Creole Women in Louisiana, 1718-1865 Katy Frances Morlas Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2005 La madame et la mademoiselle: Creole women in Louisiana, 1718-1865 Katy Frances Morlas Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Morlas, Katy Frances, "La madame et la mademoiselle: Creole women in Louisiana, 1718-1865" (2005). LSU Master's Theses. 908. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/908 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LA MADAME ET LA MADEMOISELLE: CREOLE WOMEN IN LOUISIANA, 1718-1865 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of History by Katy Frances Morlas B.A., Louisiana State University, 2003 May 2005 Acknowledgments My advisor, Tiwanna Simpson, and my committee members, Katherine Benton-Cohen and John Rodrigue, provided a cogent critique of my work that was much-appreciated. My fellow graduate students in the History Department provided sustenance during times of great stress and were always ready to celebrate in times of ease. They include Josh Lubin and Lori Pastor, who entered the program with me and with whom I shared a week of defense, as well as Kim Reynolds and Maria Kohls, who were there to witness the aftermath. My friend and colleague Lee Smith, with whom I shared a ride to Tulane, margaritas, Old South Baton Rouge, and some of the most hilarious stories I have ever heard, seems to always be interested in my talk of history. Perhaps the greatest achievement of my time in graduate school is my friendship with Wayne Edmondson and Brian McGowan. Wayne’s rascality and Brian’s advice grounded me when confused and shook me up when inert. Thanks especially to Brian, who read my thesis in its infant stages and provided me with both praise and criticism. This thesis could not have been accomplished without him. I am also indebted to the staff of Hill Memorial Library at LSU and the special collections staff at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University. Norman and Sand Marmillion of Laura Plantation are due particular thanks. Without them, an essential part of Louisiana culture and River Road heritage would be ignored and perhaps even disappear. They have been so kind and generous in allowing me to visit Laura and witness her restoration. Their history is my kind of history; their approach, my kind of approach. Both the Marmillions and the staff at Laura remind me that there are others who share my passion and view. My parents, Victor and Kathleen Morlas, have provided support throughout both my ii undergraduate and graduate careers and deserve immense thanks, especially for listening to my ramblings about people long dead and smelly archives. My dear friends Phyllis, Casey, Heather, and Kimberly, who in so many ways are like an extension of my family for me, have been with me through laughter and tears. My other girlfriends, Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte, who were there when all else failed to cheer me up, always remind me that women’s history is both valuable and necessary. For my love of history, I thank those who first gave it to me, my grandparents, Butsy and Jackie Morlas and Jack and Frances Vidrine. Along with my parents, they have provided me with unquestionable support. My aunts, Becky, Debbie, and Monie, three New Orleans ladies, not only helped me to become a strong woman but even expressed interest in the subject I’ve spent months researching. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my best experience in graduate school, an event I often believed was the best result of my having remained at LSU, witnessing the Tigers become National Champions at the Sugar Bowl from my fourth row seat at the endzone. I have learned just as much, possibly more, from LSU football as I have learned in a classroom, including faith, perseverance, and sacrifice. I approached my defense with the tenacity of Marcus Spears, and I tried to carry through so many situations with the grace of Ally Broussard. Finally, this work is dedicated to the memory of my great grandmother, Eugenie Josephine Dejean Morlas, the truest Creole woman I have ever known. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................................................ii ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION TURNING HISTORY WRONG SIDE OUT......................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 PARAGONS OF PERFECTION.......................................................................................16 CHAPTER 2 THE DEVIL’S EMPIRE....................................................................................................64 CHAPTER 3 ALWAYS THE MASTERS..............................................................................................92 CONCLUSION THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT..................................................................................127 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................130 VITA............................................................................................................................................143 iv Abstract In Louisiana during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a unique group of people known as Creole created a culture that differed from the rest of the United States. Descendants of the first French and Spanish settlers, Creoles both black and white struggled to maintain their heritage despite an influx of Anglo-American Protestants into Louisiana; women in particular sought to preserve their culture. Although black Creole women have received significant attention, their white counterparts remain virtually absent in scholarship. This thesis focuses on the lives of white Creole women in the River Parishes and New Orleans and seeks to recreate the lives of both independent women plantation owners as well as women who served as wives and mothers. Creole women in Louisiana differed from women in the rest of the United States in their language, religion, legal system, and traditions; they also resided in a more racially fluid environment. Creole women spoke French, and most refused to allow their children to learn English. They were governed by civil rather than common law, which included a system of community property that enabled them to own property, resulting in a large number of female plantation owners. This legal system also gave them the right to draft their own wills, obtain legal separations from their husbands, and act as private business owners. Catholicism provided these women with the Blessed Virgin Mary, a powerful model of female authority and virtue absent in the Protestantism dominant in the rest of the country at the time. Creole women often had family members who were both black and white and faced complex tensions that arose from the mixing of races. Unlike many women in the rest of the South, Creole women plantation owners viewed themselves as masters capable of running a plantation and disciplining their v slaves without hesitation. All these factors created distinct differences between Creole women in southeast Louisiana and the women in the rest of their state and nation. vi Introduction Turning History Wrong Side Out For very little is known about women. .Of our fathers we know always some fact, some distinction. They were soldiers or they were sailors; they filled that office or they made that law. But of our mothers, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, what remains? Nothing but a tradition. One was beautiful; one was red-haired; one was kissed by a Queen. We know nothing of them except their names and the dates of their marriages and the number of children they bore.1 With the publication of historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South, slaveholding women of the antebellum South received the most well-researched scholarly analysis given them since Anne Firor Scott first brought them to light almost twenty years before. While their male counterparts have attracted the attention of numerous historians and been the subject of a plethora of books and articles, Southern women, especially those tied to plantation society, have more often served as the inspiration for sweeping epic novels than for nonfiction social histories. Though most Southern women bore little resemblance to Scarlett O’Hara, this fictional character is the way they are best known. Even in scholarship, the Southern woman has until recently been narrowly confined to the diaries of Mary Boykin Chestnut and a small handful of others like her. Despite Fox-Genovese’s success at broadening the scope of women studied, Within the Plantation Household fails to convey the diversity that existed in certain enclaves of the South; she portrays a region homogenous in both ethnic background and religion, neglecting southeast Louisiana and 1Woolf, Virginia. “Women and Fiction”