The Pirates Laffite

by William C. Davis

  What most of these stories have in common is that they came from men who actually did have some much later acquaintance with Jean Laffite in 1818–20, but they did not set down their recollections of him until twenty years later or more, when they themselves were elderly, of fallible memory, and perhaps influenced by legends and romances that had grown up around their subject. They may also have been recalling very accurately just what Jean Laffite told them, only to be the victims of a penchant for impish humor and broad storytelling that seemed to be a part of his personality. In short, to cover the gap of these years after he left France, he may well have invented and reinvented his own story, both to amuse himself and his friends.

  10. Babb, French Refugees, p. 19.

  11. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description Topographique, III, p. 1506.

  12. Fick, The Making of Haiti, p. 208.

  13. Pierre Bardin, "Lafitte, Myth or Reality?" Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe (Bulletin 64, October 1994), p. 1149. The author found this information in documents at Port-au-Prince.

  14. Pierre Laffite statement, April 21, 1806, Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 52, item 335, NONA. An attempt to more precisely date this episode, and to fully identify the victim Gabauriau, has been unsuccessful. There are records of indemnity applications made to the French government by the Saint-Domingue exiles in the 1840s, grouped together in the "Fonds de l'Indemnite de Saint-Domingue" in the Archives d'Outremer in Aix-en-Provence, however, a search failed to produce anything matching this episode. Stewart R. King, Mt. Angel Seminary, St. Benedict, Oregon, was very helpful in this attempt.

  15. It is worth noting that in "The Cruise of the Enterprise. A Day with La Fitte," United States Magazine and Democratic Review, VI (July 1839), p. 42, the author—identified only as "T"—has Laffite—which one is not stated, but the inference is that it is Jean, who was the well-known one by 1839—saying that "eighteen years ago I was a merchant in San Domingo." As will be discussed later, this is a questionable source. However, it is the only early source to state that a Laffite had been a merchant in San Domingue, as Pierre almost certainly was. Certainly, as will be demonstrated later, the Enterprise did visit Galveston in February 1820 and there were discussions with a Laffite, probably Jean, as Pierre was likely still in New Orleans at the time. So it is just possible that this is an echo of a genuine conversation and statement by a Laffite.

  16. A captain of artillery named Laffite also came with the expedition, but nothing suggests that this was Jean, as some have speculated. The identity of this man has not been determined.

  17. Gene A. Smith, "Editor's Introduction," Arsene Lacarriere Latour, Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814—1815 (1999 reprint, Gainesville, FL, 1999), pp. xiii–xv.

  18. Pierre's first recorded appearance in New Orleans on March 21, 1803, and his apparent residence there afterward, places the outside date of early March 1803 on his departure from San Domingue.

  19. In the Esau Glasscock letter dated November 1809, the writer speaks of visiting Pierre Laffite and meeting his son. Since only one child is mentioned, it was possibly—but not necessarily—this son, sometimes called Eugene. "He is the son of this Mr. Lafitte by a previous marriage," Glasscock wrote, possibly referring to Adelaide Maseleri as Pierre's first common-law wife. Lyle Saxon, in quoting the letter, says that the boy was Pierre, Jr., however, this does not appear in the quoted material from Glasscock's letter, and thus may be Saxon's embellishment (Esau Glasscock to Ned Glasscock, November 1809, in Lyle Saxon, Lafitte the Pirate [New York, 1930], p. 9; for the question of the authenticity of the Glasscock letter see below). Or if the boy was only four or five years old, then he could be a second son actually named Pierre. Other sources to be cited subsequently do establish that as of November 1809, Pierre had to have at least one or two children, a son Martin Firmin and/or his daughter Catherine Coralie, and perhaps even the first of his two sons named Jean, none of whom Glasscock seems to mention. Eugene might actually be this Jean, since phonetically the names are similar and may even come from the same root. If not a Pierre, Jr., then the boy Glasscock saw could have been Martin or Eugene.

  A Eugene Laffite does not identifiably appear in the archives anywhere, but there is one reference to him in Pierre's own words. Writing to Jean Laffite on February 17, 1818, Pierre said that "my son Eugene is going to present himself to you" (Pierre Laffite to Jean Laffite, February 17, 1818, Legajo 1900, Papeles de Cuba, Archivo General des Indias, Ayer Collection of Transcripts, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL [AGI-Newberry]). Clearly speaking of this same son at the same time, and in the same context, Felipe Fatio referred to "[Laffite's] son, a boy of 16 years," which places his birth circa 1802 (Fatio to captain general, February 18, 1818, Legajo 1900, AGI-Newberry).

  Then there is the situation with Pierre's daughter Catherine, who later became known as Coralie Laffite, or his son Martin Firmin Laffite who in one document is listed—or misinterpreted—as Martial. So it could actually be that the boy Glasscock met was named Pierre Eugene, but in later years he was called Eugene to avoid confusion with his father. As suggested hereinafter, it is also possible that the son Eugene was an invention of Pierre's for a particular purpose in 1818.

  TWO

  1. C. C. Robin, Voyages to the Interior of Louisiana, West Florida, and to the Islands of Martinique and Saint-Domingue During the Years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806 (Paris, France, 1807; edited and translated by Stuart O. Landry as Voyage to Louisiana [Gretna, LA, 2000]), p. 32.

  2. Babb, French Refugees, p. 157.

  3. Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 28, item 557, October 22, 1796, Vol. 5, item 588, December 10, 1800, Vol. 59, item 348, July 29, 1809, NONA; Square 48, Lot 18561, 18560, 18559, for 902—912 Royal Street, Vieux Carré Commission Archives, HNOC; "Index to Spanish Judicial Records of Louisiana," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XII (April 1929), pp. 349—50, 353.

  4. Marguerite Landreaux to Pierre Laffite and Joseph Maria Bourguignon, March 21, 1803, Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 43, act 222-bis; Cancellation of obligation, June 6, 1803, Vol. 44, item 476, NONA. The former document refers to Laffite as being a resident of Royal Street in March. The latter document refers to Laffite and Bourguignon as "neighbors." Since the 1805 City Directory places Bourguignon on Dumaine Street, it seems reasonable to conclude that if they were neighbors, then Pierre's Royal Street residence was close to the Dumaine intersection.

  5. The Works Projects Administration Index to Colonial Court Records, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans (LSM), shows that Pedro Alarcon, innkeeper, shoemaker, and militiaman in March 21, 1791, had proceedings instituted against him in 1803 for allowing gambling in his house. The reference is to an 1803 document, which was missing as of a 1980s inventory. It is indexed to the same bound book as the Lafitte document detailed in note 8.

  6. Pierre Laffite to Pedro Alarcon, Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 45, item 646, NONA.

  7. Cancellation of obligation, June 6, 1803, Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 44, item 476, NONA. This document, in Spanish, is not easy to read and interpret, but it seems apparent that it acknowledges the return of the property and erasure of the debt. This is confirmed by the fact that on July 29, 1809, Marguerite Landreaux sold the same property to Louis Miltenberger, demonstrating that she retained ownership long after 1803 (Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 59, item 348, NONA). The survey for this lot in the Vieux Carré Commission Archives at HNOC also fails to note any Laffite-Bourguignon ownership, but confirms Landreaux's possession throughout this period.

  8. The origin of the idea that the Laffites kept a smithy when they first came to New Orleans lies in an advertisement on the front page of the New Orleans, Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, September 18, r8o2, in which Hearico and Lafitte, "blacksmiths and toolmakers," newly arrived in the city, offer their services, especially for sugar and lumber mills, at their shop near the church at the corner of the Place d'Arms. No Lafitte is listed in the city directory at that time, nor any Hearico, though it is interesting that in Spanish "h
errero" meant blacksmith (Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 60, item 497, October 9, 1810, NONA).

  Further early advancement of the misconception may lie in an 1803 document indexed to Box 83, Book 4087, WPA Index, LSM. At the time of indexing in the 1930s, the document stated that a "Pierre Lafitte," an innkeeper, bought a slave at auction from an unidentified seller. There followed the two-word sentence "master blacksmith," which could mean that either Lafitte or the slave was the blacksmith. Unfortunately, since being indexed the original document has disappeared. Nevertheless, this does show that in 1803, the same year that Pierre Laffite bought property in New Orleans, there was an innkeeper named Pierre Lafitte who had a smithing connection, and was perhaps Hearico's partner. Thereafter in recollection a conflation of the two would have been natural.

  By 1851 John R. Grymes, onetime Laffite attorney, and Kilby Smith both thought they recalled that the Laffites had been blacksmiths, and other old-timers agreed (New Orleans, Daily Delta, November 9, 1851; "Editorial and Literary Department—Life and Times of Lafitte," DeBows Southern and Western Review, XII [ January 1852], p. 112). This appears to be the earliest published statement of the erroneous smithing. After that the acceptance of the misconception became virtually universal. The influential nineteenth-century Louisiana historian Charles E. A. Gayarré said that in his youth he knew well some ot Laffites' former companions, clients, and moneyed associates, and he accepted the blacksmith tradition. That virtually implanted it in the Laffite story thereafter. The smithy, he said, had disappeared by the time of his lecture, which was delivered circa 1886, but he recalled that it was on the north side of St. Philip between Bourbon and Dauphine. This is the erroneous site traditionally associated with a Laffite smithy, which will be discussed hereafter ("Lecture on the Lafittes, No. 1," n.d., Gayarré Selected Papers, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge [LSU]; Charles E. A. Gayarré, The Story of Jean and Pierre Lafitte, The Pirate-Patriots [New Orleans, 1938], p. 46). The imaginative John O. Dyer embellished the myth in the Galveston, Daily News, September 19, 1926, when he maintained—on no verifiable evidence—that the Laffite brothers formed a company in New Orleans called "Lafitte Freres," and bought slaves at auction and trained the better males to be blacksmiths. Early and influential Texas historian John Henry Brown actually declared in 1892 that the Laffite blacksmith shop "was standing until a few years ago" (John Henry Brown, History of Texas From 1685 to 1892 [St. Louis, 1892], I, pp. 68–69).

  Even before then, however, some saw through the confusion, like early Galveston historian Charles Hayes, who concluded in 1879 that there was a confusion between the Laffites and another Lafitte who was a blacksmith in New Orleans (Charles Hayes, History of the Island and the City of Galveston [Austin, Texas, 1974; reprint of destroyed Cincinnati, 1879 edition], p. 84). And if further evidence were needed, the Vieux Carré Survey for the intersection of Bourbon and St. Philip, the long-held traditional site of the supposed blacksmith shop, reveals that the property has an unbroken title from 1791 to 1833 with no Laffite mentioned (Square 76, Lot 18806, HNOC). The Survey report concludes that it is an ancient building but was never a forge and makes no connection other than lore to the Laffites. It does appear that the sometime Laffite associate Renato Beluche was the grandson of a onetime owner of the property, Jean Baptiste Laporte. A map survey indicates that the existing building today identified as "Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop" may have been built between 1722 and 1731.

  9. 6.3 percent of the refugee males were mariners and one-fourth were merchants. Paul F. Lachance, "The 1809 Immigration of Saint Domingue Refugees to New Orleans," Louisiana History, XXIX (Spring 1988), p. 133.

  10. Robin, Voyages, p. 36.

  11. Francisco Mota, "The Adventures of Lafitte and the Pirates of Barataria," Laffite Society Chronicles, VI (August 1998), n.p., says without supporting documentation that Pierre opened a "boutique" on Royal Street to sell luxury goods.

  12. Robin, Voyages, p. 97.

  13. Rufus King to James Madison, March 17, 1803, State Papers and Correspondence Bearing upon the Purchase of the Territory of Louisiana (Washington, 1903), p. 146.

  14. Ibid., pp. 286–88.

  15. Robin, Voyages, p. 66.

  16. David D. Porter, Memoir of Commodore David Porter of the United States Navy (Albany, NY, 1875), p. 73.

  17. Proclamation, December 2, 1803, State Papers and Correspondence, pp. 288–89.

  18. Babb, French Refugees, p. 161.

  19. Robin, Voyages, p. 36.

  20. Josephine Patin gave Laffite her power of attorney in a document, dated and signed at Baton Rouge by Laffite, which refers to him as "a merchant of this post." Power of Attorney, October 16, 1804, Archives of the Spanish Government of West Florida, Clerk of Court's Office, East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, Baton Rouge, LA.

  21. Philip Pittman, The Present State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi (London, 1770), pp. 33–34.

  22. Robin, Voyages, pp. 116–19.

  23. Ibid., p. 98.

  24. Alexander DeConde, "This Affair of Louisiana" (New York, 1976), pp. 220, 228.

  25. Josephine Patin Power of Attorney, October 16, 1804, Archives of the Spanish Government of West Florida, Clerk of Court's Office, East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, Baton Rouge, LA.

  26. Sale of slave, October 30, 1804, Archives of the Spanish Government of West Florida, Clerk of Court's Office, East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, Baton Rouge, LA. In these documents Folche and Grand-Pré both attest that they know Pierre Laffite and recognize his signature.

  27. An inferential additional argument to support Pierre Laffite's being a resident of the Point Coupée area at this time is a statement in the New Orleans, Daily Delta, October 21, 1851, that there were at that time at Point Coupée a Colonel Morgan and a Colonel White who told many old stories of a Laffite. The newspaper no doubt meant Jean, but he was already often confused with Pierre.

  28. Paul Lachance, "Repercussions of the Haitian revolution in Louisiana," David P. Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, SC, 2001), pp. 211–12.

  29. Robin, Voyages, pp. 116—19.

  30. Petition to Governor Claiborne by Inhabitants of Point Coupée, November 9, 1804, Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Volume IX: The Territory of Orleans 1803—1812 (Washington, 1940), pp. 326–27.

  31. John Williams to William Brown, December 10, 1804, RG 36, Entry 1627, Records of Customs Houses in the Gulf States, New Orleans, LA, Letters Received, 1804–1899, NA.

  32. Robin, Voyages, p. 53.

  33. Laffite witnessed a slave sale in Baton Rouge, Julian Guedri to Clement Lacour, Record of sale, November 3, 1804, Archives of the Spanish Government of West Florida, Clerk of Court's Office, East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, Baton Rouge, LA.

  34. Robin, Voyages, pp. 101–103.

  35. This Galvezton is not to be confused with the Laffites' later haunts on Galveston Island in Texas.

  36. Paul E. Hoffman, Florida's Frontiers (Bloomington, IN, 2002), p. 259.

  37. Isaac Joslin Cox, The West Florida Controversy, 1798–1813 (Baltimore, MD, 1918), p. 101; DeConde, This Affair of Louisiana, pp. 220, 228.

  38. State Papers and Correspondence, p. 201.

  39. Thomas Maitland Marshall, A History of the Western Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, 1819–1841 (Berkeley, CA, 1914), pp. 23–24.

  40. Laffite's presence in New Orleans in February–March 1805 is established in the testimony in Marie Zabeth and infant vs. Pierre Lafitte, Case #131, Superior Court Suit Records 1804–1813, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library (NOPL).

  41. In the Petition of Stephen Carraby, July 29, 1805, Carraby refers to "Peter Lafitte a trader," and states that Laffite had no known property in the Orleans territory and was believed to be about "to depart from this country & territory." Stephen Carraby vs. Peter Lafitte, 1805, Civil Suit #71, County Court Records of Civil Suits, New Orleans City Archives, Louisiana Division, NOPL. The fact that Laf
fite does not appear in any of the extensive records of shipping duties and drawbacks in Entry 1656, Record of Drawbacks, 1795–1849, Record Group 36, Records of the U.S. Customs Service, New Orleans Collection District, National Archives, Washington, DC (citations from this source hereinafter are listed as RG for Record Group, and NA for National Archives), suggests that he was not importing or shipping goods abroad out of the port of New Orleans, but was limited to the upriver internal trade. The fact of his having no fixed domicile nor of owning any property is further established by the absence of any listing for him on Royal and Dumaine or anywhere else in New Orleans in 1805. A Directory and A Census, Together With Resolutions Authorizing Same Now Printed For The First Time From The Original Manuscript (Facsimile: New Orleans, 1936).

  42. Marshall, Western Boundary, p. 22.

  43. Stephen Carraby vs Peter Lafitte, 1805, Civil Suit #71, County Court Records of Civil Suits, New Orleans City Archives, Louisiana Division, NOPL.

  44. "Stephen Caraby" advertised slaves for sale in the New Orleans, Moniteur de la Louisiane, February 18, 1804.

  45. Williams to Brown, November 20, 1804, RG 36, Entry 1627, NA.

  46. Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 51, item 422, May 1, 1805, and Notary Narcisse Broutin, Vol. 11, item 418, May 27, 1815, NONA.

  47. Juan Buatista Elie imported slaves from Havana as early as 1803. Notary Narcissus Broutin, Vol. 1, item 108, March 14, 1803, NONA.