In The Flow of Time – July 24, 2024 It’s the south, ante-bellum New Orleans. I’m digging into slave trades around Marie Laveau, and the Trudeau family – her father a free man of color, and his parentage, powerful white men at the pinnacle of society. I’m pretty much accustomed… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 22, 2024 In 1798, Marie Laveau’s grandmother Catherine Henry had the house on St Ann Street built. It was torn down in 1903. But I have the 1885 fire insurance map, so I have (a few years after Marie’s death) the layout of… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 20, 2024 This cringe-worthy statement is from a mid-20th century white New Orleans author: “No true Creole ever had colored blood.” This sums up one of my challenges. Race is at the heart of New Orleans. So are race words and—far more importantly—the… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 18, 2024 I was looking for weather reports. I thought, newspapers of the period. Into the Library of Congress I go. The papers were four dense pages long. The LoC. has thousands of New Orleans papers. The oldest they have is the new… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 16, 2024 Maybe. I was up early this morning. Puzzles done, coffee overcoming sleepiness, I was getting some details on the aftermath of the slave rebellion in 1811. As I’ve read the history, it seemed like this might be a good starting place… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 10, 2024 Today’s find…. the New Orleans riverside, drawn in 1828 by Captain B Hall, from the flatboat landing, looking downriver to the ocean-going tall ships. He drew this using a camera lucida. In effect, this is a tracing of what was really… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 9, 2024 The largest slave revolt in US history started on the Woodland plantation in 1811, today the Kid Ory Historic House. I’m pretty sure that revolt is going to make it into my novel. The man who owned it in 1811 was… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 9, 2024 Gee, Beryl just went by here. Why am I thinking of hurricanes? As I research, I build a timeline spreadsheet. Sometimes I only know a year, or a season (there was drought one summer, endless rain another). Oftentimes I know precise… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 7, 2024 One of today’s rabbit holes is the history of funeral parades, music, and the Second Line in New Orleans. This idea came from somewhere, it’s a tradition. I don’t know when that tradition was born. Most sources I’ve found take it… Continue reading
