Mad Madame LaLaurie

by Victoria Cosner Love

  We have no way of knowing if this house is, or ever was, haunted. But we do know that the Lalaurie house is irrevocably associated with murder, torture and unrest. The tour guides who show the Lalaurie house over and over again are well versed in New Orleans history. They are also storytellers of the finest caliber. Each guide these authors have had the honor to meet has put a slightly different spin on the Lalaurie story.

  Add up the stories, the documentation, the cultural times, women’s roles and expectations, the decline of the Creole culture, the rise of the Americans, yellow journalism, voodoo, torture, family ties and money… and you have a legend. Now stir in the wilder stories: ghastly medical experiments, devil babies, haunted portraits and zombification drugs. Or consider the dreadful idea proposed by our tour guide for Haunted New Orleans Tours: the practice of dumping slaves in the swamps when they died as a viable way for the Lalauries to have practiced fatal experiments on a huge number of victims.

  Multiply all of this by the thousands of visitors to New Orleans who have gone home and retold the story to horrified, fascinated friends and family, and you get the makings of a legend larger than life. This legend transcends almost two hundred years, kept alive by thousands of ghost tours dedicated to the perfect ghost story, all starring the Mad Madame Lalaurie.

  Appendix

  Delphine’s Thoroughly Impressive Legacy and Family Connections

  An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.

  –Spanish proverb

  To look at Delphine’s family connections, both up and down her family tree, is to take a trip through the history of New Orleans. Her family had its hand in banking, the industry of merchants, pirating, slave trading, sugar cane, cotton and politics, as well as in the very foundation of New Orleans. Although there were some dubious characters and black sheep in the family (one can’t describe piracy or the slave trade as particularly admirable occupations), Delphine is the only member of the clan associated with torture, murder or insanity.

  Here are some of the famous and venerable families connected to Madame Delphine Lalaurie.

  ANDRY

  Gilbert Andry (or Andre) was a plantation owner whose niece, Felicite Amanda Andry, married Delphine’s son, Jean Pierre Paulin Blanque. The marriage took place in 1850 or so, long after the scandalous events at the Lalaurie Mansion. Andry’s plantation lay along the route of the Slave Revolt of 1811, and he was killed in the uprising. He became a hero in local folklore, which described Andry as standing on the plantation house balcony and defending his home to his last breath, armed with only a sword. Another, older connection to the Andry family also exists. William DeBuys (son of Gaspard) married Corrinne Andry (daughter of Gilbert). Their son, William DeBuys, married Adele Marie Macarty, Delphine’s cousin.

  DE BIENVILLE

  Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville was the founder of the city of New Orleans. He led the way for French colonization of the area with more than twenty years of military service, establishing forts. He repeatedly served as governor of French Louisiana and established a dynasty that supported Louisiana’s and New Orleans’ massive growth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  Jean D’Estrehan married Genevieve Bienville (granddaughter of Jean-Baptiste), binding the mighty Desteran family to the Macartys by marriage. Jean’s daughter, Elanore D’Estrenhan, married Edourard Macarty—Delphine’s second cousin—connecting the Macartys to the very beginning of New Orleans.

  LE BRETON DES CHAPELLES

  Jean Baptiste Césaire Le Breton des Chapelles married Jeanne Françoise de Macarty, Delphine’s aunt. He was one of the French king’s own bodyguards, a Mousquetaire Noir. Jean Baptiste held the office of commandant of militia at the German coast and held the rank of captain in the Spanish army, according to Stanley Clisby Arthur.

  Le Breton des Chapelles was murdered by two of his slaves on what would later become the Macarty plantation. Several documents about his death have survived, including a court paper describing the torture used to obtain the slaves’ confession and a letter from Delphine’s father to Jean Baptiste’s father about the murder.

  DEBUYS

  According to family history, the DeBuyses were one of New Orleans’s oldest French Creole families. The DeBuyses adjusted well to the changing governments of Louisiana, and they made a substantial fortune. Gaspard DeBuys served as a member of the first legislative council of Louisiana and served under General Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans. One of the DeBuys descendants was one of the architects who designed the main quadrant of Loyola University. William DeBuys (son of Gaspard) married Corrinne Andry (see prior section). Their son, William DeBuys, married Adele Marie Macarty, Delphine’s cousin.

  DELASSUS

  Charles de Hault Delassus was the last Spanish lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana. He oversaw the transfer of the territory to the Americans on March 9–10, 1804. Ironically, he was not Spanish himself, but French. He was born in Bouchaine, Flanders, on November 17, 1767, and joined the Spanish army when he was fifteen. By 1794, Delassus had risen to the post of lieutenant colonel in the elite royal battalion of King Charles IV of Spain, the Royal Walloon Guards. When the French Revolution broke out, Delassus’s parents fled to America and settled in Upper Louisiana. Soon they were destitute and appealed to their son for assistance. Delassus resigned his commission and asked for a transfer to the Louisiana Regiment so that he might be near his family.

  In 1833, Marie Louise Jeanne Blanque (called Jeanne) married Pierre Auguste de Hault Delassus, son of Charles de Hault Delassus. Pierre Auguste (1813–1888) was the only son of Charles de Hault Delassus and Feliciana Martina Leonardo Delassus. Auguste, as he was known, was born in New Orleans on July 4, 1813. In 1833, he married Marie Jeanne Blanque (1815–?). They had six children.

  Auguste Delassus was closely associated with Delphine Lalaurie. Delphine transferred her power of attorney to him before she and her husband fled New Orleans. Delphine repeatedly wrote to him from France, complaining about the state of her financial affairs. It is in letters to Auguste Delassus that Delphine voiced her desire to move back to New Orleans.

  Auguste died at his home in Delassus on January 15, 1888. His body was taken to St. Louis and buried in Calvary Cemetery.

  DESTREHAN

  Jean Baptiste Destrehan (name appears variously throughout historical texts) was the royal treasurer of French Louisiana colonies and was a man of great wealth and power in New Orleans. He purchased a humble cottage and its surrounding lands and then had it torn down and replaced with a suitably fine home for his family.

  His son, Jean I. Destrehan, built Destreran Plantation, located on the German coast of the Mississippi. This plantation is famous for being the place where the Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811 was quelled.

  A tribunal court was set up to punish the leaders of the slave rebellion and the slaves from the Destreran plantation who participated. All of those convicted suffered horrendous fates.

  The Desteran plantation is one of a few premier remaining examples of the French Creole architectural style.

  Jean Destrehan married Genevieve Bienville (of the New Orleans founding family), binding the Destrehan family to the Macartys by marriage. Jean’s daughter, Elanore D’Estrenhan, married Edourard Macarty, Delphine’s second cousin.

  FORSTALL

  Borquita, Delphine’s daughter by her first husband, married Françoise Placide Forstall, the son of an old French family. His grandfather, Nicholas Michel Forstall, was appointed for four terms, from 1774 to 1801, as the first alcalde (judge of the first instance) of New Orleans.

  Françoise’s father, Edmond Forstall, was one of the most influential members of the family. From 1832 until he died in 1872, he held the New Orleans agency of Hope and Company of Amsterdam and the Baring Brothers of London. He used these to negotiate the sale of bonds issued by the state. He was also one of the front people involved in framing the law for the incorporation of free banks in Louisiana.

  A
revolutionary sugar-refining apparatus was invented by a young man of mixed race named Edmond Rilleux. Edmond Forstall is cited as one of the first people to import and use one of the new sugar-refining machines. These were expensive machines, and some of the smaller plantation owners were unable to afford them. But further innovations eventually lowered the cost.

  Forstall was shipping refined sugar in the early 1830s to New York. Edmond Forstall contracted Rilleux’s father to build one of the machines at the Louisiana Sugar Company, but something went wrong with the contract and a bitter feud flared up. Rilleux disappeared, and Forstall canceled his contract with him. This cost the Forstall family millions of dollars—the refining process invented by Rilleux revolutionized the sugar industry.

  LANUSSE

  Paul Lanusse was one of the leading merchants in the city of New Orleans until his business failed. In 1804, he served on the board of directors of the newly established State Bank of Louisiana. He was elected an alderman in 1812. Paul was married to Marie Céleste Macarty, Delphine’s aunt. Marie Céleste’s sister, Mitilde, married Charles Lanusse. This fact caused many confusing moments, because quite a few of the early historians did not realize there was a double liaison with the families. Charles Lanusse comes up in Gayerré’s histories, but Paul seemed to be the one who consistently stayed in the spotlight.

  The Lanusses were prominent in business and politics. Paul Lanusse was one of the judges who decided on the fate of the slaves found guilty of insurrection in the Slave Revolt of 1811. It was Paul who sued the infamous pirate Pierre Laffite (Jean Laffite’s brother) for monies owed to him—a total of about $9,000. This suit would eventually lead to Pierre Laffite’s arrest.

  DE MONTREUIL

  The neighbor who was present while the slaves were pulled from the burning Lalaurie house was a Montreuil. The Montreuil family dates back to the days of Norman dominancy in French history. Marthe Macarty (one of Delphine’s fabulous aunts) married Gaultier de Montreuil. This union produced a landownership war that resulted in hard feelings between the Monsieur Montreuil (Delphine’s cousin) and the Macartys. It was this Montreuil who witnessed the Lalaurie fire and passed along information about the mistreatment of the Lalauries’ slaves. One news writer, Meigs Frost, theorizes that the rumors of abuse and perhaps even the story of the little murdered slave girl, Nina, may have been Montreuil’s invented or embellished revenge on Delphine’s family for taking land from his coffers.

  MARIGNY DE MANDEVILLE

  A litany of the Marginys’ contributions to society, family connections and money is listed in Grace King’s book Old Families of New Orleans. The Marigny plantation hosted the exiled princes of France in 1798 during the French Revolution. The Marignys threw lavish parties for their royal guests, spawning stories of the family’s extravagance for generations. The princes’ host, Pierre Phillipe Marigny, held connections in Creole society to almost every powerful family, including the Macartys. Marriage alliances tied the two families as in-laws.

  Historian Stanley Clisby Arthur, in his book Old Families of Louisiana, noted:

  It was the third child of Phillipe Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville (son of Pierre Phillipe) who represented the family during the last century; and who is the hero, par excellence of New Orleans’ social traditions; who, we may say was to the Marigny family what the final bouquet is to a pyrotechnic display.

  This young man is credited with bringing the game of craps from Europe to Louisiana, setting the standards of 1820s fashionable extravagance and his loss of the family’s lands and fortune.

  MIRÓ

  Esteban Rodriguez Miró (1744–1802), governor of Spanish Louisiana from 1785 to 1791, married Céleste Éléonore de Macarty, Delphine’s aunt.

  Miró arrived in Louisiana at the beginning of the Spanish ownership of the territory and was a primary figure during the Spanish occupation.

  In 1785, Miró became governor of Spanish Louisiana. Miró passed one of the first slave codes that restricted slaves from ownership of firearms and the ability to travel, as well as provided for several other provisions. During his appointment, the fire of 1788 burned a large part of the city, and Miró was primarily responsible for rebuilding many of the structures still in existence in New Orleans, including the Cabildo and the St. Louis Cathedral.

  His Macarty bride, Céleste Éléonore Elisabeth, is noted in Old Families of New Orleans as “young, beautiful and all Irish by her quick wit.”

  Grace King stated:

  New Orleans had never been so gay as under her husband’s or rather her administration with the opera, theatre, balls, card parties and pleasure jaunts to the suburb of Bayou St. Jean or across the river to the plantation of her aunt, Madame Jonchere.

  When Miró put in for retirement, “he left Louisiana not only reconciled to Spain, but even endeared to it and beautified by its domination,” according to King.

  After Miró passed away, his wife was so despondent that she begged her niece, the Baroness de Pontalba, to come live with her in Paris. The baroness did, taking her son, Tonton, and leaving her husband to write an incredible journal of the Creole royalty in New Orleans.

  PELLERIN

  Delphine’s grandfather, Barthélémy, married Françoise Hélène Pellerin. Françoise’s father, Gerard Louis Pellerin, was first to command the Opelousas/Attakapas Post settled in 1720, located on the banks of the Bayou Tech. The Attakapas Territory was nestled between the Atchafalaya River and the Bayou Nezpique and was populated by the eastern Attakapas tribe. This area eventually became the community of St. Martinsville and a haven for the ousted Acadians and other French immigrants.

  DE PONTALBA

  Delphine’s cousin, Jeanne Françoise Le Breton des Chappelles, married Joseph Delfau de Pontalba. Joseph, the Baron de Pontalba, left a wonderful journal that he wrote to his wife, who joined her aunt, the Widow Miró, in France.

  De Pontalba’s main contribution to history is his spectacular journal and the letters kept and sent to his wife after she and their son went to stay with Madame Miró. Beautiful descriptions of Creole life are found in these writings.

  RATHBONE

  Marie Jeanne “Céleste” Forstall, Delphine’s granddaughter, married Henry Alanson Rathbone, continuing the Rathbone dynasty. The Rathbones were one of Rhode Island’s founding families. Henry Alanson Rathbone arrived in New Orleans after the War of 1812. Grace King regarded him as “one of the few Americans that was received with distinction in Creole Society.”

  Regarding Henry’s wife, Céleste (née Macarty), King wrote that she

  retained her beauty to old age. Her stately home on Esplanade Avenue, surrounded by a great garden, maintained its standard of old fashioned elegance and its luxurious appointments, long after the Civil War, which ended the old standards of living as the old Regimé.

  TREPAGNIER

  In 1718, a French Canadian named Claude Trepagnier joined Bienville’s expedition party that carved out Ville de la Nouvelle Orléans. As a reward for his participation in the expedition, Claude Trepagnier was granted a plot of land. In 1721, when the official design of the city was laid out, the grid pattern of the streets of the new town was centered at the Place d’Armes, now known as Jackson Square. The central focus of the traditionally designed French town was the St. Louis Cathedral, which was part of the Trepagnier land grant, making it a key plot of land.

  In 1735, Claude’s daughter, Marie Françoise, made her second marriage to Jean Baptiste Macarty, making her Delphine’s aunt.

  During the Louisiana Slave Revolt in 1811, Charles Gayerré narrated the encounter between Jean-François Trepagnier (Delphine’s cousin by marriage), a planter, and the attacking mob of slaves. When the shouts of the mob alerted the planter of their arrival, Trepagnier loaded his shotgun with buckshot and faced them from “a high circular gallery which belted his house.” Jean François Trepagnier is one of two confirmed white deaths from the Slave Revolt of 1811.

  VILLERÉ

  Jacques Phillippe Vill
eré (April 28, 1761–March 7, 1830) was the second governor of Louisiana after it became a state. He was the first Creole and the first native of Louisiana to attain that office. In 1784, Villeré married Jeanne Henriette de Fazende (Delphine’s cousin), the daughter of Gabriel de Fazende, who owned a plantation seven miles downriver from New Orleans in Saint Bernard Parish.

  In 1815, he was elected governor of Louisiana. He took office the following year and served through 1820. His governorship marked a period of diversity, economic gain and population growth for Louisiana.

  King finished her chapter on the Villerés with the following: “[T]he Villerés count more descendents in active business life in the city than any other of the ‘foundation families’ as they may be called.”

  Authors’ Notes

  We chose to standardize the spelling of “Macarty.” It has at least three different forms during the family’s history. Putting the pieces together is always difficult; there were many conflicts in even the genealogy of the families. We hope that we pieced it together fairly accurately but apologize for any mistakes. In regard to other standardizations of last names, we generally used the spelling that was found in documents relating closest to the 1834 time period.

  If some of the history contradicts itself, that is what history does. We tried to be consistent in facts, spellings and anything else we could control, but let’s face it—this is why history is fun.