Categories: Descriptors, Language

On 6 February 1796, Baptiste MEUILLON, a native of St. Charles Parish, and Céleste DONAT[O]-BELLO, a native of New Orleans, decided to tie the knot. They did so in Opelousas, where they resided alongside much of their family. Baptiste was described as a mulâtre libre, son of [Baptiste CHEVAL, whose name was absent, and] Marianne MEUILLON, négresse libre. Céleste was described as a quarteronne libre, daughter of [Donato BELLO, whose name was absent, and] Marie-Jeanne [TAILLEFER], quarteronne libre. So, what?[1]

Both Céleste and her full brother, Martin DONATO-BELLO, were the natural children of an “Italian” (Itay, as a nation, didn’t yet exist) named Donato BELLO, and a freed woman of color from New Orleans named Marie-Jeanne TAILLEFER. But both siblings routinely used their presumed father’s entire name as their surname throughout their lifetimes. There appears to be no doubt that Donato was their father. Their mother, Marie-Jeanne, was sometimes described as mulâtresse (wheat- or honey-colored) other times as quarteronne (light wheat or light tan). If Martin and Céleste were both the children of a white father and quadroon mother, to use the Anglophone terms, then shouldn’t Martin and Céleste be described as “Octoroons?” Obviously, if Marie-Jeanne, their mother, was one-fourth black, the children were one-eighth, yielding octoroon. Right? Instead, the children are described the same way as the mother. They were not alone in Louisiana, either. [2]

On the ninth of June in 1783, the well-known Spanish missionary, Antonio DE SEDELLA, baptized my nearly-two-month-old fifth great-grandmother, Modeste-Arthémise “Modesta Artemisa” LE NORMAND. She had been born on the twenty-ninth of April that same year. In the body of the entry, Antonio did not describe the infant’s physique and status, but did describe her mother “Carlota” (Jeanne Charlotte BROUTIN) as a mulata libre. Pierre Marin LE NORMAND’s name, Modesta’s father, like that of Donato BELLO’s above, was omitted. Once the entry was complete, DE SEDELLA returned to the left-hand margin and squeezed mulata libre between the infant’s name and entry number (See image below). In fact, Charlotte, known in Spanish-language records in Louisiana as Carlota, was the natural daughter of Ignace-François BROUTIN (white Creole) and of Catherine DESTRÉHAN, a mulâtresse libre. In a nutshell, Modeste-Arthémise’s father (Marin), her maternal grandfather (Ignace-François), and maternal great-grandfather (Jean-Baptiste-Honoré D’ESTRÉHAN de Beaupré), were all white men; to use American terms. Shouldn’t the baby Modeste-Arthémise be quantifiably “octoroon,” according to the US understanding of “race” mixing and terms corresponding to it? [3]

Things become really interesting when Modeste-Arthémise’s little brother, Alexandre Norbert LE NORMAND, was baptized several years later. Another priest, Fr. DELGADO, recorded baby “Norverto”‘s baptism in St. Louis Church’s registry this time. Unlike older sister Modeste-Arthémise, DELGADO clearly wrote the baby’s name, complexion, and baptism registry number in the left-hand margin at the same time. How did he describe Norbert? As a negro esclavo! In fact, Carlota, the mother, was also described as negra esclava. Say, what? Charlotte had been free for over a decade, already. Yet, we know that this is our guy because when his older brother, Joseph Marin LE NORMAND, was baptized in St. Martinville on 25 May 1785, the entry read “Joseph – fils de Charlotte – caterone libre de Mr. Marin Le Normand.” There, too, Charlotte was represented with her servile status. It’s weird, but there’s a story behind this that I hope to flesh out in another post at another time. [4]

Anyway, what does all of this mean? How is it possible for, in the Anglo sense, an octoroon child to be recorded as negro (100% black)? How is it possible for Martin, Céleste, and Modeste-Arthémise to be recorded the same as their mothers, when their fathers were, in the American sense, a white man? If MOREAU de Saint-Méry’s elaborate blood quantum charts from 1797 in Philadelphia were spot-on, there would be a very specific description pattern. There wasn’t.

One problem is that English-speaking researchers and/or observers are imposing the Anglophone understanding of genetics and physique onto the Latin descriptors in the documents. Ever since Moreau’s publication in 1797, it appears that English-speakers have sought to “measure blood” levels based on admixture. That roughly corresponds to: white and black (100%), mulatto (50/50), quadroon (1/4 black), octoroon (1/8 black). This is why in English, but not in other languages, there is a such idea as “bi-racial” and “multi-racial” (aka “mixed race”). Louisiana Governor Huey Long, an Anglophone Protestant from north Louisiana, is quoted as having once said: “Why you could feed all the pure whites and pure blacks in Louisiana with a cup of beans and half a cup of rice!” Other linguistic populations, like Lusophones (speakers of Portuguese), think of everyone among them as being “mixed race,” so measuring “mixture” makes no real sense to those non-Anglophones. [5]

As a result, those researchers or observers are missing the Latin interpretation of the very Latin people being studied. In other words, Latins in the Americas–and apparently in Moorish Spain–recognize much more fluidity in terms of phenotype and physique, with very specific terms corresponding to them. Thus, a ghostly pale father and roux brown mother can produce any range of possibilities, including children whose phenotypes are the exact same as one or both of either parent. There’s no expectation of what the children should look like, as there is among speakers of English. And therefore, when a child pops out looking no different from the darkest complected parent, or the lightest, people just keep on stepping.

This is exactly what happened in the case of Martin and Céleste DONATO-BELLO who, according numerous colonial and early national Louisiana documents, appear to have resembled their mother, Marie-Jeanne TAILLEFER, most. Accordingly, registrars and clerks deployed the exact same Latin descriptor (quarteron) to describe the children and the mother. It is also precisely what happened in the THIBODEAUX-CHAMPAGNE family pictured below in a modern sense.The father is mulâtre with green eyes. The wife is blanche with reddish hair and blue eyes. The oldest daughter has green eyes, the middle has blue-gray eyes, and the baby has blue-green eyes. Only one daughter, the oldest, is mulâtresse, like her father, and that’s mostly due to her thick, voluminous hair and other facial features. The other two are blanches, like their mother. Quantifiably, in the American sense, Martin and Céleste were not quadroons, and nor was their mother (her father was a Frenchman, and her mother négresse).

The other problem, as a researcher/genealogist, is the misidentification of paternity. In the marriage contracts of Martin, Céleste and even Modeste-Arthémise, the father’s name was omitted. Because the children were described by Francophone and Hispanophone clerics and clerks the same as the mother, the gut instinct of English-speaking researchers is to assume that the father must either be the same “mixture” as the mother, or have more “black blood” than the mother. By this point, those researchers will have looked for other mulâtre or mulato males of similar age associated with the same families. They will have assumed, for instance, that Solimane, whose Catholic name was Antoine, a mulâtre slave of Jean-Baptiste-Honoré D’ESTRÉHAN de Beaupré, would be the father of Jeanne Charlotte BROUTIN and her sisters, since their mother, Catherine DESTRÉHAN, was married to Solimane, and both were described as mulâtres. They will have also assumed, based merely on phenotype, that the three girls in the THIBODEAUX-CHAMPAGNE family pictured below, are the daughters of two white parents. In so doing, genealogical/biological family trees go in all the wrong directions. The dangers of misidentifying parentage, as we have seen before, can lead to a political debacle.

Simply put, Martin, Céleste and Modeste-Arthémise were described in French and in Spanish the same as their mothers, because they resembled their mothers a lot. That is entirely a normal human phenomenon in the past as it is today. Equally important is that Latin descriptors are not the same as Anglophone races. The challenge is for non-Latin-cultured researchers to step outside of their own cultural understandings in order to understand local contexts about the individuals or population being analyzed. Louisiana is now part of the United States, but was not before December 1803 and, even after that, much of the population of the southern half of the state, retained and naturally perpetuated its Latin cultural norms, including its Latin-based languages and usage of Latin physical descriptors.

Endnotes

[1] Baptiste Meuillon and Céleste Donat Bello, 6 February 1796, Opelousas, Louisiana (LSU Opelousas Contracts #178).

[2] Donato BELLO’s name was absent in the marriage contracts of both Martin and Céleste. See N1 above and also Martin Dto. Bello [sic] and Marianne Duchesne, 16 March 1803, Opelousas, Louisiana (LSU Opelousas Contracts). Both siblings also, sometimes, used only the BELLO surname, or DONATO. For information on Marie-Jeanne’s descriptor fluctuation, consider her being described as mulâtresse in the marriage contract of Martin Donato-Bello to Marianne Duchesne, and quarteronne in the marriage contract of Baptiste Meuillon and Céleste Donato-Bello.

[3] St Louis Church, New Orleans, Baptêmes de couleur, Book 1777-1873, volume 5, page 350, number 1217.

[4] Ibid., Book 1786-1792, volume 4, page 73, number 518. Joseph Marin LE NORMAND was born 7 Apr 1786 and baptized 25 Apr 1785 in St. Martinville. Baptismal sponsors were Joseph PRADIÉ, resident at Plaquemines and Félicité DESTRÉHAN – carterone libre (SM Ch v 3 #108). Félicité was the maternal aunt of Norbert and Marin, a sister of Jeanne Charlotte BROUTIN, their mother. Félicité also used the BROUTIN surname.

[5] It appears that nonwhites in Louisiana are very familiar with the quote they attribute to Long. You can find it attested now in academic and popular publications, like Gilbert King, The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South (Basic Civitas Books, 2008), 132; Glenn Feldman, Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 157; and, Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens: University Press of Georgia, 1999).