Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

Marie Laveau.
MARIE LAVEAU AND DAUGHTER MARIE, THE HISTORIC
NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1974.25.23.131.
family. Marie Laveau herself in August 1819 married Jacques Paris, a free quadroon from Haiti, at
St. Louis Cathedral.
Abundant notarial records show that it was not uncommon for free women of color to engage in business
or build their own homes. Francoise Fusillé, Marie Laveau, Modest Foucher, Madeline Oger,
Charlotte Morand, Rosette Rochon, Eulalie Mandeville, and Helene Toussaint, were among the many who
built homes or engaged in business. Real estate, however, did not interest Marie Laveau. The comfort the
spiritual world provided the poor drew her to Voudou rituals that evoked her and her people’s African
backgrounds. Voudou services were primarily small affairs conducted in small rooms such as those at
Marie Laveau’s home on St. Ann Street. The center piece was an array of food, plants, and candles displayed
on a white tablecloth spread on the floor. A series of chants led swiftly to dancing movements that
gradually spread throughout the room. Charms and gris gris were created and distributed as desired.
Just before Laveau died in 1881, The Daily Picayune sent a reporter to the house. His description
suggests it was a Spanish style cottage with a tile roof; inside, a walnut bedstead almost filled the room
on which rested the Voudoo queen. The house had
“a low roof of red tiles that peeped over the top of
the rude decrepit board fence…The room was one
of those low, close compartments with whitewashed
walls and ceiling and bare floor…through
the passage way back could be seen the yard, and
further back a house, well lighted, whence came
the music of the organ and the sound of dancing.”
The census of 1880 records persons of color Marie
[Laveau] Glapion living here at 95 [actually 80]
years of age. Her daughter Philomène Glapion
Legendre, thirty-nine, kept house, along with her
three children Fidelia, Noemie, and Alexandre.
In Marie’s view, Voudou had a dimension of
social service along with its spiritual qualities. In
that capacity she served as chaplain for condemned
men in parish prison. 2 Unfortunately, none of
Marie’s children seem to have carried on her arts.
Her daughter Marie Philomène Glapion strongly
objected to such allegations, selling the house on St.
Ann Street a few years after Marie’s death.
1 Ina Johanna Fandrich, The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveaux: A Study of Powerful female Leadership in Nineteenth-
Century New Orleans. Routledge, New York, 2005. See also Liliane Crété, Daily Life in Louisiana, 1815-1830. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.
2 Carolyn Morrow Long, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau. (Gainsville: University
Press of Florida, 2006}, 110, 164.
S AMUEL J ARVIS P ETERS
(1801-1855)
Samuel Jarvis Peters was the embodiment of the Anglo-American civic leader and businessman
who emigrated to New Orleans and led its American Sector growth. As a banker he was president
successively of City Bank and Louisiana State Bank. As a businessman in 1832, he founded a New
Orleans Chamber of Commerce. As a politician in 1836, he ran for the city council and opposed
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
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