Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

J ACQUES J ULIAN E SNOUL D E L IVAUDAIS
(1696-1773)
Benjamin Latrobe, View of the Balize, 1818.
Benjamin Latrobe painted this view of the
Balize as it appeared a century after
Jacques Livaudais struggled to guide ships
through the mouth of the Mississippi. Not
much improvement had been made.
Jacques Julian Esnoul, Sieur de Livaudais (known as “Diego” in Spanish times) was Louisiana’s
most important eighteenth-century Mississippi River bar pilot and Captain of the Port of New
Orleans. Over a lengthy career managing the entrance to the river, Livaudais became one of the
earliest European-born experts on Mississippi River navigation. He remained at his post for nearly
forty years, married, lived a long life, and left a posterity that remains one of the most significant
Creole families in Louisiana. It is no small accomplishment that they are both numerous and
vigorous, retaining both name and a sense of identity in this place. Livaudais’ wife Marie Geneviève
Babin was a Mobile Creole, and apparently his cousin. After her marriage to Livaudais in 1733, she
carried and delivered eighteen babies in twenty-two years, nine of whom survived to adulthood.
Livaudais followed his ancestors into the seafaring trade. Born in the walled port of St. Malo,
Normandy, in 1696, he learned seamanship from his family and St. Malo traditions. His father
Jacques Esnoul, a privateer and naval officer, became the Sieur de Livaudais as a reward for service
to the French against English pirates. Esnoul became lord of the tiny village of Livaudais, just two
rows of houses on a hill in St. Jouan des Guerets, on the southeast side of Brittany, engendering
the name that survives in Louisiana.
A ten-year career sailing for the East Indies Company led to a transfer to Louisiana as a river
pilot in 1723, where by 1727, Livaudais succeeded Jean Sénat as Captain of the Port. At that time,
the Mississippi was discharging 500 million tons of sand a year with constantly shifting sands that
made it necessary to sound the passes every week when weather permitted. “You would have
difficulty without seeing it,” Livaudais wrote the minister in 1748, “how frequently the river
changes at its mouth from year to year…. For the twenty-one years I have served in the colony, I
have never seen the passes go even one year without change.” 1
By 1758, Livaudais had been Port Captain and chief bar pilot over thirty years. As Port Captain
he had functioned as harbormaster, inspected ships, managed dock workers, and occasionally
undertaken salvage operations for lost anchors or other equipment. Toward the end of the French
period, Livaudais gained the Croix de St. Louis to go with his ten-arpent plantation near the city and
another on the German coast. He died in New Orleans in 1773 at the age of seventy-seven.
Among his surviving children were the eldest, Jacques Esnoul, whose plantation upriver from
the city would become the Faubourg Livaudais, now the Garden District; Francois Esnoul, whose
land would become the Faubourg Annunciation; and the eighth child, Joseph Dugué Livaudais,
who pursued a career in lumber and resided on his 50,000-acre plantation in Lafourche Parish,
now Gheens Plantation. Almost countless children followed, as the Livaudais family was fruitful,
and multiplied.
—Sally K. Reeves
1 France, Archives Nationales Series C13A, 32, Fo. 74.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
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