Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

FOREWORD BY S. FREDERICK STARR
As New Orleans celebrates its founding three hundred years ago it is easy to assume that the city’s growth and success were inevitable.
Does it not owe its fortune to mighty forces, any one of which could have propelled the city forward? We all know that geography made
a key contribution, by presenting a water route across Lake Pontchartrain to Bayou St. John that saved sailing ships ninety-five miles of
arduous upstream tacking on the Mississippi River in the face of a roiling current. The river’s status as the best outlet for agricultural and
manufactured products from forty per cent of America’s territory assured the city’s economic prosperity. Politics helped, too, with three
empires—France, Spain, and Great Britain—vying to control this crucial port until the new United States finally won out in January, 1815.
Finally, social factors contributed, by making the city an attractive place for successive waves of immigrants to settle.
What, then, could be missing from this quartet of powerful and impersonal forces? The answer is simple: people. We may comfortably
assume that it was New Orleans’ good fortune that forces such as these drove it forward. But none of them, nor any combination of them,
accounts for the city’s distinctive identity or the range of fields in which its citizens have distinguished themselves. Nor can listing the geographic,
economic, political, and social forces acting upon it explain the city’s rich contributions to America in so many fields. In the end,
New Orleans’s survival, growth, and flowering trace above all not to impersonal forces but to people, specific men and women over 300 years.
An obvious point? Perhaps, but two generations of American historians and journalists thought otherwise. Instead, they stressed above
all the role of underlying social and economic forces in the development of societies. This caused individuals, with all their distinctive talents
and penchants, to slip into the background. Now our perspective has shifted again, allowing a more balanced appreciation of the role
of individuals in history, while at the same time acknowledging the larger context in which they function.
Embodying this welcome shift in perspective, the compilers of this volume set out to identify those men and women whose lives and activities
did most to define the identity, character, and contribution of New Orleans over the past three centuries. Moving beyond the narrow caricatures
promoted by the tourist industry, they delved into many fields of endeavor, from science to art, philanthropy, religion, law, music,
and technology. In each of these areas, and many others, New Orleanians richly contributed to the life of their city, country, and the world.
Author Dr. William D. Reeves and editor Sally Kittredge Reeves focused on one-hundred New Orleanians who left their mark on the
city and at the same time contributed to the larger culture. Selections were made with the help of a group of distinguished advisors and
contributors, among them Dr. Lawrence Powell, Dr. Carolyn Kolb, Distinguished Professor Vernon Palmer, Educator Howard Hunter, and
historians Jari Honora, Prescott Dunbar, and William Forman.
The resulting list of personages, each of whose biography is included in this volume, is amazing for its range and scope. Here you will
find colonizer and governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (1680–1767); city planner and architect Barthélemy Lafon (1769–1820);
inventor of the Wood Screw Pumps that have saved the city from floods, Albert Baldwin Wood (1879-1956); pioneering newspaper editor
Eliza Jane Nicholson (1849-1896); the sustaining force at [Daughters of] Charity Hospital over sixty-two years, Sister Stanislaus (Catherine
Malone) (1863-1949); and human rights champion Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes (1849-1928). Together, the group of hundred forms a marvelously
talented and diverse tableau. Had space allowed, the list of candidates could have numbered two-hundred, or five-hundred. At any
length, there will inevitably be equally worthy folks who might have been included but weren’t. Take this as an invitation to add your own!
Thanks to the diligence of editors and authors, you have in your hands a remarkably interesting and engaging book. Whether you read
through it sequentially or skip around among the intriguing personalities presented therein, the story of these impressive New Orleanians is
bound to set you thinking. To this reader, these hundred biographical sketches served as a reminder of the sheer breadth and diversity of fields
in which people have contributed to the welfare of this city, and in ways that affected future generations. There is no single path, or limited
number of paths, by which people can become, in the fullest sense, “citizens,” respected and valued by those among whom they live and work.
Nor is there any correlation between a person’s abilities and contribution and his or her “visibility” during their life-time or later. Most of
those included in this compendium eschewed publicity and instead stayed focused on the task at hand. Those in the present day who seek
acclaim and short-term notoriety pale by comparison. Above all, the lives of those included here constitute a kind of group monument to the
lasting values of persistence and tenacity. Indeed, many did not live to see the full effect of their efforts, which are so clearly manifest to us today.
As New Orleans celebrates its three hundredth birthday, it is useful to pause on these and other thoughts to which this book might lead us.
This is not to say that the blind forces of geography, economics, politics, and society are insignificant in human affairs. They are present, of course,
and demand our recognition and study. But the story of the lives presented here reminds us that we are, in the end, masters of our fate. Each of
us has the capacity to build what needs building and to change what needs changing. This is precisely what these hundred New Orleanians did
over the course of three centuries. With luck, the coming years and decades will produce equally creative, positive, and tenacious New Orleanians.
S. Frederick Starr
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
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