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
In The Flow of Time – July 6, 2024 Research. Poking around the Library of Congress, I found the Sanborn Fire Insurance map of New Orleans. Without leaving my desk I can travel back to St. Ann Street in 1885 and see the Laveau residence as it stood at the… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 5, 2024 There are so many threads… cholera and yellow fever. I had no idea what yellow fever was. Think Ebola. 19th century architecture. Street names, then and now. African music, Congo square, the birth of jazz, the synthesis of African and catholic… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – July 2, 2024 Research sometimes goes into dark places. I have stumbled across the journal of Benjamin Latrobe. He’s an architect, working in New Orleans circa 1819, on the city’s water works. Latrobe was architect for the US Capitol. This is a highly accomplished,… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – June 30, 2024 Around 1800 in New Orleans, white men seriously outnumbered white women. Conversely, free women of color seriously outnumbered free men of color. There were also more women as slaves (household workers in the city) than men. White men absolutely used slave… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – June 29, 2024 I just finished Property, a novel by Valerie Martin. This isn’t note taking research, it’s gestalt gathering.The story is set in 1828 told from the point of view of a “monstrously self-absorbed” wife of a plantation owner. I read it because… Continue reading
