In The Flow of Time – June 20, 2024
Research into history continues. I am now deep into New Orleans, from about 1800-1870. Not sure where it will start and end yet. I’m tentatively calling this Currents because
◊ it’s on the Mississippi
◊ It is joie-de-vivre, the flow of music and life
◊ a potpourri of nationalities, colors, and religions mixing and evolving
◊ it is the roots of jazz, and that’s happening at Congo Square
◊ of course, the flow of history
I’m definitely gonna have to go to the Big Easy and absorb. BUT, for this little tidbit… I research to find…
◊ the real people, some stories from their lives that perhaps I can use
◊ the “history” that we usually see in the books
◊ a sense of place onto which to paint the story
My goal is to write a powerful fictional story around real people. Marie Laveau, the Voudou Queen of New Orleans. She is a member of my family. But the place and time are pretty grim. One of the family, Zénon, would be her grand-uncle. He’ll be in the story. Zénon is one of the largest landowners in a parish, owns 90 slaves (per the 1810 census). I shudder.
The human landscape is
◊ the powerful white elite
◊ the free people of color (Marie was one)
◊ slaves; mostly black, a few native Americans
Charles “Don Carlos” Trudeau dit Laveau (Zénon’s brother and Marie Laveau’s grandfather) was the surveyor for the Spanish territories, the leader of the first city council after the Americans took over, and Mayor for a time in 1812. He had an illegitimate son with a (perhaps) free black woman. Their son is Charles Laveau. He was a free man of color, a mulatto, a successful businessman, and Marie Laveau’s father.
Don Carlos had four or five white daughters. I’m going through them one by one to get a sense for who they were. It’s pretty awful. One’s married to the bank president and a politician, they hang out with the governor. Another is married to the first territorial governor, a General in the Revolution and the war of 1812, a “leading citizen.” And probably a highly paid spy for the Spanish, conspirator with Aaron Burr. Sister #3’s husband (before she married him) crushed the slave revolt that started on his plantation, and put the heads of black men on spikes. For. Real. Marie is old enough, that revolt will be in the story. A few years later, one of her white aunts marries the guy who did it.
SHEESH! But yeah, the deep south, circa 1810-1820, slave markets, buying and selling human beings, treating them like any other stock animal…
Then there is the youngest daughter, Manette. She marries Dr. Josias Kerr. He’s Irish, from Ulster. He came with the British in the attack on New Orleans, stayed behind to treat the injured. Manette was a nurse in the hospital, caring for “enemy” soldiers. They fell in love, married, had kids. And he spent his life as an “itinerant” doctor going from plantation to plantation to provide medical care to the slaves.
My writer’s heart goes pitter-patter. I have no plot yet, but I have a powerful story and a powerful contrast. Marie Laveau is a healer. He is a healer, and her uncle. He doesn’t give a shit about skin color. We have on one side, the “southern belles” married to the power elite who turn the screw. On the other, the guy who’s trying to grease the screw. Who in my fiction will be colleagues with Marie Laveau, because “western” medicine might need a voudou helping hand so he can assuage his patients’ fear of the white stranger.
I have ZERO idea how this will all work out. But this is fun, the finding of stories, real people and real things around which to spin a yarn. And I have to tell you, reading about Josias made a lot of darkness go away.
Oh, and I know where he lived when he wrote out his last will. “repair to the domicile of Josias Elliot Kerr, situated on Dumaine Street, between Condé and Royal Streets, and there found the said Josias Elliot Kerr sick in bed, but of sound mind, memory and understanding…” This is an 1850 map of the district. Kerr and Marie lived a few blocks from each other.
