Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

the breakup of the city. As a reformer he revamped the financial structure of the city, permitting
the funding of streets and wharves. As an advocate for public education, he oversaw the creation
of the city’s first public school system.
Peters arrived in New Orleans at the age of twenty and joined a merchant house with ties to New
York. In 1823, he formed Peters and Millard, wholesale grocers. He sold, borrowed, and loaned until
1829 when his personal fortune enabled him to run for the city council. In one term he uncovered fraud
in city finances and revamped them. In 1831, he helped start the Pontchartrain Railroad, the city’s first,
and served as its president. He persuaded the city to build wharves along the Faubourg Marigny. The
next year he founded the Chamber of Commerce in order to persuade businesses to pull together.
Meanwhile the Mississippi River embankment had been moving, depositing acres of new soil
along the American sector riverbank above Canal Street and rendering the wharves there useless.
When the Creoles refused to cooperate in their rebuilding, the various interest groups decided to
separate into three municipalities. Peters argued successfully that they should not go so far as to
create three different mayors, that the municipal councils should function with a single executive.
The arrangement continued from 1836 to 1852, when the factions voted to reunite, adding the
upriver City of Lafayette as a fourth district to balance the politics between Creoles and Americans.
During the period that he led the Second Municipality, Peters worked to create a public school
system in the American sector. He traveled to New England to study their schools, reputedly the
best in America. There he met with Horace Mann and John A. Shaw of Massachusetts, who became
the Supervisor of the Second District schools. The district was launched, in 1842, with just 300
students, but by the end of the year that number had increased to 800. By the 1850s the system
had twenty-six schools, all funded without McDonogh (q.v.) money. Peters was intimately involved
in getting the new city hall, known as Gallier Hall, completed. He was equally important to the
construction of the new Custom House at the foot of Canal Street. 1
Peters married Marianne Angelique Myrthe de Silly and had three children, S. J. Peters, Jr.,
Benjamin Franklin Peters and Harriett Angelique, who married Jules A. Blanc. Towards the end of
his life Peters and his son-in-law Blanc purchased the Calhoun estate in the uptown New Orleans,
later the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Peters died at the mansion after owning it for only two
years. His funeral was held near the fountain that still splashes water there.
Samuel Jarvis Peters.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1974.25.12.80.
Rita Katherine Carey, “Samuel Jarvis Peters” in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly XXX (April 1947), 441-480.
C HARLES E TIENNE A RTHUR G AYARRÉ
(1805-1895)
Charles Etienne Arthur Gayarré was the first historian to show how records in France could
correct and inform Louisiana’s colonial history. He spent years in France copying documents and
composing histories, yet his life was not confined to such writing. He practiced law, served in
legislative, administrative, and judicial offices, and led the Louisiana Historical Society. Gayarré
was one of the most cosmopolitan men of nineteenth century New Orleans. The “Judge” was
majestic, “in his high satin stock that held his head inflexibly erect.” Grace King (q.v.) recalled his
height which towered over her tall father. 1
Gayarré grew up on his grandfather Etienne Boré’s plantation where sugar was first commercially
granulated. A few years at the College d’Orléans prepared him for law school in Philadelphia. His law
degree, impeccable social connections, and adequate inherited income enabled him, in 1830, to win
a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He had hardly settled into the House before the governor
selected him deputy state attorney general. Originally aligned with the Whig party, Gayarré did
not remain so, but became an active Jacksonian Democrat. In 1834, he was elected to the United States
BIOGRAPHIES
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