In The Flow of Time – July 14, 2024
I very quickly realized what an intricate braid Marie Laveau’s family represents. I decided to use the family home on St. Ann Street to make sense of it all. Marie’s grandmother bought her own freedom in 1795, then purchased the property and had the house built in 1798. It will be a key location as dozens of family members move in and out over time until Marie dies in 1881. A granddaughter finally sold it, after Marie’s last surviving child died. I still don’t know when I’ll start and when I’ll end, so I gathered everything I could for the entire time of her life and a few years before.
There’s more than one property in the family, but this is the one that matters. The home itself will be a character of sorts. Catherine built it, but over decades the family mortgaged it, suffered foreclosure, jumped through hoops to work around racist laws that would deny the property to their children.
This is where Marie was born, grew up with her grandmother (her mother left!), then left herself to start a family with her first husband, returning when he disappeared. Marie died in this house. Most of her children grew up here, and moved in and out as life happened. Her grandchildren grew up in this house.
I think I’ll drop Marie’s great-grandmother in at the start, giving us five generations. For history, Marguerite, an enslaved woman from Africa, disappears from the record before 1782. But… I think I’m going to have her daughter Catherine buy her freedom and move her into the house. She wants to take care of her mom. When Marie is born in 1801, her great grandmother Marguerite will not only dote on the child, but as Marie grows up, Marguerite is her tie to her cultural roots in Senegal. She has to learn about herbs and cures and medicine and the old-time religion from somewhere. Fiction! But it makes sense and rings true.
I’ve tracked 43 people in and around this house. Eight of them never lived here but are closely tied to the family. There are spousal spats, affairs, complicated relationships, kids, cousins, aunts… Five of those 43 people are slaves. Marie Laveau and her partner Christophe Glapion owned other human beings.
Women run this show, adult men are mostly absent. There is really only one significant male figure in the house, Marie’s partner Christophe. He is a white man of French heritage passing himself off as colored so he can live with Marie and their children. Only two daughters survive to adulthood. Each has a long-term relationship, but neither marry. The men are much older white man, and living with them is, most of the time, illegal. As time passes and laws change, sometimes they move away to live with their partner. When the men die, because they are 20+ years older, the daughters move back. Most of the time they live with Marie in the family compound, with all their kids.
So this bit of work is done. I’m sure I’ll tweak it as I read and learn more. Of course it’s all color-coded, month by month, for 80+ years. It keeps me off the streets. I pulled two major “things” out of all this work.
The writer thing: with this many people living this many lives, moving in and out, there is no way I can keep this in my head, or keep it straight. I need a spreadsheet. 🙂 This will be a form of bible, a reference as I plot ideas and create scenes.
The real thing: it’s family! I’m reading biographies written 150-200 years after the fact, digging into original documents, looking up genealogy, where places are on maps, trying to get my head around the chaos. And I’m starting to get the feeling that I know these people. Although what I have is not much more than a matrix of who arrives or leaves when because X is happening in their lives…. one thing is abundantly clear. Families haven’t changed.
The image: Catherine Henry was a marchande, like the woman in the engraving. This lady is selling calas. I think that particular food item will be in the story somewhere. 🙂
