Part I: Early History
Snuggled in the heart of downtown New Orleans,
between the famed and often-clamorous French Quarter and the more subdued Faubourg Marigny is a small, densely populated Black
neighborhood. All but forgotten except by those born and reared within its
boundaries, the Faubourg Tremé enters public discussion these days only in reference to the impending re-development of Armstrong
Park. But the Faubourg Tremé played a central role in this city’s early
history and is the nucleus of much of the black cultural heritage of New Orleans.
When Bienville established New Orleans
as a New World French port city and colonial trading outpost, a major factor in his choice of this site was the relative dryness
of the land area between the Mississippi River and Bayou St. John. Even more
important was the location of an ancient Indian portage providing optimal access to the Gulf of Mexico. The Old Indian Portage, as it would come to be known, is present-day Bayou Road and would prove critical
to the settlement of Faubourg Tremé.
In 1721, a French army engineer named Le
Blond de la Tour, working under the direction of Adrien de Pauger, developed a plan for the city of New Orleans comprising
what is known today as the Vieux Carré. It was under the direction of La Tour
that forts St. Ferdinand and St. John were constructed in what would eventually become the Faubourg Tremé. At about the same time, Charles Morand, an employee
of the Company of the Indies, established the city’s first
brickyard on that arm of Bayou Road that is now
Governor Nicholls Street. The following year, Morand purchased the property from his employers and built a plantation in the area
between Rampart, Claiborne and Bayou Road. In 1756,
he extended his land holdings to include all of the area bounded by present-day Governor Nicholls, St. Bernard Avenue, Galvez and Rampart Streets.
The plantation’s primary product was the red brick, which Morand had contracted with the Company of the Indies to continue manufacturing.
Not long after Morand’s expansion, Louisiana came under Spanish rule and, in 1774, the entire property
appears under the title of "Pablo Moro," Morand's Spanish-language alias. Over
the next five or six years, the greater portion would come into the hands of Moro’s grandson-in-law, Claude Tremé. By the end of the 18th century, Tremé had subdivided and sold off more that
two-thirds of the original property. Then, in 1810, the newly incorporated city
of New Orleans acquired the remaining land for the sum of $40,000 and promptly proceeded to subdivide it into individual plots,
which it then sold on a first-come-first-serve basis.
The larger number of purchasers were
free and recently manipulated black men and women. Thus, the turn of the 19th
century saw the creation of a racially mixed neighborhood more than fifty years before the Civil War. The Faubourg Tremé had by then long established itself as a haven for free blacks.
Tremé’s willingness to sell properties
neighboring his own home to free blacks has been cited as evidence of the usually good relations between New Orleans whites
and free blacks. But free Black men and women had been owning properties in the
area since the 1710’s and 20’s – far longer than Claude Tremé.
City records show that in 1726, Luis Congo,
a free Black man, lived with his wife on the Chemin au Bayou St. Jean. According
to census records, Congo’s occupation at that time was a Keeper of the High (or Bayou) Road.
By 1771, a freedman named San Luis Lanuitte
had bought and built up four arpents on each side of the Bayou Road. Lanuitte
had been enslaved to one Jean Pradel and secured his freedom after acting in the capacity of advisor, tutor and traveling
companion to Pradel and his family. The Lanuitte property, situated near the
old Bridge of the Washerwomen, was subsequently owned by other free blacks.
Since the Spanish Colonial period (1762-1803),
more than 80 percent of the land now situated in the area between Dumaine and St. Bernard, from Rampart to Broad, had always
been owned and occupied by free blacks.
Moreover, by the turn of the century, free
black men and women constituted as much as 20 percent of the population and controlled something in excess of $10 million
of the city’s economy. By 1830, free blacks were acting as independent
speculators, investors, land brokers and developers and were buying, selling, and passing on to successive generations properties
often valued at between $40,000 and $100,000 – no paltry sum in the 1800s. And
these properties were located not only in the Faubourg Tremé but in the Vieux Carré and the newly developing Faubourg Marigny.
Whether Claude Tremé held any special affection
or respect for free Blacks cannot be known. What is clear, however, is that
he was in no position to decline to sell properties to blacks at a time when New Orleans was clearly growing and expanding
beyond the former limits of the Old City; when land other than his own was readily available to these same buyers; when free
blacks had apparent and considerable economic clout; when black money, as the old saying goes, “spent as good as white.” Also, it is perhaps an appropriate example of poetic justice that what would be for generations
a thriving black community would forever bear the name of Claude Tremé, a white man of no small means who, in 1787, more than
twenty years before the subdivision and sale of his wife's lands, had been sentenced to serve five years in the local
prison for the murder of a slave, now known only as Aléjo.
Early documents on record at the Louisiana
State Museum and the Louisiana Division of the downtown branch of the public library indicate that free Blacks exercised more
economic control than has been publically acknowledged.
Whenever such power is recognized, it is
usually relegated to brief mention and referred to as “contributions made” or “privileges enjoyed”
by “free persons of color” – with emphasis being placed on mixed ancestry. Nor is it uncommon for present-day blacks to cling to the French terminology of the 18th and
19th centuries – gens de couleur libres – thus de-emphasizing the African heritage of their
families and the larger community in favor of a “French” or “mixed” past.
Whatever privileges might have been reaped
in the past by those blacks who clung to the notion of French ancestry, whether real or invented, on these issues the record
is clear:
· Faubourg Tremé was constructed by the physical labor and technical know-how of blacks, both
enslaved and free;
· for more than one hundred years, the Faubourg Tremé expanded and prospered under the direction
of black men and women who were pre-eminent in the economic, agricultural, military, social, and cultural life and development
of the Faubourg and the city; and
· many of the families now residing in Tremé are the direct descendants of those early black laborers,
builders, landowners and activists.
Under both French and Spanish colonial
rule, slaves were able to purchase or barter for their freedom. In many instances,
this was achieved via special services such as those mentioned in the case of San Luis Lanuitte. Many arrived in New Orleans having spent years in bondage in Haiti and Cuba and were literate
in the French and Spanish languages. Those arriving directly from Senegambia and the Kongo region had long been fluent
in French, Portuguese and, to a lesser degree, Spanish as well. Nor had they yet relinquished their original languages:
Bambara, Ki-Kongo, Wolof. Many white settlers, on the other hand, were unlettered. This is evidenced by the number of early legal and church documents recorded by clerks
or priests and authenticated only by the mark of the party or parties involved.
Widespread illiteracy among whites was
the rule rather than the exception during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as formal education was
not required for occupations outside of the clergy and the professions and was, at any rate, viewed as a privilege rather
than a necessity. From the standpoint of the enslaved, however, acquisition
of even minimal learning – the ability to read and write, to speak Western languages fluently and to calculate sums
– could mean the difference between a life of endless toil for the benefit of white masters and the personal and
economic freedom every enslaved person coveted. It was not uncommon
then, for the enslaved to serve as tutors, translators and interpreters, or even financial advisors to their owners and thus
obtain freedom for themselves and their loved ones.
Freedom could also be obtained through
military service and acts of bravery that protected or benefited the interests of the slave owner. Risking one’s life
to save a master, his wife, children or physical property not infrequently resulted in the acquisition of one’s “free
papers.”
The enslaved were also permitted to
hire themselves out as wage laborers and to use those wages to purchase themselves, their families or prospective spouses. Large numbers of such workers were leased to, and often owned by, factories, houses
of prostitution and the Catholic Church.
Louisiana was a vast and menacing territory. The cadre of early settlers and planters often complained to their sponsors of the
harshness of the climate and the extreme physical conditions under which they sought to establish a colony that would glorify
the French and Spanish crowns they served. They sought and obtained ever-increasing
numbers of slaves who were experienced workers in brick and iron. It was the
enslaved who endured the intense heat and humidity, the unpredictable cold snaps and outbreaks of yellow fever and other tropical
illnesses and epidemics, which festered and spread rapidly in the dank swamp environment. The expertise of those who survived carried a high premium. And numbers
of the enslaved were successful in bargaining for manumission upon completion of specified terms of labor during
the earliest period of Louisiana’s history. No wonder then, that numbers
of free blacks appear in census and other records of the period as carpenters, joiners, glazers, smiths, masons, builder,
architects and engineers.
Those enslaved in the employ of Morand
on behalf of the Company of the Indies were able to manufacture a type of brick capable of withstanding the tropical humidity
of the region. The red-orange brick used in the brick-and-mortar and brick-between-posts
constructions typical of New Orleans architecture thus bears the popular appellation, “slave brick.” For generations it was highly valued and revered in local spiritual practices because it provided
both a spiritual and tangible point of contact with our slave ancestors.
In addition to those who bought or
otherwise obtained manumission, there were also blacks born into freedom here in New Orleans as well as successive waves of
free black emigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America who settled here. Regardless of the specifics of their status, the prominence of free Blacks in the Faubourg Tremé
is well documented. And as the Faubourg expanded throughout the 19th
century, so did their land holdings and economic strength.
In 1797, Juan and Margarita Bautista, a
free Black couple, purchased two arpents of land situated on Bayou Road from Lanuitte.
They later added to their holdings and passed on a substantial property to their two children, Francisco and Francisca
Montreuil.
In addition to the Tremé properties inherited
from his parents and those acquired on his own, Francisco also owned plantation estates outside the city limits. By the 1820s he had become a major land developer in the new Faubourg Marigny as well. Francisco, the only son of Juan and Margarita, was buried from St. Louis Cathedral in 1840.
His sister Francisca, who was also known
as Françoise Montreuil and as Franchon Carrière, eventually became proprietress of at least three plantation estates. The area surrounding her primary residence between Bayou Road and Grand Route St. John
came to be known during her lifetime as Bayou Franchon.
Three generations of Montreuils lived at
the Bayou Road residence. And generations of black families bearing the names
Gravier, Dédé, Charles, Guillaume, Batiste and Baptiste, all of whom have origins in Tremé, can trace their descent from Juan
Margarita and the original Bautista-Montreuil line.
It was a common practice for free black
families in New Orleans to purchase adjoining lots and to share land, produce and household use. The Cheval family, for instance, owned several properties in the 1500 block of Dumaine fom 1831 until 1875.
The Perrault-Toutant families owned properties
along Ursulines and Columbus streets. The Crokère (or Crocker) family owned Bayou
Road plantation homes as well as properties in successive blocks on Ursulines, Rocheblave and Tremé streets throughout the
1800s.
A free man named Bartolomé exchanged
his labor for a portion of land in the Faubourg Tremé only to have it sold out from under him by French officials during his
absence from the city. Bartolomé and other free black men had been called to
Pensacola on a military expedition. By law, all black men in Louisiana, slave
or free, could be pressed into military service without warning at any time. On
returning home, Bartolomé found he was obliged to re-purchase his lands. He then,
of course, sued for court costs and damages. Though he managed to reclaim title
to his land, Bartolomé never received financial compensation for his troubles.
Among those free Blacks who identified
themselves as African or as “African émigrés” were free women named Sophie Peyroux, Marie Françoise Bernoudy,
Marie Thérèse Villanueva and Marie C. Couvent. Marie Justine Cirnaire Couvent,
a freedwoman, was a prominent citizen and renowned philanthropist. The wealthy
widow of Bernard Couvent, who had purchased her out of slavery to make her his wife, Marie Couvent bears special mention among
free black women in New Orleans. In her last will and testament, recorded in
1832, she briefly recalls her initial enslavement:
“I am Marie Justine
Cirnaire. I was born in Guinée [meaning the continent of Africa or, specifically,
the former Guinea Coast of W. Africa]. At the age of about seven years, I
was transported to St. Domingue [Haiti]. Consequently, I do not recall
the names of my father and mother. Nor do I know my own age. I married Bernard Couvent, f.n. [free Negro], whose widow I now am and
with whom I bore no children…
.”
[All translations
©Brenda
Marie Osbey]
Though the public elementary school building
on Pauger Street bears her name, she is best remembered as the benefactor and founder of a Catholic school for which she provided
in her will in order to insure the education of orphaned and impoverished free children:
“…I mean for
the said land and edifices never to be sold under any circumstances whatsoever, but on the contrary, that there be made, by
subscriptions or other means, all the improvements and additions which the times and the number of orphans might exact.”
The Couvent School, later known as
Holy Redeemer and then Bishop Perry School, stands today on one of several lots owned by Marie Couvent, this one in the Faubourg
Marigny, at the corner of Dauphine and Touro.
Though the Code Noir
of 1724 and its Spanish equivalent, Las Siete Partidas of 1789, were established primarily to check the
growth and progress of Louisiana’s free black population, enforcement was sometimes loose and depended to a large extent
on the whims of individual French and Spanish officials at any given time. With the annexation of Louisiana by the United States in 1803, however, the so-called privileges
of free blacks were sharply and rapidly curtailed. Furthermore, it became increasingly
difficult to obtain freedom by any means.
Then in 1804, 1806, and 1809, came attempts
to prevent the immigration of free blacks from Cuba, Haiti and other Caribbean
islands. Still, between 1790 and 1810, more than 10,000 free Blacks entered the port of New Orleans. It was around this same time that Europeans and whites from other areas of the United States began arriving
in New Orleans in substantial numbers. Clashes between white immigrants and free
blacks were inevitable. Then, in March 1829, a slave revolt less than 50 miles
outside the corporate limits of New Orleans resulted in the enactment of more restrictive laws curtailing the freedoms and
activities of free blacks within the city.
One of these was the immigration law of
1830, which effectively barred free blacks from entering and remaining in the city.
Exceptions were made for those who had arrived prior to 1812, but even they
were required to register with civil authorities upon risk of expulsion. Most
of the wealthier free black families ignored the registration process altogether since their presence generally had long pre-dated
that period. Those who did register were listed by officials according
to skin color (“brown,” “reddish,” “yellowman”
or “yellowwoman,” “maroon,” etc.). Height, weight and
other identifying characteristics were also recorded. In short, they were treated
as real or potential criminals. Oddly enough, one of the first major Black-white
conflicts to occur during this period was one over religious freedom and the right to worship.
In 1841, at the request of free blacks
living in the Faubourg Tremé, construction of St. Augustine's Church was begun on part of the Morand-Tremé property at St. Claude and Bayou Road (Gov. Nicholls).
The dispute goes back several years to the failure of the Collège d’Orleans, originally established as a
preparatory school for wealthy young white men.
The college, located on St. Claude near
the residence of Claude Tremé, was never able to attract a sufficient number of students. No sooner had it closed its doors
as a failed white enterprise, however, than it reopened as a thriving school for the Faubourg’s free black
children.
In 1836, the propery was purchased
by the Ursuline nuns. Meanwhile, the Sisters of Mt. Carmel built a convent for
their order nearby, and in 1838, took over the former Tremé residence and the running of the free school. The Ursulines then donated the remainder of the property to the Diocese, with a special request that the
church to be built there be named for their patron, St. Augustine of Hippo.
Free black families in the community had
given funds for the construction of a church of their own because until that time, they had not been allowed to worship freely
in the Catholic churches of the whites. The majority of free blacks were Roman
Catholics - colonial legislation having decreed early on that all free persons born in the territory be baptized, married
and interred in accordance with the offices of the Catholic faith. Prior to
the founding of St. Augustine's, however, neither free nor enslaved blacks were permitted to sit among whites
to worship. They were made to stand or kneel at the rear of the churches so that
their presence would not offend their “supervisors.”
When St. Augustine was completed, white
Catholics from neighboring areas organized a city-wide campaign to purchase as many pews as possible to prevent
the Faubourg Tremé’s black parishioners from claiming the new church as their own place of worship. But blacks had made a special request for a church of their own.
They had given monies for its construction and supplied the labor force that actually built the structure. They quickly purchased as many pews as possible and then reserved additional pews for their enslaved brothers
and sisters. The end result was that when its doors opened in 1842, St. Augustine’s
was a mixed congregation. It would remain so throughout most of the 20th
century.
But this would not be the last time
that Tremé residents would clash and openly battle along racial lines. In fact,
the furor surrounding the founding and grudging integration of church and parish would become typical of the black-white turf
wars the Faubourg Tremé would sustain in the years ahead.
Part 1 of 7
Continue to Part 2.
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