White Like Her

by Gail Lukasik

  But neither Judy nor I can find any direct link between Ursin and the German Coast Frederics through legal documentation.

  Even the verifiable fact that Ursin—who was living in New Orleans at the time of the Battle of New Orleans—chose to enlist as a private in the third regiment of the Louisiana militia, all of whom were from Plaquemines Parish where Adam Frederic had resided, is circumstantial evidence at best. His decision could reflect his desire to fight with his friends and family from the parish where he might have grown up. Or it could not.

  Judy and I both come to the conclusion that Ursin may have been illegitimate and was never acknowledged by his white father, thus explaining our inability to find a birth or baptismal record for Ursin.

  “Is there nothing else we can do to find his parents?” I email Judy.

  Judy suggests I search the Historical Notaries Indexes, by Notary, which are available online. She cautions, “This is a very slow and time-consuming undertaking, but it might be worth it.”

  To hire Judy to search the Notarial Archives would be quite costly.

  I groan aloud when I click on the site and view the full page of notarial archives for the Parish of Orleans. Each notary has volumes and volumes of records, beginning in 1739. But the notary archives are my last hope to find Ursin Frederic’s parents. Among other transactions, notaries recorded inheritances. If Ursin was left an inheritance from his father, then I would know who his father was. It’s a long shot. But I have one clue that might make the task easier. Narcisse Broutin was the notary of record for the sale of the lot in 1822 where Ursin had his cabinet making shop.

  Overwhelmed with the amount of research I still have to do for the book, I sheepishly ask my husband Jerry, who is a retired dentist, if he would search through the archives.

  He agrees, reluctantly and with provisions. “An hour a day at the most. And not every day.”

  Other discoveries give me a glimpse into Ursin’s life and the period in which he lived. As unexpected as the possibility that the Frederics may have been of German descent and that they came to the Louisiana Territory in the early 1720s, what wasn’t unexpected was that they owned slaves. Once I learned how early the family came to the Louisiana Territory, I anticipated finding slave owners in the family tree. They were farmers who owned plantations. I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t owned slaves.3

  There is solid documentation that not only did white Europeans own slaves but also free people of color were slave owners, indicating that free people of color did not identify with Africans, even though African blood was mixed with their European blood. Their free status and the three-tier caste system allowed them to identity more with Southern whites than African slaves even though as free people they did not enjoy all the privileges of whites. Their psychological profile of identifying with their oppressors is not surprising and all too familiar.

  Ursin also owned slaves. There’s a record of him selling a slave named Saturin, age thirteen, to Joseph Lenoir in 1814. He also had a slave named Elizabeth Frederique who died in 1835 at the age of eighteen and is buried in the same cemetery as Ursin Frederic, St. Louis No. Two. The name Frederique suggests the relationship between Elizabeth and Ursin might have been more intimate than slave and master. Was she the daughter of a sexual dalliance with one of his slaves or was she his consort? Either scenario is feasible and neither one is palatable.

  In January of 1822, before Ursin cohabitates with Roxelane Arnoux, he has a daughter, Marie Armande Frederic, with Marie Polline, a quarterone (a person whose one parent was white and the other mulatto). Marie Armande’s baptismal record names Marie Polline as her mother and Ursin Frederic as the child’s natural father, indicating that the parents weren’t married. The baptism is recorded in the register for baptisms of free people of color. Traditionally mixed-race children took on the race of the mother and were treated accordingly.

  Marie Armande’s godparents offer clues not only to the importance of the role of godparents but also the fictive kinship interrelationship between the mother and the godmother. Often parents sought godparents of equal or higher status in order to gain privileges for their child.4 This was the case with Marie Armande’s godparents: Jean Marie Armand and Seraphine Andry. Both godparents were white and Seraphine was from a prominent New Orleans family. After a cursory online search of Seraphine Andry, I discover in the Louisiana Digital Library that Seraphine Andry petitioned in 1829 to free three of her slaves: Marie Pauline, Marie Amanda, and Marie Louise Victorire. This is seven years after the birth of Marie Armande.

  I ask Judy Riffel if she thinks Marie Pauline could have been the Marie Polline listed on Marie Armande Frederic’s baptismal record. After all, the names are very similar: Marie Pauline/Marie Polline. The birth date of the freed slave child Marie Amanda is 1822, the same birth date of Marie Armande Frederic, and their names are nearly identical.

  Her answer confirms my hunch. “I’d say that’s a pretty good match.”

  When Marie Armande Frederic’s certificate of baptism arrives from the Archdiocese of New Orleans Archives, there’s a note from Jack: “Seraphine Andry recognizes the child as free.” By selecting her mistress as godparent, Marie Pauline/Polline obtained freedom for her child and eventually herself.

  My imagination spins wildly and the fiction writer emerges creating scenarios concerning how Ursin became sexually entangled with Marie Polline, the “quarterone” slave of Seraphine Andry. Their relationship wasn’t a plaçage arrangement since Marie Polline wasn’t a free woman at the time of her daughter’s birth. Did the wealthy Seraphine Andry send Marie Pauline to Ursin’s carpentry shop on a personal errand and they were drawn to each other? Did Ursin suggest assignations? Did Marie Pauline see a relationship with Ursin as a path to freedom for subsequent children and possibly herself? I’ll never know.

  But none of this information gets me any closer to learning who Ursin’s parents were. My husband has begun scrolling through the notarial archives but its very slow work. He complains that some of the entries are illegible, names are spelled phonetically or misspelled, and then there’s just the overwhelming volume of entries.

  In desperation, thinking I might be able to save him this laborious task, I call the Cemetery Department of the Archdiocese of New Orleans and ask for Ursin’s internment record, thinking his parents or siblings might be interred with him. But I come up blank.

  Adding to my confusion and uncertainty about Ursin’s parentage, Jack Belsom phones me with what he considers a breakthrough in finding Ursin’s parents.

  “Are you sitting down?” Jack Belsom teases me.

  Holding the phone, I hurry up the stairs to my home office, close the door, and grab a pad of paper before sitting. I can hear the excitement in his voice. “I am now,” I answer.

  “We may be cousins.”

  A week ago I contacted Jack about the sacramental records for Ursin Frederic, giving him alternative birth dates for Ursin. According to Ursin Frederic’s tombstone in St. Louis Cemetery No. Two, he was born in New Orleans on August 1, 1792, and died September 15, 1856. In addition to the 1792 birth date on Ursin’s tombstone, other documents gave a range of birth dates. Jack graciously searched the records from 1784–1790 and 1791–1795. But he’d found no baptismal record for Ursin. I am leaving no stone unturned.

  “I talked to my friend who is an expert on the German Coast,” he says. “And he found a Ursin Celestin Frederic. Now here’s the exciting news. Ursin Celestin Frederic married Elosie Duvernay. I’m descended from the Duvernay family. We may be cousins.”

  Then he tells me a story of how he’s been a friend of Greg Osborn and it was years into the friendship before they discovered they were cousins.

  “You have to understand if you’re descended from one of the early families of Louisiana, you probably are cousins. That’s how it is in New Orleans, two degrees of separation.”

  Though I’m excited by the possibility that we’re cousins, I’m almost certain Ursin Celesti
n Frederic is not my Ursin Frederic.

  I thank him for the information and tell him I’ll look into it. After I hang up I reread Judy’s early research on Ursin. Sure enough, Judy eliminated Ursin Celestin Frederic as a relative. But still I email her and request a copy of Ursin Celestin Frederic’s widow’s application for a War of 1812 pension, the document she used to rule out Ursin Celestin. When it arrives, it’s clear from the information that Ursin and Ursin Celestin are two different men. I’m back to square one and continue constructing Ursin’s life from what I do know.

  By 1829 Ursin is living with Roxelane Arnoux, a free woman of color, in the suburb of Marigny, on Greatmen Street (now Dauphin Street) between Frenchman and Champs Elysees Streets where their first child, John Frederick, is born in 1829. On his birth record, John is described as the “child of their cohabitance” and his race is designated as colored. On the same document, Ursin’s age is given as thirty-nine years old and Roxelane’s age as twenty-five years old. Their fourteen-year age gap lends credence to this being a plaçage arrangement.

  As to what happened to Marie Polline is only conjecture. Perhaps she died or Ursin became tired of her. Regardless, Ursin moved on to another woman. As to Ursin’s daughter by Marie Polline, in 1851 Marie Armande has a son Joseph and she is residing on St. Phillip Street near Rampart, the same street on which Ursin had his cabinetmaking shop in 1822. It’s unclear if it’s the same building that housed his carpentry business.

  In subsequent birth records dated August 1835 and March 1837, Ursin and Roxelane’s children are described as “natural” or “from the cohabitation of” Roxelane and Ursin. The children of these plaçage unions were known as “natural” children as opposed to “bastard” children, an important distinction in many ways, but especially in terms of inheritance. Bastard children couldn’t inherit from their fathers, but natural children could inherit.

  Like many plaçage liaisons, Ursin lived with Roxelane monogamously, dispelling the notion of the tragic quadroon, and his “natural” children were his heirs.5

  For the majority of their lives together, Ursin and Roxelane resided in the Marigny area. In the early nineteenth century when Ursin and Arnoux established their residence, “New” Marigny, the area away from the river near Claude Street, was where the white Creole gentlemen set up their plaçage households.6 During that time, Marigny was composed of single and double Creole cottages. Many of the inhabitants were tradesmen, in occupations such as shoemaker, carpenter, blacksmith, butcher, and tailor. As a cabinetmaker Ursin’s trade was typical of the population.

  By 1811 there were over 150 households living there. In 1830 when the city was divided into three municipalities, Marigny was included in the Third Municipality and all business was conducted in French. Reunification took place in 1851 and the Third Municipality became the Third District. By the 1840s with the influx of German immigrants, shotgun cottages were built with more frequency and became the dominant nineteenth-century New Orleans—type house.7

  Though the houses may have looked charming, living in Marigny during the early nineteenth century was anything but charming. Because the ground water in the city had high mineral content making it unusable for drinking and washing, water had to be brought in by cask and cart. An open gutter served as the sewage system, and at night soil wagons collected human waste from the gutters, which was deposited into the river creating an awful stench.8

  Another group of immigrants to the Marigny area in its early days were refugees from Santo Domingo. Roxelane Arnoux and her family might well have been one of those refugees. She was born in Santiago de Cuba, where many of the refugees fled first before coming to New Orleans.

  My friend and colleague English Professor Emerita Nancy Cirillo whose area of specialization is Caribbean studies educates me about the Haitian Slave Revolt (1791–1804), which was led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, a free black. Not only was it the only successful slave revolt in the Americas, but also the black rebels who won control of Santa Domingo, located in the western part of Hispaniola, established the first independent nation of former slaves, renaming the island “Haiti.”

  In 1803, the largest mass exodus from the island took place when about thirty thousand people, including whites, free people or color, and some slaves sailed to Cuba after the revolutionaries defeated the French army sent by Napoleon. Roxelane’s family might have been among those fleeing to Cuba.

  When Cuba deported many of the refugees in 1809, Roxelane’s family remained in Cuba.9 According to ship records, not until 1825 does Roxelane Arnoux, age seventeen, arrive in New Orleans. That would put her birth year as 1808, which matches the birth year on her death record witnessed by her son Leon Frederic. On the ship’s record she is listed as a passenger on the schooner Thom disembarking at the port of New Orleans in the third quarter of 1825, four years before the birth of her first child with Ursin.

  The schooner Thom departed from St. Jago, Cuba. What is of particular interest on the manifest is the captain’s name: Jean Arnoux. His death record lists his birthplace as Jeremie on the Island of Santo Domingo around 1774. He was the legitimate son of Jean Arnoux and Margdeleine Arnau. What his exact relationship to Roxelane was is unclear. If Jean Arnoux was a white man and Roxelane’s father, then Roxelane was a child of a mixed-race relationship. On the 1860 census her race is designated as Mulatto. But if he wasn’t her father, he certainly was related to her.

  Prior to enlisting the services of Judy Riffel, I’d mentioned to Ike Edwards that Roxelane Arnoux was born in Santiago de Cuba. He explained to me that many of the men who won their freedom as a result of the Haitian slave revolt, when they came to New Orleans, participated in the War of 1812 as part of the free men of color militia. He was suggesting that Ursin Frederic’s family might have originally been enslaved in Santo Domingo and took part in the slave revolt. Since Leon Frederic, Ursin’s son, had served in the Native Guards as a free man of color during the Civil War, it wasn’t too far a leap, though an erroneous one.

  Every so often I ask my husband how it’s going.

  “Slow,” he says.

  “Did you find any Frederics?”

  He shows me the scant list, a few John Fredericks, no Ursin.

  But one mystery concerning Ursin is finally solved. I’ve pondered over the word (Lours) in parenthesis after Ursin Frederic’s name in his obituary, wondering if as Rich noted on the Genealogy Roadshow packet that Lours might indicate that Ursin was born in Lourdes, France.

  Judy Riffel has a different idea, one that makes perfect sense. Because the obituary was written in French, and Lours is the French word l’ours, meaning “bear,” Lours might have been his nickname.

  Judy writes: “It could have been his nickname, many soldiers had them. Since there were two Ursin Fredericks, he could have gone by ‘l’ours’ to differentiate himself from the other one.” Or it could be a play on Ursin’s name from the Latin ursus, “bear.”

  Her interpretation delights me. Ursin “The Bear” Frederic seems to embody his fierceness and strength. Ursin was a bear of a man with a big appetite for life, especially when it came to women. He was a man of complexity: a slave owner, a womanizer, a father who supported his family, and a war veteran who risked his life for his community. Though there is no justification for slavery, I don’t feel the need to apologize for him or hide what he did. The mist of history comes between us just as it did with my mother and me.

  In trying to piece together ancestors lives, I’m acutely aware that we’re separated by the experiences of our individual times and places. And for every ancestor who made choices I wished they hadn’t, there are other ancestors who made choices I celebrate.

  Bernard Lanabere, my third great-grandfather, was born in Serres-Castet, France, on September 18, 1811. The nearest town to Serres-Castet is Pau, which boasts a castle that was the birthplace of Henry IV of France, who reigned from 1598 to 1619. Bernard’s father Jean Lanabere was a farmer. His mother’s name was Marie Liben.

 
; Bernard had the dubious distinction of bearing the name of his older brother, the firstborn son, who was born in 1807 and died before Bernard’s birth. Though at the time it was not uncommon to name a child after a deceased child, I can’t help but think he must have endeavored all his life to escape the shadow of that older deceased brother. In contemporary psychology Bernard would have been the replacement child. Perhaps his leaving France for America was in some ways to escape the specter of his dead brother. How could Bernard ever hope to measure up to the idealized dead brother who forever would be perfect?

  In The Foreign French: Nineteenth-Century French Immigration into Louisiana: Vol. I 1820–1839, I find a record of a Lanaber (Lamber?) of France arriving in New Orleans, November 4, 1836, on the ship Louisiana. He is thirty years old, occupation not given, and has departed from the port of Bordeaux. Putting aside the misspelling of his last name, this Lanaber is five years older than my ancestor Bernard if the ship record is accurate. Also, my Bernard arrived in New Orleans in 1838 according to his death certificate. However, the 1836 arrival of Lanaber from France is the only ship record I can find of a Lanabere arriving in New Orleans during the time period when Bernard would have immigrated. Considering the inaccuracies in reporting ages at the time, the Lanaber who disembarked in New Orleans in 1836 is probably Bernard Lanabere. Also, the port of Bordeaux was the closest port to Serres-Castet for vessels sailing to America. Though passenger manifests after 1834 were less fragmented and appeared to be more complete, the embarking French passengers were underreported, so it’s not surprising that the only listing I could find was for a Lanaber. Though the law of averages tells me Lanaber is Bernard Lanabere.

  When Bernard immigrated to New Orleans, he was part of a French migration pattern. Prior to 1832, annual patterns of immigration from France that passed through New Orleans were about one thousand. After 1832 until the Civil War there was an increase of French immigrants in New Orleans from three thousand to seven thousand, with the French being the third largest group after the Irish and the Germans in the city.10 Interestingly, New Orleans ranked among the six leading American ports between 1820 and 1839 for French immigration.11