Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

18th century until the Civil War and later. Dolliole lived a long, prosperous life, census records of
1850 showing that at the age of seventy-one he was still a builder with real estate worth $10,000,
along with four slaves aged seven to forty-five. Ten years later, his household included the family of
mason Pedro Barthelemy and carpenter Leon Bonnecase.
Among other important builders of the antebellum period were Pablo Cheval, Paul Mandeville,
Bazile Dédé, August Philippe, Francois Darby, Charles Dupard, Manuel Moreau, Francois Boisdoré,
Louis Barthelemy Rey, Toby Dominique, Myrtille Courcelle, Francois Fils, Florville Foy, Pierre
Rillieux, and Joseph Chateau.
New Orleans-born Joseph Chateau (1816-) was one of the most prolific free black builders of
the antebellum period, with significant work of several types. New Orleans notaries of the 1840s
recorded seventeen contracts documenting his building activities, indicating that Chateau’s stockin-trade
was the Creole cottage. With façades usually scored (floché) to resemble stone, and decorative,
red-hued painting, they can still be found in the older neighborhoods. Chateau also worked
in other genres, building townhouses, renovating a store on Chartres St., and making innovations
to the vernacular cottage. His 1850 household included an Irish worker as well as two French-born
carpenters, possibly helping to explain the wide scope of his work.
—Sally K. Reeves
J OHN
M C D ONOGH
(1779-1850)
John McDonogh, the most important philanthropist in New Orleans history, began his career
in the trading house of William Taylor of Baltimore where McDonogh was born in 1779. Taylor
carried on an extensive trade with Europe, the West Indies and the South American countries. He
sent young McDonogh out repeatedly as the
owner’s representative, a responsible position for
one not yet twenty years of age. Though
McDonogh made his fortune in New Orleans, he
never forgot the city of his birth. McDonogh’s
elaborate will, devised a dozen years before his
death in 1850, laid out his plans for a spectacular
legacy to both New Orleans and Baltimore. Its
clauses shed light on the testator’s personal life
and beliefs. The high purpose of his life was the
establishment and support of Free Schools in said
cities, and their respective suburbs, (including
the Town of McDonogh as a suburb of New
Orleans) wherein the poor, (and the poor only),
of both sexes of all Classes and Castes of Color,
shall have admittance, free of expense for the purpose
of being instructed in the Knowledge of the
Lord and in reading, writing, Arithmetic, History,
and Geography. 1
A prominent feature of the will was a bequest to the City of New Orleans of the Louis
Allard Plantation on Bayou St. John, which the donor specified was to be used as a public
park. The land adjacent to it, he recommended, should be leased to farmers so the city could
use the income to finance operations. McDonogh died, in 1850, leaving his entire estate
equally to New Orleans and Baltimore. It took nine years and a protracted series of litigation
John McDonogh
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
BIOGRAPHIES
29