Wanted to reply sooner but was down with the flu.
Hope you're feeling better now!
I'll hold you to that! Seriously, I am interested in hauntings, but I'm totally chicken when it comes to that. Knowing myself, I'll still ask though, since curiosity will get the better of me.
They say that the veil between this world and the next is a bit thinner in New Orleans. Whether that's true or not, who knows? But the entire place is haunted. I was pushed down a flight of stairs in the old slave quarter at my parents' place--and that's not even considered a particularly impressive ghost story among locals.
I don't know why I never associated duels with plantations. I do know they took place, but to me it was always in a "remote place somewhere". Never actually taking into consideration that the remote place had to belong to someone, if nothing else, so no innocent person would get hurt.
In New Orleans, most of the duels (though certainly not all) took place under the Dueling Oaks, a pair of enormous live oak trees on the Allard Plantation along Bayou St. John. A sizable portion of the plantation land, including the Dueling Oaks, became City Park in 1850, but the duels were held there from the late 1700s until dueling was outlawed in 1890. One of the oaks still stands today (I actually got married underneath it). Keep in mind that duels were not necessarily fought to the death, sometimes just to first blood, and the combatants were often good friends. Dueling was the accepted means of settling virtually any dispute. Some people fought them just to show off their skill with a weapon.
And of course the wife would never know because the husband would "want to protect her", never mind that he was protecting himself as well. So chances were her family might not even know that the baby wasn't his. I'm trying to make the husband as psychopathic as possible.
Perfectly plausible.
I love that image of sitting on the porch sipping a beverage. I absolutely agree about the heat being paralyzing.
It's such an iconic image, I'd definitely try to slip it in somewhere.
One question about the check. If you're a guest, say someone visiting there, and you're invited out to eat, or someone suggests you go to a restaurant, should you also fight over the check or would that be seen as rude then
Depends on the context. If you don't know each other very well, then the host pays and the guest graciously accepts. If you're moderately close friends/relatives, then the guest offers to pay/split, the host declines, and both sides mildly protest once or twice before the guest ultimately accepts the host's hospitality. It's the super-close relationships (parent/adult child, siblings, best friends) where the real back-and-forth comes in.
I'm asking because in some cultures one thing is rude and it's perfectly acceptable in other places, you know the way in some parts your help is most certainly welcome in the kitchen and in other parts just suggesting you'd be willing to help out would be considered downright rude.
That reminds me. In your time period, society families would, of course, have had "help." But in later periods, or among poor families at that time, the unstated Southern rule is "women in the kitchen." At every gathering in my family, all the women and girls over age 6 or so hang around the kitchen from the time they arrive until the meal is served, and then again after the meal to clean up. Mostly Grandma does everything (thinks no one can do anything as well as she can), but everyone's there to hand her things or do minor tasks. Mostly we just sit at the table and gab. The guys take over the living room in front of a football game, unless they're outside messing with the grill. Among my parents' generation and younger, it's much less sexist, and a lot of the guys are very good cooks. But whenever Grandma's generation is around, tradition prevails.
I remember reading about that. So technically a child of such a union could gain access to the higher echelons of society like the governor's ball?
Yes. Of course, he'd have to demonstrate that he was the "right sort" (refined, well-dressed, charming, good dancer, excellent conversationalist. It was hard to deny society access to wealthy men's legitimate sons, even if they were boors, but the illegitimate kids, both white and mixed, were fair game for ostracizing if they didn't play by the rules.
I kind of want to make him a wine master...So based on what you said in 5., he could make it to a position where he could meet the judge's / doctor's / opera owner's wife.
Absolutely. A wine master octaroon, assuming he meets the above requirements of charm and refinement, would be a popular guest.
That's it! The reverse placage. But she can't do it because she's too young and it just wouldn't do. She's 20 when it happens. But if he wouldn't let her divorce him? Or family pressure?
He wouldn't be able to prevent the divorce. Women had an absolute right to demand a divorce (no such thing as no-fault or irreconcilable differences then, but it was easy enough to find a reason, from adultery--oh, how ironic!--to "outrageous conduct"). Family pressure-quite a strong possibility, depending on how much influence they have over her.
I love Lafitte!! All the legends and the mystery around him, his true heritage, the affair, etc.
Just don't forget that Jean Lafitte died in 1823, his older brother Pierre in 1821. So you could certainly connect your story to their gang or their descendants, but if you want to tie in to them directly, it needs to be very early on.
When you say it could go in any conceivable direction, do you mean as far as race riots breaking out? I guess that would bring it into alternative history territory.
Very alternative history. There are no records of race riots in New Orleans until 1866, when the Reconstruction-era Black Codes were adopted. Nothing wrong with alternative history, of course, it's just a different choice.
My opinion only: Scenario 1 is not possible unless you choose alternative history. The country was much bigger in those days, and the odds of prominent New Orleans being involved in the Hardscrabble riot of 1824 in Rhode Island? Very stretched--though not impossible in an alternative scenario.
However, you could possibly do something similar if you leave out the "race riots" aspects. The jail at the time was still the Spanish Colonial Prison of 1769, which was not demolished and replaced until 1837. It's where Jean and Pierre Lafitte were held for piracy--a really nasty place, by all accounts. So having the octaroon thrown in there would be particularly vicious.
Then have the octaroon's friends (some of whom are likely also the husband's friends) swear vengeance. Same sort of scenario as you postulated, but on a smaller scale. And I'd keep race more or less out of it, since most of the friends on both sides would most likely be white anyway.
Scenario 2 I really like. I think that would work well. Understated but historically accurate. The swamp was a popular dumping ground for bodies then...
I remember reading up on Marie Laveau and Delphine LaLaurie, thanks for reminding me again. That's awful about the family members buying the slaves and sending them back. Were they aware of any of it? I know slaves were considered property, but still. And what made her that way?
I'm going to venture a guess that the LaLaurie relatives probably had no idea. Nobody in town did. The LaLauries were very popular, very charming, in every way the ideal neighbors/relatives/friends. Their underground life was, well, deeply underground. I'd be surprised if anyone at all knew what was going on. As far as I'm aware, nobody knows what made her that way. She vanished without a trace right after the fire/discovery, so no psychological/medical records exist.
A piece of folklore, though probably just a legend, postulates that she may have escaped to Jamaica, where she became the White Witch of Rose Hall. But other versions of the White Witch legend have the witch murdered around 1832, two years before LaLaurie left New Orleans. So who knows really?
In that vein, is there anywhere I could get an old map online because I've been googling myself crazy trying to find out where the governor would have lived in 1821, where the attorney general would have lived in the time period from 1820-21, where a federal judge would have lived. All I get is links to later when I look for the governor's mansion. I'm sure there's something that eludes me that's pretty straightforward.
The Cabildo, built 1795-1799 next door to St. Louis Cathedral in what is now Jackson Square, was the seat of government. It's the heart of the French Quarter which was, of course, the only part of the city that existed at that time (except for a few plantations upriver in what became the American Sector, now Uptown).
The French Colonial Governor's Mansion stood on the other side of the Cathedral from the Cabildo, but that house was torn down to make room for the Presbytere in 1791. So your governor can't have lived there, but both he and the judge would have lived nearby--if you can't get an actual address, don't worry about it, anywhere in the Quarter will do.
Here is a modern map to get you started. I don't know how much you've researched this, so my apologies if I'm covering ground you already know.
Then, as now, the Quarter stretched from the Mississippi River to Rampart Street, a distance of only seven blocks. In the early French Colonial days, a literal rampart, or fortified wall, stood on Rampart Street, but to the best of my knowledge, it was already down by your time period. Across Rampart from the Quarter is Congo Square--a hugely important location, as it was the Place de Negres, or gathering place for New Orleans' blacks.
The Code Noir gave slaves Sundays off and granted them freedom of religion, and Congo Square was where they gathered--to sell items amongst themselves and to whites, to socialize and dance, and most importantly, to practice voodoo. Now, many people say that the Congo Square rituals were performed for the white onlookers (of which there were hundreds, Sunday afternoons at Congo Square were just as important to whites as to blacks), while the real rituals took place in Bayou St. John (near the Allard Plantation with the Dueling Oaks, in what is now Mid-City). Congo Square and its huge importance to both blacks and whites played an instrumental role in marrying voodoo and Catholicism, a blend that is still very much alive and well in New Orleans today among people of all backgrounds and cultures.
During your time period, the Treme was just being built--a middle-class neighborhood for free people of color that abuts Congo Square and the French Quarter. But it wasn't until the latter part of the 19th century that it really developed. Most people in your time period, black and white, lived in the Quarter. If you've ever seen the HBO show "Treme," it's set in that neighborhood.
If you zoom in a little on the map, you'll see an area just down Basin Street from Congo Square, bounded by St. Louis and Conti. That's St. Louis Cemetery #1, opened in 1789. St. Louis Cemetery #2 opened three blocks away in 1823, though burials were still held in #1 as well. If anybody has a funeral in your story, read up on death and burial customs in New Orleans--they're a bit unique. For example, mass graves are common--if you could afford a big family plot, then you shared with relatives. Otherwise you shared with strangers (in a very practical, though morbid, contraption known as a wall oven).
In New Orleans, the heat and humidity are so intense that it speeds up the decomposition process--the above-ground burial vaults act as slow-burning crematoriums. So they bury someone, then in a year and a day they can open the vault. They sweep the bits of ash to the back, where they fall into a receptacle at the base, and put the next person in.
Below-ground burial has been available for a long time now, but many old families still prefer the traditional way. But back then, they had to bury above ground--the water table is so high that when they tried below-ground, old Uncle Arthur would pop up and go floating down the street during a hard summer rain! I could go on and on, but really, if you need any burials, do look into the customs.
Anyway, back to the Quarter. In the other direction, the boundaries are Canal Street and Esplanade Avenue (14 blocks total). So the entire area is very easily walkable, and anyone could live anywhere within the boundaries regardless of where he worked/shopped/played.
Canal Street is one of the widest streets in the country, because it was intended for a canal to go there. The canal was never constructed, but the wide street served as a barrier between the old French Creole families in the French Quarter and the "upstart Americans" who were beginning to move into newly subdivided plantations upriver (in Uptown).
Esplanade Avenue was the critical link between Bayou St. John and the Mississippi River. Somewhat later in the 1800s, the wealthiest French Creoles began building mansions along the street, but in your time period very few if any homes existed there.
The Mississippi River was a crucial trade link (still is), and the waterfront area was packed with warehouses and docks (and dive bars and brothels). No "respectable" citizen went down there if he could help it. But just off the river, at the intersection of Decatur and North Peters, is the French Market. Built in 1791, it was the marketing hub of the city--meat, milk, produce, textiles, imported clothing, tools, exotic herbs and spices, coffee, pralines--whatever you needed was readily available at the French Market.
The heart of your location is the Place d'Armes, which became Jackson Square in 1815 following the Battle of New Orleans. Your characters would know it by both names. Which they used would depend on what they thought of General Jackson (basically a hero in New Orleans, but politically polarizing).
Jackson Square is bounded by Decatur, Chartres, St. Ann and St. Peter. St. Louis Cathedral, with the Cabildo to its left as you face the Cathedral, and the Presbytere to the right, sits along Chartres facing the Square. The Presbytere was just used for commercial space in that era, so nothing too terribly relevant to your story.
The Cathedral was built in 1727 and rebuilt several times after fires. By your era it looked much as it does today, just smaller. The priest at that time was the much-beloved Pere Antoine, who passed away in 1829 and is rumored to haunt the place today. Everyone who was anyone attended Mass, regardless of personal beliefs, as it was very much a see-and-be-seen event. Marie Laveau was highly instrumental in helping get "butts in seats" when attendance seemed to be on the decline shortly before your time period. All were permitted to attend services, from the richest man to the poorest slave.
The Place d'Armes (Jackson Square) was the site for public executions, primarily of runaway and disobedient slaves, starting in the late 18th century and winding down in your time frame. The practice was gone by 1856, when they replaced the old gallows with a lovely equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson. It has always been known as a sort of free speech zone, a gathering place for everyone regardless of wealth or skin color. Today it's where the tarot readers, musicians, visual artists and street performers ply their trades.
Those are probably the most vital locations in your story to get "right." Beyond that, if you use someone notable try to see if the historic address is available. But in general, you can figure that there were residences and businesses all over, and the records aren't really that complete. So you can place things where they make sense for the story.
Someone pointed me to the artist David Harouni, and his gallery (933 Royal St) looks like a pretty cool house, so could that be somewhere the octaroon might have lived at?
That's a cool building, and would work fine. So would hundreds of others. One of my favorite facts about the city today is that most of those old French Quarter homes have been divided into apartments. They all have a shared courtyard, often featuring all sorts of native and exotic flowers--no backyards in the Quarter, but the courtyards serve the purpose wonderfully. And they all have a lockable front door. But you never know exactly what you're going to see when you enter that door.
A couple of examples: My former apartment at 1030 St. Peter was part of an 1860s three-story single family home. The main structure was left intact, and the apartments were sort of "wings" of the original home. So when you went through the front door, you were standing in the grand entrance foyer, with the sweeping grand staircase in front of you. To the left was one apartment, to the right another. I lived on the second floor, the only apartment on that floor. So you went up the grand staircase and around the bend to the left, and we had two entry doors--one to the main part of the apartment and one to my roommate's bedroom. Up the stairs again was the attic apartment, which was unlocked since it wasn't rented. A really neat loft-style space, which I loved exploring.
My parents' former apartment at 730 St. Philip: Originally a single-family home with a slave quarter out back. The main house had been cut up more severely, so it was harder to tell how it originally looked. Two apartments, including my parents', on the ground floor opposite each other. Upstairs, two more apartments opposite each other. Third floor, one apartment. But the back wall had been removed behind the stairs--where there was previously a back door, it was an open archway. So if you went straight through from the front door, past the staircase, you'd end up in the courtyard, encased in high (10-12 feet) brick walls. Opposite the main house was the slave quarter. It had been destroyed by a fire and never rebuilt, so it was just a shell--the stairs were still intact and there was plywood over the remaining joists upstairs, so we could poke around (that's where I got pushed down the stairs by a spirit). Downstairs was used as communal storage for everyone in the apartments.
So you really do have a ton of leeway in where you place the housing and what you want it to look like. I encourage you to look at a lot of contemporary photos online and imagine how things looked back then.
And who would have been invited to the governor's ball then? Also, if masked balls were reemerging, wouldn't the first such ball be a huge event? Where would they hold it?
Okay, let's break this down a little. New Orleans nightlife was world-renowned, second only to Paris at that time. It was still very much a French city, so virtually everything that happened in Paris (operas, plays, fashions, rituals) happened in New Orleans practically the next week, plus New Orleans had traditions of its own. So even during the era that masking was prohibited, grand and glorious balls, often following a night at the opera, were held frequently.
The governor's ball, like all balls of the time, would be held at home in the sweeping ballroom. It might be the grandest in the city, or it might not be. New Orleans parties, it's just what she does, so everyone in society would compete to throw the most elegant ball. Most wealthy homes had an upstairs consisting of two or three rooms connected by panel doors. So they could be used for various practical functions such as a sitting room or dining room, but the staff could easily open the doors and convert the rooms into a single large ballroom.
Now let's talk about the Carnival season, which begins on Twelfth Night (January 6) and continues through Mardi Gras Day (literally Fat Tuesday). The date of Mardi Gras varies each year according to the date of Easter, but it is always the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Incidentally, the party stops at precisely midnight that night. Even today, mounted police ceremonially sweep the streets at midnight, clearing people out (though today the bars stay open and people keep partying, back then it was a legal mandate to go home and get ready for Lent).
Today Carnival is known for a seemingly endless series of parades, but it also the ball season. All the krewes hold formal balls, and many society families (virtually all of whom belong to at least one krewe) time their daughters' coming out to take place at a krewe ball. Traditionally the krewes were highly secretive and the balls were open only to members and invited guests, but some of the modern super-krewes sell tickets to the public.
Anyway, back then the ball season had even more meaning than it does today. It was not uncommon for the young marriageable men and women (late teens to early 20s) to attend literally a ball per night. Masking was banned by the city council in 1806, but enforcement was sporadic. Many of the private balls are believed to have been masked despite the ban--after all, the entire government would have attended. It is believed that the ban was primarily enforced against public masking because the American federal government was concerned that masking could give an opportunity for slave uprisings.
In any event, there weren't krewes back then--except possibly the Perseverance Benevolent & Mutual Aid Association, which formed in 1781 and seems to have been a proponent of organized parading.
The first "official" Mardi Gras celebration happened in 1833, so a bit after your time period. But public masking was definitely allowed by the mid-1820s, and people took to the streets in droves wearing wonderfully odd and grotesque costumes.
Sorry for firing off all these questions, I tend to get carried away. Just feel free to ignore the ones you want to ignore.
Sorry for dumping so much information in your lap. I guess I get carried away too
Feel free to keep asking, I'm sure I can drum up some answers somewhere
I think there was actually a couple of "Marie Laveaus." One was the grandmother in the early 1800s and the other flourished later around Reconstruction. Might have to look that up.
There were two, a mother and a daughter, both born free in New Orleans. The mother came to notoriety around 1820. But part of her mystique was that she never seemed to age. In 1881 Marie Laveau passed away in her home at the age of 98. Yet people continued to see her around town. Eventually someone figured out that, at some point, the elder Marie had passed the mantle to her daughter. That was the secret of her longevity, as well as part of the secret of how she was able to accomplish so much. The two women worked together to develop the Marie Laveau mystique.
