111. Marie Louise Villars to Eugenie Tressanceaux, September 1, 1815, Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Voi. 71, item 827, NONA.
112. Marguerite Villard to Joseph Defaucheaux, September n, 1815, Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Voi. 71, item 850; Note, February 24, 1813, Marguerite Villard to Joseph Defaucheaux, Voi. 66, item 55, NONA; Vieux Carré Survey, Square 87, Lots 18892–93, HNOC.
113. Certainly Laffite was not back in New Orleans as of February 5, 1816, when a search of the city failed to find him, and could not have, for three days later he was still in Washington taking letters from Gaul. Another search for him on May 7 also failed to find him, the two dates bracketing the period during which he must have returned from Washington and then left with Latour (J. H. Holland endorsement, February 5, 1816, on court order, January 26, 1815; George Morgan endorsement, May 7, 1816, on court order, March 26, 1816, Laffite vs. Sylvestre, Case #0829, Parish Court Civil Suit Records, NOPL). Given the usual three weeks or more for the ocean passage, he should have been in New Orleans by mid-March at the latest. Morphy to Cienfuegos, December 4, 1816, Legajo 1900, AGI-Newberry, says that Jean returned to New Orleans "last week after an absence of eight months." If Morphy is correct, and he would have known firsthand, Jean returned in the last week of November, and an eight-month absence would mean he left on the expedition toward the end of March.
THIRTEEN
1. Morphy to Apodaca, November 3, 1814, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry.
2. Antonio Morales to Apodaca, March 13, 1815, Apodaca to José de Soto, March 4, 1815, Legajo 1796, AGI-Newberry.
3. Morales to Apodaca, March 26, 1815, enclosed in Apodaca to de Soto, March 4, 1815, Ibid.
4. Apodaca to de Soto, April 7, 1815, Ibid.
5. Statement, May 30, 1815, John Gourjon vs. Vincent Gamby, Suit Records, #751, First Judicial District Court, Orleans Parish, NOPL.
6. "Memoir of Ellis P. Bean," Yoakum, Texas, I, pp. 447–49; Morphy to Apodaca, November 20, 1815, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry.
7. Warren, Sword, p. 128.
8. Morphy to Apodaca, November 20, 1815, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry.
9. Extracts from the letters of Herrera and Toledo &c &c dated at New Orleans in November & December 1815, United States Department of State Collection, Spanish Affairs, 1810–1816, Library of Congress.
10. "Memoir of Ellis P. Bean," Yoakum, Texas, I, pp. 447–49.
11. Deposition of carpenter, December 1815, Deposition of Theon Barberet, December 1815, United States vs. the Schooner Two Brothers, alias the Presidente, Case #0884, NAFW.
12. Morphy to Apodaca, November 20, 1815, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry.
13. Deposition of Toledo, December 1815, Deposition of Herrera, December 1815, United States vs. the Schooner Two Brothers, alias the Presidente, Case #0884, NAFW.
14. Deposition of Toledo, December 1815, Deposition of Herrera, December 1815, Ibid.
15. Testimony of John Lynd, November 25, 1815, Ibid.
16. Herrera to Toledo, November 25, 1815, Extracts from the letters of Herrera and Toledo &c &c dated at New Orleans in November & December 1815, United States Department of State Collection, Spanish Affairs, 1810–1816, Library of Congress.
17. Onís to Miguel de Lardizábal y Uribe, August 15, 1815, Papeles de Estado, Audiencia de Mexico, Legajo 5558, Expediente 12, AGI-Newberry.
18. Ibid.
19. Dick to Rush, July 20, 1815, M-179, RG 659, NA.
20. Claiborne to Monroe, July 20, 1815, M-179, RG 59, NA.
21. Jose de Quevado to Joaquin de Arredondo, May 5, 1815, Nacogdoches Archives Transcripts, Supplement VIII, p. 100, Robert Bruce Blake Collection, East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX (Blake).
22. Teodoro Martinez to Benito Armenan, July 18, 20, 21, 1815, Nacogdoches Archives, TSL.
23. Paul Lafite to the Governor, July 21, 1815, Nacogdoches Archives, TSL; Orders from Gutiérrez to Humbert, July 4, 10, 1815, Statement of Gutiérrez, March 18, 1820, United States vs. John Desfarges et al., Case #1440, NAFW; Picornell to Onís, November 24, 1815, Legajo 1815, AGI-Newberry.
24. Morphy to Apodaca, July 20, 1815, Onís to Apodaca, August 14, 1815, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry; Onís to Monroe, August 24, 1815, Notes from the Spanish Legation in the United States to the Department of State, 1790–1906, M59, Record Group 59, Volume 4, NA.
25. Walter Lowrie and Walter'S. Franklin, eds., American State Papers. Documents Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. Class I, Foreign Relations, Volume IV (Washington 1834), p. 432.
26. Morphy to Apodaca, September 4, 1815, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry.
27. Patterson to Cunningham, September 5, 1815, M-125, NA.
28. Deposition of Edmund Quirk, February 12, 1816, Blake, Supplement, XV, pp. 216, 220.
29. Onís to Apodaca, November 16, 1815, Legajo 1837, AGI-Newberry; Paul Lafite to Mariano Varela, November 28, 1815, Nacogdoches Archives, TSL.
30. Sedella to Onís, September 18, 1815, Papeles de Estado, Audiencia de Mexico, Legajo 5558, Expediente 12, AGI-Newberry.
31. Morphy to Apodaca, November 3, 1814, Legajo 1836, AGI-Newberry.
32. Picornell to Onís, February 16, 1816, Legajo 42, Archivo de Su Magestad Católica en Philadelphia, Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid.
33. Picornell to Apodaca, November 28, 1815, Sedella to Apodaca, December 27, 1815, Legajo 1815, AGI-Newberry; Wilson, Impressions Respecting New Orleans, p. 166. Harris Gaylord Warren, "Documents Relating to Pierre Laffite's Entrance Into the Service of Spain," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XLIV (July 1940), p. 78, identified the two other recipients of pardons as Jean Laffite and "Laurent Maire, captain of the Dos Hermanos," or Two Brothers. Warren repeats this in Sword, p. 132n. However, he is mistaken, having borrowed this probably from Stanley Faye. In "Great Stroke," p. 742, Faye repeats the error, then further erroneously identifies Maire as the Laffites' brother-in-law, which most assuredly he was not. Maire was a white Italian, and certainly neither Laffite was married at all, much less to a white European. Maire's wife was Adeline Godon, of an old New Orleans family. Laurent Maire Estate Inventory, September 15, 1827, Orleans Parish Court of Probates, NOPL.
34. Sedella to Apodaca, November 20, 28, 1815, Legajo 1815, AGI-Newberry.
35. Picornell to Onís, February 16, 1816, Legajo 42, Archivo de Su Magestad Catolica en Philadelphia, Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid; Onís to Apodaca, January 8, 1816, quoted in Warren, Sword, p. 132.
36. Juan Ruiz de Apodaca to Francisco Vallesteros, January 16, 18, 1816, Legajo 1856, AGI-Newberry.
37. Morphy to Apodaca, September 4, 1815, November 20, 1815, Legajo 1836, Morphy to Apodaca, August 10, 1816, Legajo 1877, Morphy to Apodaca, September 17, 1816, Legajo 1873, AGI-Newberry; Faye, "Aury," p. 631.
38. Sedella to Apodaca, November 28, 1815, Legajo 1815, AGI-Newberry; Faye, "Privateer Vessels," pp. 129—30.
39. Sedella to Apodaca, November 17, 1815, Legajo 1815, AGI-Newberry.
40. Herrera to the Mexican Congress, November 26, 1815, Extracts from the letters of Herrera and Toledo &c dated at New Orleans in November &c December 1815, United States Department of State Collection, Spanish Affairs, 1810–1816, Library of Congress.
41. Duplessis to Patterson, December 6, 1815, Entry 1627, RG 36, NA.
42. Testimony of Robert Fell, December 1815, United States vs. the Schooner Two Brothers, alias the Presidente, Case #0884, NAFW; List of the Crew of the Two Brothers, of NOLA, L. P. Fougard master, December 6, 1815, Entry 1627, RG 36, NA.
43. United States vs. the Schooner Two Brothers, alias the Presidente, Case #0884, NAFW.
44. Testimony of John Lynd, November 25, 1815, Deposition of Toledo, December 1815, Deposition of Herrera, December 1815, Ibid. In fact, no record has been found of the Mexican insurgent Congress issuing any commission to the Laffites during its brief existence. There are several records of letters of marque granted by Rayon, Rosains, Morelos, Anaya, and Herrera during 1814–15, but searching by Robert Vogel has found nothing d
irectly related to the Laffites. After the collapse of the Mexican Congress in 1816, Humbert ran a shirttail provisional government, but no records of him granting commissions to the Laffites have emerged either.
45. Apodaca to Vallesteros, January 18, 1816, Papeles de Estado, Audiencia de Mexico, Legajo 5558, Expediente 12, AGI-Newberry; Warren, "Documents," pp. 79–80, 87.
46. Sedella to Apodaca, December 27, 1815, Legajo 1815, AGI-Newberry.
47. Morphy to Captain General, December 27, 1815, Ibid.
48. Morphy to Apodaca, March 8, 1816, Ibid.
49. Onís to Apodaca, Januar}' 8, 1816, Legajo 1837, AGI-Newberry.
FOURTEEN
1. Edwin H. Carpenter, Jr., ed., "Latours Report on Spanish-American Relations in the Southwest," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXX (July 1947), pp. 715–16, suggests that Jean was already somehow a part of the plan when he went to the East, but erroneously dates Jean's trip to Philadelphia in December rather than July 1815. Certainly Jean did not travel east with Latour, as Carpenter suggests, for Latour was still in New Orleans weeks after Jean's departure.
2. Mr. and Mrs. T. L. Hodges, "Jean Lafitte and Major L. Latour in Arkansas Territory," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, VII (Winter 1948), p. 246, mistakenly says Laffite was the leader and Latour his assistant. More likely it was a joint trip of spying and examination, and a look for commercial gain from trade or gold.
3. Lyle Saxon was entirely unaware of Jean Laffite's Arkansas expedition, and mistakenly believed that it was Pierre who went to the East. To explain Jean's whereabouts, Saxon says that he bought a fleet of vessels from Sauvinet in the summer of 1815 and then sailed to Port-au-Prince to make a new privateering base, but was turned away (Saxon, Lafitte, pp. 20J-10). Saxon probably got this idea—and embellished it—from Yoakum, Texas, I, p. 190, who seems to have misinterpreted a statement in Beverly Chew to William Crawford, August 1, 1817, M-38, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State August 1-October 31, 1817, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, NA, as published in the American State Papers.
4. Smith suggests that the trip began in May 1816, basing this on the fact that a letter from Benjamin Latrobe was addressed to Latour in New Orleans on May 3, 1816 (Smith, "Editor's Introduction," Latour, Historical Memoir, p. xxviii). Of course Latour was not necessarily in New Orleans when Latrobe wrote the letter, and Morphy to Cienfuegos, December 4, 1816, Legajo 1900, AGI-Newberry, clearly says that Jean had been absent eight months before his late November return, which places his departure in mid to late March.
5. Philip Pittman, The Present State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi (London, 1770), p. 40.
6. Josiah H. Shinn, Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas (Little Rock, AK, 1908), pp. 79–80; Fay Hempstead, Pictorial History of Arkansas from Earliest Times to the Year 1890 (St. Louis, 1890), pp. 98, 107.
7. Table of Civil Officers in commission on October 1, 1814, Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Volume XIV: The Territory of Louisiana-Missouri 1806—1814 (Washington, 1949) pp. 792–95.
8. Hodges, "Arkansas Territory," p. 240.
9. Paul Chrisler Phillips, The Fur Trade (Norman, OK, 1961), II, pp. 219–22.
10. William F. Pope, Early Days in Arkansas (Little Rock, AR, 1895), p. 89; Carpenter, "Latour's Report," pp. 735–36. Shinn, Pioneers and Makers, p. 251, agrees that Laffite was recognized, but Shinn could have borrowed this from Pope. However, Laffite's witness under his own name to the July 4 instrument for Vaugine is evidence that at least some knew his real identity.
11. Jean Baptiste Daigl to François Vaugine, July 4, 1816, Deed Book B, 1814–1818, Part 1, pp. 193–95, Arkansas County, Arkansas, Clerk of Court, DeWitt, AR.
12. W. D. Williams, "Louis Bringier and His Description of Arkansas in 1812," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XLVIII (Summer 1989), pp. 109–10, 118. Williams, pp. 113–14, states without giving evidence that Bringier accompanied Latour and Laffite. There is only latter-day testimony to support this, but in this instance, given Bringier's circumstances and motivations, it seems reasonable to assume that he did make the journey with them.
13. Daniel Wright, power of attorney, July 25, 1817, Notary Michele DeArmas, Vol. 13, item 428, July 25, 1817, NONA.
14. Shinn, Pioneers, pp. 46–47.
15. Pope, Early Days, p. 89. In 1873 Benjamin F. Danley denied there being any evidence of mining at Crystal Hill, but said that old-timers in the 1830s showed him a place called Mine Hill—about three and a half miles above Little Rock on the north bank, between mouths of Big Rock and White Oak bayous—where locals recalled Laffite digging. He had seen an old furnace and broken crucibles said to have been Laffite's. Little Rock, Arkansas Gazette, August 16, 1873.
16. Little Rock, Arkansas Gazette, April 6, 1873. This account is the recollection of pioneer Daniel T. Witter, as told to him after he moved to Arkansas in 1819. He gets the year wrong, placing it in 1817, but otherwise his account checks out, as in 1820 a suit was filed against Bringier for $1, 439.80 plus damages of $2,000, for "work, labor, goods, wares, merchandise, and for money advanced to the defendant" in relation to the mill or the expedition (Williams, "Bringier," p. 119).
17. Shinn, Pioneers, pp. 46–47. Shinn locates Pyeatt at Crystal Hill but is mistaken, for Pyeatt moved to Cadron in 1815.
18. Carpenter, "Latour's Report," p. 730.
19. Pope, Early Days, pp. 91–93. Pope states that this account was given to him by Pyeatt in 1833.
20. Carpenter, "Latour's Report," p. 723.
21. Ibid., p. 724. This was in the vicinity of present-day Tulsa.
22. Ibid., p. 723.
23. Morphy to Cienfuegos, December 4, 1816, Legajo 1900, AGI-Newberry.
24. Carpenter, "Latour's Report," p. 729.
25. Shinn, Pioneers, p. 47. On November 5, 1816, Latour acted as witness to Juninthe Barquaim to Louis Bringier, October 1, 1816, recorded November 5, 1816, Deed Book A, 1819–1823, p. 219, Pulaski County Courthouse, Little Rock, AR.
26. Carpenter, "Latour's Report," p. 724.
27. Ibid., pp. 729–30.
28. Unfortunately, Latour's report is so unspecific about places visited that it can only be stated with certainty that they traveled up and down the Arkansas River. Though his report speaks frequently of the Red River and mentions the Sabine and others, it seems unlikely that the expedition actually touched on them, and more likely that Latour's information was gleaned from others. Latour had no means to move his boats overland from one river to the other and back. Also, Laffite and Latour are firmly fixed by local documentation on the lower Arkansas on July 4 and November 5, 1816, and the four months in between would not have allowed them to go to the headwaters of the Arkansas and back, nor to go overland to explore other rivers. There was not time between November 5 and their arrival in New Orleans around November 28 to do so, either.
29. Carpenter, "Latour's Report," pp. 725, 728, 729.
30. Ibid., pp. 731, 733–34.
31. D. C. Williams vs. Edward Livingston and Arsene Latour, Protest, July 19, 1816, Notary John Lynd, Vol. 13, item 412, NONA.
32. Carpenter, "Latour's Report," pp. 717–19, 722–23.
33. The precise number and names of Pierre and Marie's children is always problematic, thanks to inadequate records and apparent informal changes in given names. By 1816 the Sacramental Archives definitely establish as theirs Rosa, Jean Baptiste, Catherine Coralie, and Martin Firmin. Of Eugene we have only two references. Felipe Fatio to the Captain General, February 19, 1818, Legajo 1900, AGI-Newberry, refers to Pierre's "son, a boy of 16 years." Pierre, in a letter to Jean, February 17, 1818, Legajo 1900, AGI-Newberry, speaks of "my son Eugene." Combined, these references imply he had a son born circa 1802, almost certainly from a liaison prior to Marie, and that the boy still lived with him. (However, see later discussion of the possibility that the son Eugene was an invention.) In the 1830 Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Census, p. 28, "Marie Louisa Villard" appears living between Esplanade and Canal
Marigny in the Faubourg Marigny, her household including one free colored female aged ten to twenty-three, which would be Rosa, then aged eighteen to nineteen. Also living with her was one free colored male aged twenty-four to thirty-six, which would be Eugene, then aged twenty-eight, or Pierre, whose age was uncertain. It is unlikely that it would be Martin Firmin, who married two years earlier and presumably did not live with his mother any longer. Finally, two colored males aged ten to twenty-three appear in the enumeration. One would be Jean, born November 1816, and the other Jean Baptiste, who was born prior to 1811, making him eighteen or older. Marie's last child by Pierre, Joseph, born in 1821, would have been eight to nine in 1830, but no child that age is in the enumeration, suggesting that he had died.
34. Claude Treme to Marie Louise Villard, August 17, 1816, Notary Pierre Pedesclaux, Vol. 73, item 482; John Holland to Marie Louise Villard, May 11, 1817, Notary Phillipe Pedesclaux, Vol. 2, p. 6o3bis, NONA. The full title history of this property is found in the file for Square 77, lot 22929, Vieux Carré Survey, HNOC.
35. Building contract, October 11, 1790, Notary Felix Broutin, Vol. 7, item 42, NONA.
36. Plan de Trois Lots de Terre de La Municipalité No. /, Plan Book No. 72, Folio No. 27, March 28, 1848, NONA. The subsequent documentation on the house shows no structural changes until 1849, after the 1848 plat was done, so it should be very close to the 1817 appearance of the house.
37. Survey of Square 57, lot 18579, Viaux Carré Commission, HNOC. This corner opposite the Villard house is where later lore believed the Laffite house to have been, and by the twentieth century that lore was firmly established. Today a tavern called "Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop" sits on this site, the brothers' name misspelled. The Laffites never owned or demonstrably had any connection with this property, but the legend persists. Interestingly, while the location of their home has been questioned by some in recent years, the first to hint correctly that it was across St. Philip was Ben C. Stuart in his manuscript "Texas Sea Rovers and Soldiers of Fortune," written in 1913, now in the Stuart papers, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, TX. He may have done so by accident when he said they lived "near" the mythical smithy, but then placed the smithy in the proper location of the Laffite home. He based his manuscript on standard early sources, and ironically may simply have been mistaken in reading a source that put the house in the wrong spot.
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