Eulalie de Mandeville (Macarty)

18thVirginia

Major
Joined
Sep 8, 2012
I've known the story about Eulalie de Mandeville for quite awhile, but as she died years before the Civil War I've hesitated to spend much time on her history. @ForeverFree has mentioned several times recently the group of people of African and French or Spanish heritage who constituted a third class of persons between those of Caucasian ancestry and African American slaves in Louisiana. Many sources discuss the concept of those of African descent in Louisiana who owned slaves themselves. These people were often known in Louisiana by the term "creoles of color." Some have questioned the research that indicated a high number of persons of color in New Orleans who owned slaves. This thread will not cover that research or the questions about it.

Another term which is frequently tossed about is something called plaçage, which supposedly was a system in which parents of African descent contracted with caucasian men to provide them with long-term mistresses. Dr. Emily Clark, historian at Tulane University, searched the records in Louisiana and found no such contracts had been filed, but it's still mentioned as a system by some historians.

Perhaps examining the details of Eulalie de Mandeville's life will provide us with some insight into this "third class" of Louisiana society in the antebellum period.

We don't have any images for Eulalie, so here's one of a creole woman with maid, by a New Orleans artist of the period.

FashionableMarquisB.jpg
 
Eulalie de Mandeville was born in New Orleans in 1774, the daughter of the largest landowners in the New Orleans area, Count Pierre Philippe Mandeville de Marigny and a family slave, Marie Jeanne. Her paternal grandparents freed her at age 4 and raised her like a daughter. Pierre Philippe Mandeville was not only the largest landowner in New Orleans, he was also the richest man in the city. In addition to land in New Orleans, he made purchases on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain, which would eventually become the City of Mandeville, named after him.

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Count Pierre Philippe Mandeville de Marigny
 
Trying to understand plaçage as expounded by various historians is, at best, confusing and often seems like a manner of explaining away relationships between white men and women of African heritage that found more acceptability in Louisiana than elsewhere. If you look up the term in Wikipedia, you'll find Eulalie de Mandeville listed as an example of plaçage. This was a mixed race woman whose own grandmother acted as her chaperon in her early relationship with Eugene de Macarty. Eugene and Eulalie would amass a fortune together in various enterprises, that amounted to about $250, 000 in property and assets owned by Eulalie and $150,000 in cash by the end of Macarty's life in 1845 (Several million dollars in 2017 terms). They would live together publicly in a home close to the French Quarter for 50 years in a relationship that produced 7 children.

A few days before Macarty's death, they were even married in a Catholic church in Orleans, even though interracial marriages were illegal at the time. During his lifetime, Eugene Macarty had no other wife than his partner Eulalie. To attempt to describe this as some sort of contractual relationship or to assert that Eulalie was "placed" with Eugene by her father seems to ignore the fact that this was a long-lasting, what we'd call in other circumstances a common-law marriage, that was prohibited by the laws, but not the customs, of the time. The emphasis of many historians on something they've called plaçage seems to make the understanding of this third caste of Louisiana society, "creoles of color," more difficult.
 
Eulalie's family provided for her, starting with her grandmother, who left her a piece of land 3 arpents by 40 arpents on each side of Bayou Terre aux Boeuf in Orleans Parish. Her father gave her 70 head of cattle and $3,000 in cash (about $65,000 today) and her brothers contributed lots in the Faubourg Marigny and slaves. Eugene Macarty was also from a wealthy family of landowners, but when their partnership began, he had very little in the way of assets. He began his business by selling wood from land owned by Eulalie. Eugene leased a part of her father's plantation to start a produce farm and Eulalie lent her cattle to start a dairy on the land.

Eugene Macarty would become a successful moneylender in New Orleans, while Eulalie, known as Madame CeCe Macarty, would become an equally successful businesswoman and landowner. They moved to the corner of Dauphine and Barracks Streets in 1808, where they would live and raise their children.

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Dauphine and Barracks Street corner today
 
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Trying to understand plaçage as expounded by various historians is, at best, confusing and often seems like a manner of explaining away relationships between white men and women of African heritage that found more acceptability in Louisiana than elsewhere. If you look up the term in Wikipedia, you'll find Eulalie de Mandeville listed as an example of plaçage. This was a mixed race woman whose own grandmother acted as her chaperon in her early relationship with Eugene de Macarty. Eugene and Eulalie would amass a fortune together in various enterprises, that amounted to about $250, 000 in property and assets owned by Eulalie and $150,000 in cash by the end of Macarty's life in 1845 (Several million dollars in 2017 terms). They would live together publicly in a home close to the French Quarter for 50 years in a relationship that produced 7 children.


This is exactly why New Orleans remains one of the most, if not the most fascinating cities this country is lucky enough to have. Wish so much it remained in the spotlight post Katrina- you could explain this stuff 10 times and I feel we'd still require tours and classes and an immersion course, you know?

Had a very good friend whose ancestry is deep there, who touched on this then gave up, since hers also touched on pretty much all the others, too. She's an actress, which was one of the natural things someone with such a fascinating face should do, given talent, too. Goodness.

You're a professor, ma'am! Takes one to give us New Orleans, doesn't it?
 
Eulalie Mandeville Macarty began her dry goods business while still residing at the Mandeville Plantation in Orleans Parish, before she and Eugene Macarty moved to Dauphine and Barracks Street. She figured out a market of selling dry goods door to door and employed free women of color and slaves to sell her fabrics, kerchiefs, shawls and trimmings. She operated her business out of her home at Dauphine and Barracks, employing some 5 or 6 free women as sellers, some 8-10 others who sold on commission, and a sales force of 6 slaves. Eulalie was also able to enlarge her business into other parishes close to Orleans like Plaquemines, as far west as St. Martin and St. Mary's Parishes and as far north as Donaldsonville.

Eulalie gave the funds generated from her dry goods business to Macarty to invest, but kept her business dealings separate from his. She always signed her own checks. Initially, the small loans made by Macarty were made using Eulalie's money. She also began to invest in real estate, like her brothers and father. Eventually, it was known that if you wanted a loan, you saw Eugene Macarty, to buy or rent real estate, you went to Eulalie.

By 1845, her assets were in the neighborhood of $250,000 and she owned 8 properties in the Marigny and Treme neighborhoods.

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Between 1794 and 1815, Eulalie and Eugene Macarty had 7 children together. All were well-educated and provided for by their parents, who saw that the girls had advantageous marriages and the boys were set up in businesses. They were all baptized at St. Louis Cathedral and recorded as last name Macarty. Sons Teophilo and Ysidro worked in Macaraty's lumber business, while Bernardo and Emerite moved to Cuba and started a coffee plantation. By the time of Eugene's death in 1845, one son was living in Santiago in Cuba and the other had died, leaving two children. Eugene had contributed his resources to supporting his sons on the island in managing two sugar plantations.

Upon his death, Eugene Macarty left $2,000 to his brother and to a nephew and $500 to a niece, people who would be considered "collateral heirs" in Louisiana inheritance law. Finding that Eugene was not as wealthy as his family assumed, they tried to acquire part of Eulalie's assets, which by this time totaled close to $4 million in today's currency.
 
This is exactly why New Orleans remains one of the most, if not the most fascinating cities this country is lucky enough to have. Wish so much it remained in the spotlight post Katrina- you could explain this stuff 10 times and I feel we'd still require tours and classes and an immersion course, you know?

Had a very good friend whose ancestry is deep there, who touched on this then gave up, since hers also touched on pretty much all the others, too. She's an actress, which was one of the natural things someone with such a fascinating face should do, given talent, too. Goodness.

You're a professor, ma'am! Takes one to give us New Orleans, doesn't it?

One of the sources I read said that we look at questions of race through our own 21st Century eyes, while that of French and Spanish Louisiana was considerably more complicated. We can say that there was a third caste of wealthy creoles of color who were separate from the class of slaves, but Prof. Emily Clark has pointed out that there were many lower income white males in New Orleans who took as their life partners women of color, some of them slaves and tried to provide for the children of these unions, just as Eugene Macarty had.

One thing that is sometimes not mentioned in discussions of Eulalie is that her brother Bernard de Marigny was one of the wealthiest men in New Orleans and a large real estate developer. As he sold properties, he disliked selling to those who spoke English and were not French Catholics and was willing to sell to persons of mixed heritage if they met the qualifications of being Catholic and speaking French. There were other women of color who acquired property and ran businesses, but none as wealthy as Eulalie.
 
Macarty Et Al vs. Eulalie Mandeville. It was in 1796 when the 22 year old Eulalie Mandeville would become involved with the 28 year old Eugene Macarty. By the time she was in her 30s, Eulalie had developed her successful dry goods business and become a wealthy woman, who had a large bank account in her own name. When Eugene died fifty years later in 1845, they had amassed a large estate together. Louisiana law held that a concubine, which Eulalie was considered under the law, could not inherit more than 10% of her consort's estate. Eugene Macarty's brother and other relatives sued Eulalie for their collateral portion of the estate, which included several slaves, real estate and cash.

The documentation from the trial provide interesting glimpses into the racial and social differences between the French and Spanish society of New Orleans and that which would be codified under the immigrant Anglo-Americans who were settling in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase. Bernard Marigny, from the wealthiest family in New Orleans, claimed in the trial that Eulalie "passes in his family as being his natural sister" and that "he had known her since he can recollect." Exiles at Home, the Struggle to Become American in Creole New Orleans, Shirley Elizabeth Thompson, p. 195.

The plaintiffs alleged:

that Eugene Macarty lived in concubinage with the defendant, who is a colored woman, and had a number of children with her; that he amassed a large fortune, which, at the time of his death, was in the name and in the possession of the defendant; and that in reality it belonged to the deceased, who had made use of the defendant’s name for the purpose of transmitting his estate to his colored family, to the prejudice of his legitimate relatives. They pray that the property which they specify, be declared to belong to the estate of Eugene Macarty, and that it may be recovered and disposes of as part of that estate, and distributed among the plaintiffs and their co-heirs, according to their hereditary portions.

http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2268&context=td
 
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The Cabildo, which became the Louisiana Supreme Court on the left, St. Louis Cathedral, where Eulalie was baptized in the center, and the Presbytere on the right, Jackson Square.
 
The brief for the defendant, Eulalie Mandeville, reveals numerous details about the relationship between Eulalie and family, between she and Eugene Macarty and about her business acumen.

On page 145, ss., will be found five short letters or notes written by Pierre Marigny to the defendant. They bear no date but they must have been written before the 14ty of May, 1800, when Pre. Marigny died. (bd. Marigny, 135). Her father gives her directions concerning work to be done on the plantation, consults her about buildings to be put up, &c. When her father sold the plantation, he gave her from sixty to eighty head of cattle, she sold some of them, and kept twelve milch cows, with which she kept a dairy in the city.(136, 137.)

http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2268&context=td

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Eulalie's father's tomb in St. Louis Cathedral. Findagrave says he was worth about $7 million at his death.
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=108744991

 
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The brief details various business transactions by Eulalie and her family. It notes that her brother Bernard gave her $350 in 1803, which she used to buy a lot on Hospital Street. She had a house built on the lot for $11,700 in 1839. Brother Bernard sold her two lots in his new subdivision, "foubourg Marigny." One was a donation and as he owned a sawmill, he gave her the lumber to build on the lots. Others had testified that her father gave her $3,000. The brief explains the perception of Eulalie's relationship with Eugene.

This was a serious connexion, entered into with the consent of her family, the nearest approach to marriage, the law would permit, and looked upon as morally binding, much more so, than in these days. [1846] It was then customary--for fathers to give money to their natural children, when they contracted such pseudo-marriages. (p. 140) For three years afterwards--until 1799, when he grandmother died, she remained at the plantation. (139.) Her eldest child, Emerite, afterwards Mme. Chere Rigaud was born there, for Pierre Marigny mentions her, in one of the letters he wrote her from the city, (145, ss) Then, already she was carrying on a trade in dry goods, with the women of the Spanish settlements, at the Terre aux Boeufs, (135, 127.) This trade she continued after she removed to New Orleans, and it will be seen that it soon became very extensive and profitable, and that she continued it, until a few years past.

http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2268&context=td
 
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With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the immigration of Anglo-Americans into New Orleans, the traditions of those of French and Spanish heritage of giving land and funds to their natural children of color were narrowed by new laws. The brief details this, noting that in 1807 Eugene Macarty was ill and fearing his demise, wrote a will leaving nominal sums of money to his collateral heirs (brother, niece, nephew) and the bulk of his estate to his natural children with Eulalie.

In 1807, Macarty being sick, and believing that his end was approaching, made a will, by which he bequeathed $2,500 to his brother Theodore, one of the plaintiff's, and $1,000 to a niece, $4,000 and some slaves to the defendant, and all this remaining property, the extent of which we do not know, to the natural children he had with the defendant. Such a will was then perfectly legal**; Macarty's intentions thus solemnly manifested, did not belie the defendant's reliance on him, and it may be presumed, that the defendant's apprehensions, not of Macarty, but of his collateral relatives, were excited only as her fortune increased. Then, only, she insisted, or Macarty determined, that she should be protected by using her own name in the transactions in which she was alone interested, and for many years, certainly since 1824, this plan was almost uniformly adhered to.

**The Civil Code of Louisiana was revised in 1825 to allow "natural children" to inherit only 1/3 of a parent's estate if there were any other relatives who might inherit.​
 
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The Macarty vs. Mandeville case went to the Louisiana Supreme Court, who found in favor of Eulalie, that she was an astute businesswoman who had received assets from her father, grandmother and brothers and had built her own fortune on them. It had been noted in the brief that Eugene Macarty was a hard worker, but with no assets when they began their relationship in the 1790s.

The court now knows the case, and we may therefore be permitted to say, that with such qualities of the head and character, as the defendant has been shown to possess, she would have been able to rise in her worldly affairs, and in the esteem of all who know her even without Macarty‘s patronage and that the best explanation of her fortune is to be found in her conduct. It is therefore ordered a judgment be given against the plaintiff and that their petition be dismissed with cost (Brief for Defendant 1848:106, Appendix F).
It's interesting to read the words of the justices writing back in 1846 about Eugene and Eulalie and their attempts to provide for the children of this 50 year relationship where a marriage was prohibited.

No doubt parental love, the strongest tie on earth, suggested to both of them that their own children were better entitled to inherit the proceeds of their labor than collateral heirs for whom they felt little or no regard.
 
When Eulalie Mandeville died in 1848, she had 4 sons and 2 grandchildren. Her children included Barthelemy Macarty of Cuba, Villareaux Macarty, Eugene Macarty, Theodule Macarty, and grandchildren by deceased daughter Emerise Arthemise Macarty Rigaud, Isabel Rigaud and Eugene Rigard. Her succession was concluded quickly, but erased her kinship ties with the Marigny's.

At one point, Eulalie Mandeville was the wealthiest woman of color in the antebellum South. However, Grace King, an ultra-racist female historian of the Reconstruction era and apologist for the antebellum South, erased Eulalie and children from the history of New Orleans. King was an aristocrat whose family lost their money in the Civil War and who became a writer to support herself. She wrote a book, Creole Families of New Orleans, in which she whitened the history of the early families. eliminating the "natural" descendants of these. Of Eugene Macarty, she said, "did not marry," thus extinguishing the family line of Eugenie Mandeville, who was born of the creme de la creme of Creole society.
 
Various accounts note that Eulalie and Eugene were married in St. Augustin Catholic Church in New Orleans 5 days before his death in 1845. St. Augustin was the church founded by creole people of color in New Orleans and the marriage would have been illegal. This illegitimate marriage made no difference in the legal case against Eulalie, but perhaps it was to aid the children of the couple, as the next generation of these long-term relationships usually were careful to have established and recorded marriages.

We do know about one of the children, Victor-Eugene Macarty, who was a composer. He had gone to Paris for his education and had been admitted to the Imperial Conservatoire to study composition, harmony and voice. V. E. Macarty did compose several known pieces on his return to New Orleans, but spent most of his time as a businessman in the City. Victor-Eugene did serve as a Louisiana legislator during Reconstruction, representing a ward in New Orleans from 1870-72.

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St. Augustine Catholic Church
 
The Macarty's. The thread has featured a lot of information about Eulalies's family, the Marigny-Mandevilles, but not much about Eugene's, the Macarty family. One author mentions that he was from "one of the more visible and active military families." Exiles at Home, p. 195. The Macarty's were of Scottish-Irish descent from a family that had fled to France in the late 16th Century and become a part of the military in France. They were wealthy and powerful within New Orleans society, with a good many military men as part of their family history. Macarty's father, Barthelmy Daniel de Macarty, came to New Orleans in 1732 and served as a captain of French troops and commanded Fort Chartres on the Mississippi River.

It was a Macarty family plantation which General Andrew Jackson used as his headquarters during the War of 1812. The Macarty family holdings were in the opposite direction of the Mandeville family lands, located in what is now the Carrollton section of New Orleans, in a high spot above the Mississippi River, a few miles upriver from the burgeoning City of New Orleans. Eugene's brother, Jean Baptiste, built the family holdings into a sugar plantation. In 1831, the Macarty's sold the land to a banking and railroad firm.

Eugene's nephew, Augustin Macarty, became one of the mayors of New Orleans. He also lived with women of color during his life and his estate was also the subject of a lawsuit by collateral heirs to try and disinherit his natural children (they succeeded in this case). Interestingly, Eugene's niece, one of those who contested his will, is one of the most infamous New Orleanians of the period, Madame Delphine Macarty Lalaurie, whose slaves were found tortured in an upstairs room in her mansion in the French Quarter after the enslaved cook, who was chained to the stove, started a fire.
 
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