Friday, June 14, 2019

317. Nick Douglas, part 1

317. Part 1 of our interview with Nick Douglas, author of Finding Octave. With a flash of recognition, the author meets the gaze of his ancestor in a sepia-toned photo. Knowing next to nothing about this man, his great-great-grandfather Octave, he follows two families that lead to his own. On a journey stretching from Haiti to India, and back to the 16th century, the author's adventures strangely echo those of his ancestors. Finding Octave finds an America where "free people of color"-unfettered blacks, Indians and Creoles-had power and wealth that whites struggled to claim as their own. In this pre-Civil War America, blacks negotiated their own freedom from slavery. Some chose to be slaveholders themselves. Confronting the terrible truth about slavery within his family, the author uncovers an American secret.
  1. This week in Louisiana history. June 15, 1910. Evangeline Parish created.
  2. This week in New Orleans history. On June 15, 1845 when the news of Andrew Jackson’s death reached New Orleans, Mayor Montegut requested that all flags be lowered to half-mast. Guns were fired at intervals of 15 minutes. The St. Louis Cathedral being refused to General Jackson’s friends for the funeral obsequies (Jackson being a Protestant) the ceremonies took place on June 26 in the Place d’Armes, now known as Jackson Square. It was near dusk when the head of the procession entered the square and night set in before the orators could commence. The top of the railing around the square was lighted with lamps and the platform was illuminated with a circle of torches making a most picturesque appearance.
  3. This week in Louisiana.
    Louisiana Catfish Festival.
    St. Gertrude the Great Catholic Church
    17324 LA 631
    Des Allemands, LA 70030
    (985) 758-7542
    office@stgertrude.nocoxmail.com
    Home-cooked food, live music, and rides.
  4. Postcards from Louisiana. Maude Caillat and the Aphrodesiacs play.
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4 comments:

  1. LilCreoleJune 21, 2019 at 4:34 PM

    Your comments about the creation of Evangeline Parish in 1910 were correct. Paulin Fontenot, a French Creole was infatuated w/ Longfellow's poem and actually named his infant daughter "Evangeline" -nevermind that neither he nor her were of Acadian origin. He fought to have the upper northwest part of what was then the "Royal Poste des Opelousas" of what was the vast parish of St. Landry (a Creole bastion and sister-city of New Orleans from where so many of our earliest Creole families both originated and arrived from across the vast Louisiana Purchase Territory in 1765 after the French-Indian War (Seven Years War). Ville Platte, the parish seat of what became Evangeline Parish was founded by a French Napoleonic soldier-Marcellin Garand-and was very early on settled by former Alabama and Illinois Creoles-descendants of Bienville's colonial soldiers and latern Napoleonic soldiers, Spanish-Mexican officials who married the French Creole-metis, and French-speaking German and Irish Catholics. Very few of the earliest arriving Acadian families from Saint Domingue (now Haiti) e.g. Pitre, Broussard, Naquin, Richard, Comeaux settled in the once northwestern part of St. Landry Parish during the Spanish period by special permission as the Acadians as a class were not allowed to settle in "Creole territory" but were restricted to the "Acadian Coast" around Donaldsonville-Morgan City bayou country. As always thank you for a wonderful calendar of history, cultural interviews and honest presentation of real history-ours! :)

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  2. LilCreoleJune 21, 2019 at 5:18 PM

    The tragedy of Donald Trump's administration's racist attitudes which you mentioned is sadly, but so absolutely truly an extension of the hateful, insecure Anglo-American attitudes of the 19th c. that destroys and opposes the unity which was French colonial Louisiana, despite slavery!

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