine had made a good match, for the benefits Bazile received helped support the family, which included grandchildren she had taken in. They lived in a small house on rented land worth $100 that had been built by her first husband.

Eventually Bazile became so infirm that he required almost constant care. He applied to the Pension Bureau for an increase in his monthly benefits in order to pay for a private nurse. In 1926, he wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Pensions asking for help and expressing concern about Josephine, “My back is getting worse and worse so I can just keep my face from touching the ground. Most of the time I doesn’t go [to the bathroom] because my Back won’t allow me and my wife can’t do nothing but come to my call and that is regular because look like the Older I get the more I call her. So after her attending to me daily, with me and our grandchild, she is much worried. Sometimes I need something but after worrying her so much I does without it. Now I hope you look this over and see if I doesn’t need the $72 well don’t wait until its too late to do good. Help me now. Maybe some day you will receive help.” Bazile died less than three year later. Josephine outlived him by only a month. She passed away on November 24, 1929. Her funeral service was held at St. Luke Baptist Church and she was buried in the cemetery there alongside her husband. It is likely the final resting place of Merritt and Sophie as well. By the twentieth century, most of the Thomases had converted to the Baptist faith. St. Luke was an important part of their community.

Meritt Thomas died some time between 1880 and 1900. Sophie survived him by several decades. She passed away between 1910 and 1920. Her final days were spent in the home of their youngest child Luke, only a few doors down from their daughter Josephine. Luke was a laborer in a sawmill, a step up from work in the cane fields. Luke and his wife had many children; he named one Merritt Thomas Jr. after his father. Merritt Thomas Jr. moved to San Francisco around 1919. He was part of the Great Migration, in which African Americans throughout the South moved North and West to seek better jobs and escape the violence and inequality ever present in the Jim Crow South. Merritt Jr. worked first as a bellboy and later as a doorman. In 1932, he registered to vote, a right that would have been denied him had he stayed in Louisiana.

Many of Merritt and Sophie Thomas’s grandchildren remained in Moonshine, the small community that had welcomed them after the end of slavery. Their grandson the Reverend Joseph Thomas Sr. led the congregation at their beloved St. Luke Baptist Church. He lived to be 91 years old; his obituary described him as “still on the battlefield for the Lord, pastoring for 47 years.” The Thomas family, begun in a small cabin on Evergreen Plantation, now stretches across south Louisiana and California with hundreds of descendants carrying on the name Merritt chose when he was finally free.