The Pirates Laffite

by William C. Davis

  But they had white blood, and like thousands of other mixed-race free people in the city, their skin was lighter than that of full-blooded blacks, and their features more Caucasian. With each succeeding generation, as they married or cohabited with other mulattoes or quadroons, they became more and more white to all appearances. All of Rose and André Tessier's children were recorded as "colored" at the registration of their births.61 Their daughter Laura Emilie probably married Auguste Allnet around 1860, and gave birth to five children who grew to adulthood, and their birth and death certificates listed them, too, as "colored." But then in 1880 came the census enumerator, and when he called at the Allnet home on Marais Street in New Orleans, its inhabitants told him they were "white" and what he saw did not raise any question in his mind.62 Pierre's descendants had commenced the risky business of "passing."

  On June 14, 1890, Auguste and Laura Emilie's son Edward Andrew Allnet married a white woman, Bertha Eugenie Emuy, and soon they began a family.63 In the office of vital statistics, every one of their children would be registered as "white" at birth.64 Laura Emilie's sister Alexandrine did the same thing after she married a white Canadian merchant, Edward Farr. The husband had to know of his wife's dollop of black blood, for at least two of their four children listed their own children as colored at birth. Their oldest son, Edward Robert Louis Farr, would have nine children by his wife, Marie Lacoste. Two of them were listed as colored, another as white, and no race at all was given for the rest, meaning a presumption that they were white.

  One of Edward and Marie's children listed as colored at birth was their daughter Alexandrine Mirielle, born December 23, 1891.65 When she married a white man, George Renton, on March 18, 1911, the family was actively passing as white. As part of the subterfuge, the Farrs told Renton of the several vital records on file in the city and with the cathedral, and explained that they were the result of errors and carelessness, which he seemed to accept. Unfortunately something happened that they could not have anticipated. Renton turned out to he a brute. He abused Mirielle, and, according to her, he "contracted loathsome venereal diseases as a result of his promiscuous adulteries." After four years she left him and moved herself and their furniture into her parents' home. 66

  An angry and vengeful Renton filed for an annulment on October 1, 1915, claiming that he had just learned that his wife had colored blood, making their marriage illegal and she and her family deceivers. A divorce entitled her to a half share of their joint property, whereas an annulment would mean that all property he purchased for them while together remained lawfully his. It came down to parlor furniture, a dining room set, a china closet, a gas stove, clocks, pictures, and even "bric-a-brac" that he had no intention of sharing with the woman who rejected him.67

  The ensuing legal fight lasted over a decade, turning first to last on the composition of Mirielle's blood. The question went far beyond the matter of divorce or annulment, for if she were adjudged to be colored, then so were all her family. They stood to lose voting rights, legal rights, what social status they had as members of the white working community, and perhaps even their employment. The outcome could be catastrophic for scores of aunts, uncles, and cousins. It all hinged on the documents, and soon archivists appeared in the district court carrying a mountain of certified copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates from the city archives, while the custodian of the Sacramental Archives produced the baptismal books going back to the late 1700s.

  The family's case rested on one essential claim.68 Marie Louise Villard was not their ancestor. Rather, Pierre Laffite had married a white woman, Marie Delas, and Rose Laffite was her daughter. That left the problem of the marriage record of Rose Laffite and André Tessier, which was recorded in a book of marriages of free blacks and showed both Rose and her husband to be mulattoes. The solution was one to which other "passing" New Orleanians had resorted—vandalizing the cathedral records. Sometime shortly after the first suit was filed, if not before, a member of Mirielle's family went into the cathedral archives, which were open to the public, and pulled out part one of the second volume of Marriages of Free Persons of Color for the years 1830 to 1835. The index clearly referenced the Tessier-Laffite marriage on page thirty-five.

  A careful slash with a penknife removed the page with the offending record. Showing some forethought, the vandal cut out the index page, too, and inserted in its place a duplicate on which was listed every reference from the removed index page but that to the Tessier-Laffite marriage on page thirty-five. It seemed very clever, but not quite clever enough. For a start, the new index page was obviously a different paper from the rest of the volume, and the entries in a different hand. More careless than that, the vandal did not notice that it was a double entry index, meaning that every marriage was listed twice, once under each surname involved. The page with a reference under Tessier was taken out, but the vandal overlooked the page with the reference listed under Laffite. No one would be fooled, and no one was. When the archivist began gathering the records in December 1915 for the Renton case, he immediately saw what had been done.69

  Several members of the family filed a joint suit against the New Orleans Board of Health to have the vital statistics records declared void, claiming that court clerks and undertakers, and everyone else who filled out the forms, either made mistakes or perpetuated an earlier error. The archivists testified to the story contained in their records, however, and the trail back to Marie Villard became indelibly clear, while none at all could be established to Marie Delas. Other embarrassing revelations unwittingly came out, as in the discovery that Mirielle's grandfather Edward Farr had had a mulatto mistress, and several children born to her, all recorded as colored. 70

  The family did not deny that their ancestor Pierre Laffite was the pirate and smuggler of Barataria, though their testimony revealed that after the passage of only three generations, they knew virtually nothing more about him. One, Rosalie DuHart, could only say that her mother told her "he was a pirate."71 Horace Farr recalled in May 1921 that "we always spoke about Pierre Lafitte and the family," and that "[his] being a pirate, I was interested in knowing his life."72 Edward Allnet, who led the descendants in their suit against the Board of Health, could only recall his mother Laura Emilie speaking vaguely of the grandfather she never knew as a wandering man. "He never stopped," her mother Rose had told her, but was "always on the go." When she saw her son Edward showing a penchant for travel, she chided him that he was "another one [who] will come out just like Pierre Lafitte." In her motherly jibes there was a sad echo of very different emotions suffered by her grandmother Marie Villard when she teased that Edward was "another one like Pierre Lafitte, gone away and don't know when he will come back."73

  There was another Pierre Lafitte, of course, as indeed there were several in early New Orleans. He, too, was from Bordeaux, and the cathedral archives revealed that he and a Jeanne Delas had a son Pierre born about 1800. On December 16, 1820, the son married Marie Berret, and both his mother and his wife were certainly white. However, in their court pleadings the family never made any attempt by documents to prove a link between these Laffites and their ancestress Rose. They could not. In all probability, the idea of claiming Delas as an ancestor came to them when they started tracing the documentation at the cathedral on their genuine ancestry and serendipitously chanced upon a Pierre Lafitte with a different spelling of the name but with a wife conveniently white.

  The assertion that Pierre married a Delas—they were confused as to whether her name was Marie or Jeanne, a result of conflating the records of Pierre Lafitte and Jeanne Delas with those of the couple's son Pierre and his wife Marie Berret—was attributed to Rose Laffite. Rose's daughter Alexandrine Farr so claimed in a statement taken in 1918, and she also said that Rose had only one sibling, a Pierre Laffite who went to France, then returned to New Orleans to marry.74 Testimony was introduced from an elderly woman who had known Rose Laffite Tessier in her last years in the 1860s, and who said she recalled Rose ta
lking about her father as "this man Lafitte," and saying that her mother had been French, which, of course, applied to Marie Villard's background as well as that of any Delas.75 Three years later Rosalie DuHart, daughter of Emilie Louise Tessier, repeated the claim that Rose Laffite said her mother was Marie Delas. She also produced the buckle and the cross in the hope that they provided some sort of evidence, claiming that Pierre had given them to Rose, but then her testimony made it clear that they came from her grandfather Tessier's family. It was hinted that the "D" in the initials "C. D." on the cross stood for Delas, but again DuHart compromised her own testimony when she went on to say that she had put the initials on the cross herself.76

  In the end the testimony went on for months, and filled more than five hundred pages of transcripts, none of it convincing anyone that there had been official errors. It was a sad tableau of a working-class family fighting to retain what position they had in their community and society, and they were bound to lose. There had been a number of similar cases in recent years, and the unusually complete vital records kept in New Orleans since early in the past century defeated most of them. Renton got his annulment, and in November 1922 the court handed down the inevitable decision in the suit against the Board of Health.77 Mirielle responded in December by filing for a divorce, but it was a hopeless effort, especially after her family appealed the lower court's decision in their suit to the state supreme court, alleging that it came under that bench's purview due to the damages that the family would suffer to their political rights as a result of being adjudged to be of colored blood. On March 10, 1924, the Supreme Court heard arguments, but quickly declined to hear the case or consider overturning the lower court's ruling. 78 In November 1925, giving up all hope, Mirielle filed a motion to withdraw her petition for a divorce, and at last, almost exactly ten years after her legal nightmare began, it was all over.79

  The family were devastated. For those living out of the state, as many did, it was not so bad, but for those in New Orleans there was no hiding the sudden change in their status. Mirielle Renton went back to being Mirielle Farr, an embittered woman who soon disappeared from New Orleans, doing her best to keep herself and her ancestry a secret.80 Only after the turn of the millennium would descendants of Pierre and Marie begin to emerge once more from the shadows imposed on them by the mores and prejudices of a distant time. Thus, in a last, sad, irony, when the Laffites disappeared into the Gulf, they were forgotten by their own family just as, apparently, they forgot that family themselves. Instead, as the generations ensued, their descendants preferred to remember their ancestress Marie as the white Delas rather than the mulatto Villard who had held the family together when her man went away and did not return. As for memories of the Laffites themselves, of Jean not a jot of recall survived in the family, and of Pierre little more than that he was a pirate and a vagabond.

  There was one thing more, though: vague stories redolent of adventure and mystery all conjured by the name of a place. Asked what Rose told her of her grandfather Pierre Lafitte, Alexandrine Farr could summon only a single ancient recollection that "my mother often spoke to me of Bayou Barataria."81

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ARCHIVISTS EVERYWHERE without exception have been anxious to help with the research for this work. From among those who have contributed so extensively, several stand out, and all are deserving of thanks. Sally Reeves, now retired from the fabulous New Orleans Notarial Archives, made the rich untapped resources of that unique collection available on many occasions, and with it gave her unrestrained aid with copies and translations. At Fort Worth, Texas, Barbara Rust, Meg Hacker, and Nakita Gore of the National Archives Southwest Region never recoiled from requests for assistance in the wonderful case files of the United States District Court for Eastern Louisiana housed there. The always-helpful staff at the National Archives in Washington did not fail to help, notably Michael Musick, Rebecca Livingston, and Rick Peuser, as well as volunteer staff Russ and Budge Weidman. James Sefcik and Katherine Page were most cooperative at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, as was Pamela Arceneaux of the Historic New Orleans Collection. Belinda Lassalle at the New Orleans Civil Court was very patient, and Bobby Freyou and Geneva Welch in the Louisiana State Archives in Baton Rouge were equally helpful. Wayne Everard of the Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library, gave attention to every request for material from that underappreciated resource for early New Orleans legal records.

  Other state and local government archivists lent invaluable aid, among them Shirley Perry of the Arkansas County Courthouse, DeWitt, Arkansas; Donaly E. Brice of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission at Austin; Dimitrious Gartrell at the East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Ann Lipscomb-Webster of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson. University special collections archivists also contributed, particularly Dean DeBolt of the University of West Florida at Pensacola, Wilbur Menery of the Howard Tilton Library at New Orleans' Tulane University, and Ralph Elder at the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Marie E. Windell of the Louisiana Supreme Court Archives at the University of New Orleans was most obliging in the matter of the long-lost court record of the early 1900s trial involving descendants of Pierre Laffite. Dr. Charles Nolan cordially opened the voluminous Archdiocesan Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, containing the vital records of St. Louis Cathedral, and in Houston, Texas, Karen Clingan of the TORCH Collection was most cooperative. Françoise Durand-Evrard of the Archives Nationales, Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, in Aix-en-Provence, France, very cordially helped with documents relating to San Domingue. Special thanks are due to the consideration of Dr. Robert L. Schaadt of the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center at Liberty, Texas, for granting unrestricted access to the original of the disputed Jean Laffite Journal, as well as the rest of the Laffite collections there.

  In a work dealing with so many documents in other languages, translations are vital, and several people lent invaluable aid, led by Nancy Lopez of Blacksburg, Virginia, who dealt with all of the documents in Spanish from the Archives of the Indies materials. Dr. Linda Arnold of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg also assisted with some Spanish readings, while Christina Vella of New Orleans cheerfully allowed translating several documents in French to distract her from her own valuable work. Other aid with French came from Amelia Rodrigue and Dr. Harry Redman, Jr., of New Orleans.

  Several members of the Laffite Society of Galveston, themselves interested and active in Laffite research, gave unstintingly of their time and expertise. Two stand out in deserving special gratitude. Pam Keyes of Miami, Oklahoma, has been on the Laffite trail for more than two decades, and went out of her way to make herself and her research materials available. For several years she has been an almost daily sounding board. We have not always agreed, for that is the way of historians, but always differed with mutual respect. Her generosity has been unmatched, and the interest she has taken in this work has undoubtedly made it the better. Similarly, Robert Vogel of New Brighton, Minnesota, author of several important articles on the Laffites and the filibustering community, delved into his own voluminous files to share otherwise elusive documents, and he, too, was ever ready, sometimes on a daily basis, to take on the odd question or help address a conundrum. His encyclopedic knowledge of many of the Laffite associates has been invaluable. Both Keyes and Vogel read this work in manuscript, and offered comments and corrections from which it has benefited immeasurably.

  Members of the Laffite Society helped measurably among them Dr. Reginald Wilson, Jean Epperson, Betje Klier, Jeff and Kathy Modjelewski, and Don Marler. Sylvie Feuillie of France made available some of the findings from her Laffite research, and Patrick Lafitte of Corneilla Del Vercol, France, kindly provided Pierre Lafitte's newly discovered 1802 passport. Fellow historians have been unstintingly gracious, including Dr. Stewart King of Mt. Angel Seminary, St. Benedict, Oregon, Benjamin Maygarden of New Orleans, an
d Richard McMurry of Roanoke, Virginia. A number of other friends not already named gave their time on errands great and small. Some like Dennis Brown of St. Louis, Missouri, and Anthony Hall of Stoke-on-Trent, England, performed some distant research, while old friend Thomas Lindley of Austin, Texas, more than once spontaneously sent a document unearthed in his own indefatigable research. Deborah Petite of Alexandria, Virginia, put in many hours running down documents in the National Archives, while Judith Bethea of New Orleans proved invaluable in locating documents in the several archives in New Orleans, particularly the Public Library. Edmee Chanay of Paris, France, went after Laffite origins in Pauillac, Bordeaux, and William Reeves of New Orleans helped with some local sources, while Harold Holzer of New York proved decisive in running down an 1819 sketch of the Laffite ship Dorada in its then guise as the USS Firebrand.

  To each and all, sincere thanks, and for her patience during the writing of this, and her own reading of the manuscript during a terribly busy time for her, the greatest gratitude of all must go to the pirate who stole the author's heart, Sandra Davis.