FAMILY AND SOCIAL PATTERNS OF THE COLONIAL LOUISIANA FRONTIER: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS, 1714-1803 A' Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Alabama New College. in partial fulfillment of the requirements f or the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Southern and Family History by Elizabeth Shown Mills Certified Genealogist Life Fellow, American Society of Genealogists Gadsden, Alabama November, 1981 I UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA FAMILY AND SOCIAL PATTERNS OF THE COLONIAL LOUISIANA FRONTIER : A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS, 1714-1803 by Elizabeth Shown Mills, C.G., F.A.S.G. Approved: Major Professor Grady McWhiney Director & Distinguished Senior Fellow Center for the Study of Southern History and Culture Professor Harriet W. Cabell, Director The New College External Degree Program TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDG01ENTS vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTERS I. Seeding the Frontier: Patterns of Settlement and Higration 10 II. Cultivating a Society: Patterns of Livelihood, Education, and Hortality 47 III. Rites of Passage: Patterns in Courtship, Harriage and Widowhood 93 IV. Harital Beds and Communal Hearths: Pattersn in Reproduction and Family Structure 153 COHHENTARY 206 BIBLIOGRAPHY 214 iv LIST OF TABLES 1. Foreign-Native Population Ratios, 1725-1790 19 2. Population Growth (Census Statistics), 1722-1802 27 3. Occupations - By Decade (With Ratio to Population-at-Large) 52 4-. Occupations - By Generation 53 5. Child Mortality - By Decade 79 6. Child Mortality Rates - Comparative Table 80 7. Child Mortality - By Age 81 8. Mortality Rates - By Sexan'ct Age 84- 9. Children Surviving at Death of Parent 85 10. Illegitimate and Irregular Births - By Decade 97 11. Premarital Conceptions - Comparative Table 98 12. The Marriage Contract - Characteristic Features 127 13. Male-Female Population Ratios 132 14-. Female Marital Ages - By Decade 136 15. Grooms-Brides with Living Parents 137 16. Male Marital Ages - By Generation and Decade 138 17. Spouse Selection Patterns of Remarrying Widows and Widowers 14-5 18. Intervals between Widowing and Remarrying 150 19. Intervals between Births - Comparative Tables 1 and 2 159 20. Age of Mother at Last Birth - Comparative Table 161 21. Age of Fathers at Birth of Last Child 162 22. Mean Number of Children per Completed Family - Comparative Table 169 23. Mean Ratio of Children under 10 per 1,000 Women aged 16-4-9 Comparative Table 169 24-. Birth to Marriage Ratios - Comparative Table 171 25. Mean Number of Children per Mother - By Age at Marriage - Comparative Table 172 26. Average Number of Children per Household - Comparative Table 172 27. Crude Birth Rates per Thousand 174- 28. Low Fertility Table - Female Cohorts 182 29. Household Characteristics - 1726_1787 192 30. Household Characteristics - Comparative Table 198 31. Size of Households - Comparative Table 199 32. Naming Patterns - By Time Frame 202 v LIST Of FIGURES 1. Provincial Origins of French Emigrants to 1803 21 2. Colonial Migration - By Generation 35 3. Commercial Activity - By Decade 58 4. Female Participation in Notarial Activities - By Decade 66 5. Male-Female Literacy - By Generation 70 6. Mortalities - By Month 91 7. Patterns of Twinning (Figures 7.1-7.7) 165-166 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Marie Aurore Rachal Charleville - one-eighth Caddo Ancestry 40 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Over a dozen years have elapsed since I was first lured into study­ ing the Natchitoches frontier and the pioneers who settled it -- and a legion of debts have accumulated in that time. Research of this nature is all but impossible without the cooperation of local civil, church, and university archivists, and in my Natchitoches work I have been blessed. Archivists there, over the years, have not merely cooperated, they have often assisted enthusiastically. As this present study also shows, it is equally impossible to study the migrant population of the frontier outpost of St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches without a broader and comprehensive study of the records generated in all of the colonial Louisiana settle­ ments, records now scattered in a host of archives throughout America and abroad. In the five volumes published to-date in my Cane River Creole Series on Natchitoches, I have attempted to express the measure of appre­ ciation that lowe to this legion of archivists, friends,and fellow family historians who have assisted me with my explorations of the Natchitoches frontier. Their cumulative numbers are too great to include in this pres­ ent paper, but the gratitude lowe them still remains. In the course of this current study, special debts have accrued which I must specifically acknowledge. I have been fortunate, indeed, to have as my advisor Professor Grady McWhiney, Director and Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Southern History and Culture at the University of Alabama. There could have been no more receptive "sounding board" for my evolving thoughts and ideas, and his perceptive critiques -­ stemming from his own highly developed understanding of the Southern mind ix -- have been invaluble. Perhaps this present paper will repay him in a small way by helping him to better know his personal "roots" -- since, in the course of this study it was discovered that several of the individuals I have discussed in this paper, for the significant impact which they had upon the frontier's development, were Professor McWhiney's previously-unknown ancestors. Totally indispensable to this project has been the assistance and co­ operation of Gary B. Mills, Associate Professor of History, University of Alabama -- another descendant of Old Natchitoches. It was he who was res­ ponsible in the first place for introducing me to his ancestral home, and over the years I have been fortunate enough to have him as my occasional colleague and regular (even eager) critic. It was also his suggestion that I acknowledge him as "Aaaw Honnnnn ••• ," "--But, Darn It," or "Why Don't You Understand •••• ?" Equal thanks are due to my errand-boy, my house-maid and my yard-boy, Clayton, Donna, and Danny Mills -- together with my apologies for serving them so many frozen pizzas in return, and my sincere hope that they understand it all. Appreciation is owed also to the administration of the University of Alabama New College Program, particularly Dr. Harriet W. Cabell, Director, and Dr. James J. Harrington, Assistant Director, for their patience and understanding as I pursued this project at what must, to them, have seemed a snail's pace. Reconstitution of the personal lives of 2,631 individuals is an infinitely slow process, as any genealogist can attest! I was for­ tunate in being able to build this present study upon ten years of accumu­ lated work that I had already done on the subject families, but the comple­ tion of the reconstitution process generated over 6,000 pages of abstracted personal data, and the extraction and analysis of statistical material from ix this mass is an extended process -- particularly for one whose family and career responsibilities must be given priority. As a consequence of these factors, I must also express my very personal appreciation to the New Col­ lege Program itself, and to the educators and administrators who conceived and developed the concept of permitting the adult student to pursue his own academic development at whatever pace his personal responsibilities permit. Finally, the oldest debt of all must be acknowledged to Professor Wil­ liam F. LaForge of Delta State University, Cleveland, Mississippi, who -­ twenty years ago this past summer -- took a sixteen-year-old college fresh­ man, a declared business major, and instilled in her a lifelong appreciation of history. INTRODUCTION Women's rights. Ethnic awareness. Birth control. Sexual freedom. Alternate family styles. Job mobility. The Social Revolution of twentieth­ century America has focused public attention upon a litany of cultural and moral issues that past societies cared not -- or dared not to address. Since the turbulent sixties, America has "let it all hang out," and now Americans cannot agree on solutions to each newly-visible problem. Calls for government action are met by complaints of too much intervention in private lives. Any rally for a government-sponsored "return to traditional morality" is countered with the invocation of those magic words: separation of church and state, as though the mere utterance of those eight syllables should clearly settle any social issue. A crux of the problem is that the American public lacks the requisite historical perspective to deal realistically with many such issues. Half the adult population of this nation attended public school in an era when .many historians believed it their sacred duty to present the past in a man­ ner that would inspire and uplift the new generations. Frank studies of il­ legitimacy and wife-beating had no place in their rose-garden sagas of human­ ity. Despite scholarly advances of recent decades, history textbooks remain unpurged of many of the stereotypes, cliches, and misconceptions which are so generally accepted that few people have felt the need to document or even to question them. As contemporary society struggles to redefine such social foundations as the family and the roles, responsibilities, and rights of its varied 2 members, a new breed of historical demographer, in America and abroad, has begun to wrestle with many of the questions left by their predecessors. Exactly what is "traditional morality" -- if it can be defined at all? How much individuality have various governments permitted their citizens in the