Natchitoches Louisiana 1803 1840

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Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840

Author : Kathleen M. Byrd
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807182850
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 by : Kathleen M. Byrd

Download or read book Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 written by Kathleen M. Byrd and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kathleen M. Byrd’s Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 is an examination of one French Creole community as it transitioned from a fur-trading and agricultural settlement under the control of Spain to a critical American outpost on the Spanish/American frontier and finally to a commercial hub and jumping-off point for those heading west. Byrd focuses on historic events in the area and the long-term French Creole residents as they adapted to the American presence. She also examines the effect of the arrival of the Americans, with their Indian trading house and Indian agency, on Native groups and considers how members of the enslaved population took advantage of opportunities for escape presented by a new international border. Byrd shows how the arrival of Americans forever changed Natchitoches, transforming it from a sleepy frontier settlement into a regional commercial center and staging point for pioneers heading into Texas.

Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840

Author : Kathleen M. Byrd
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807182869
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 by : Kathleen M. Byrd

Download or read book Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 written by Kathleen M. Byrd and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kathleen M. Byrd’s Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1803–1840 is an examination of one French Creole community as it transitioned from a fur-trading and agricultural settlement under the control of Spain to a critical American outpost on the Spanish/American frontier and finally to a commercial hub and jumping-off point for those heading west. Byrd focuses on historic events in the area and the long-term French Creole residents as they adapted to the American presence. She also examines the effect of the arrival of the Americans, with their Indian trading house and Indian agency, on Native groups and considers how members of the enslaved population took advantage of opportunities for escape presented by a new international border. Byrd shows how the arrival of Americans forever changed Natchitoches, transforming it from a sleepy frontier settlement into a regional commercial center and staging point for pioneers heading into Texas.

Cane River Bohemia

Author : Patricia Austin Becker
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807170283
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Cane River Bohemia by : Patricia Austin Becker

Download or read book Cane River Bohemia written by Patricia Austin Becker and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Historic Landmark with a complex and remarkable two-hundred-year history, Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana, was home to many notable women, including freedwoman and entrepreneur Marie Thérèse Coincoin and artist Clementine Hunter. Among that influential group, Cammie Henry, the mistress of Melrose during the first half of the twentieth century, stands out as someone who influenced the plantation’s legacy in dramatic and memorable ways. In Cane River Bohemia, Patricia Austin Becker provides a vivid biography of this fascinating figure. Born on a sugar plantation in south Louisiana in 1871, Cammie Henry moved with her husband to Melrose in 1899 and immediately set to work restoring the property. She extended her impact on Melrose, the surrounding community, and the region when she began to host an artist colony in the 1920s and 1930s. Writers and painters visiting the bucolic setting could focus on their creative pursuits and find encouragement for their efforts. The most frequent visitors—considered by Cammie to be her circle of “congenial souls”—included writer/journalist Lyle Saxon, naturalist Caroline Dormon, author Ada Jack Carver, and painter Alberta Kinsey. Artists and artisans such as Harnett Kane, Roark Bradford, William Spratling, Doris Ulmann, and Sherwood Anderson also found their way to Melrose. In addition to hosting well-known guests, Henry began a collection of history books, nineteenth-century manuscripts, and scrapbooks of clippings and memorabilia that later brought her attention from the wider world. Researchers and writers contacted Henry frequently as the reputation of her library grew, and today the Cammie G. Henry Research Center at Northwestern State University houses this impressive collection that serves as a lasting tribute to Henry’s passion for the preservation of words as well as for the South’s material culture, including quilting, spinning, and gardening.

The Founding of New Acadia

Author : Carl A. Brasseaux
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807141632
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (416 download)

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Book Synopsis The Founding of New Acadia by : Carl A. Brasseaux

Download or read book The Founding of New Acadia written by Carl A. Brasseaux and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Dixie Bohemia

Author : John Shelton Reed
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807147664
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Dixie Bohemia by : John Shelton Reed

Download or read book Dixie Bohemia written by John Shelton Reed and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane University, resided among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends -- ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer -- and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the Jazz Age. Reed begins with Faulkner and Spratling's self-published homage to their fellow bohemians, "Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles." The book contained 43 sketches of New Orleans artists, by Spratling, with captions and a short introduction by Faulkner. The title served as a rather obscure joke: Sherwood was not a Creole and neither were most of the people featured. But with Reed's commentary, these profiles serve as an entry into the world of artists and writers that dined on Decatur Street, attended masked balls, and blatantly ignored the Prohibition Act. These men and women also helped to establish New Orleans institutions such as the Double Dealer literary magazine, the Arts and Crafts Club, and Le Petit Theatre. But unlike most bohemias, the one in New Orleans existed as a whites-only affair. Though some of the bohemians were relatively progressive, and many employed African American material in their own work, few of them knew or cared about what was going on across town among the city's black intellectuals and artists. The positive developments from this French Quarter renaissance, however, attracted attention and visitors, inspiring the historic preservation and commercial revitalization that turned the area into a tourist destination. Predictably, this gentrification drove out many of the working artists and writers who had helped revive the area. As Reed points out, one resident who identified herself as an "artist" on the 1920 federal census gave her occupation in 1930 as "saleslady, real estate," reflecting the decline of an active artistic class. A charming and insightful glimpse into an era, Dixie Bohemia describes the writers, artists, poseurs, and hangers-on in the New Orleans art scene of the 1920s and illuminates how this dazzling world faded as quickly as it began.

Notorious Woman

Author : Elizabeth Urban Alexander
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807130249
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Notorious Woman by : Elizabeth Urban Alexander

Download or read book Notorious Woman written by Elizabeth Urban Alexander and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2004-10-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines (1804?--1885) has all the trappings of classic melodrama -- a lost heir, a missing will, an illicit relationship, a questionable marriage, a bigamous husband, and a murder. For a half century the daughter of New Orleans millionaire Daniel Clark struggled to justify her claim to his enormous fortune in a case that captivated the nineteenth-century public. Elizabeth Urban Alexander taps voluminous court records and letters to unravel the twists and turns of Gaines's litigation and reveal the truth behind the mysterious saga of this notorious woman. Myra, the daughter of real estate heir Clark and Zulime Carrière, a beautiful young Frenchwoman, was raised by friends of Clark and kept ignorant of her real parentage until 1832, when she discovered her true lineage in letters among her foster father's papers. She thereupon returned to Louisiana with tales of a lost will and a secret marriage between Clark and Carrière and claimed to be Clark's missing heir. Was Myra the legitimate daughter of the prominent merchant or the "fruit of an adulterous union?" The courts would decide. The Great Gaines Case wound its tortuous path through the United States legal system from 1834 until 1891. It was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court seventeen times and pursued even after Gaines's death by lawyers trying to recoup fees. By courageously bringing her case to the courtroom and doggedly keeping it there, Alexander asserts, Gaines helped instigate a new type of family law that provided special protection of women, children, and marriages. Though Gaines never recovered more than a tiny fraction of the rumored millions, this riveting chronicle of her struggle for legitimacy and legacy as told by Elizabeth Urban Alexander is a gold mine for anyone interested in legal history, women's studies, or a good yarn superbly spun.

New Orleans, Louisiana, and Saint-Louis, Senegal

Author : Emily Clark
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807171719
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis New Orleans, Louisiana, and Saint-Louis, Senegal by : Emily Clark

Download or read book New Orleans, Louisiana, and Saint-Louis, Senegal written by Emily Clark and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the intertwined histories of Saint-Louis, Senegal, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Although separated by an ocean, both cities were founded during the early French imperial expansion of the Atlantic world. Both became important port cities of their own continents, the Atlantic world as a whole, and the African diaspora. The slave trade not only played a crucial role in the demographic and economic growth of Saint-Louis and New Orleans, but also directly connected the two cities. The Company of the Indies ran the Senegambia slave-trading posts and the Mississippi colony simultaneously from 1719 to 1731. By examining the linked histories of these cities over the longue durée, this edited collection shows the crucial role they played in integrating the peoples of the Atlantic world. The essays also illustrate how the interplay of imperialism, colonialism, and slaving that defined the early Atlantic world operated and evolved differently on both sides of the ocean. The chapters in part one, “Negotiating Slavery and Freedom,” highlight the centrality of the institution of slavery in the urban societies of Saint-Louis and New Orleans from their foundation to the second half of the nineteenth century. Part two, “Elusive Citizenship,” explores how the notions of nationality, citizenship, and subjecthood—as well as the rights or lack of rights associated with them—were mobilized, manipulated, or negotiated at key moments in the history of each city. Part three, “Mythic Persistence,” examines the construction, reproduction, and transformation of myths and popular imagination in the colonial and postcolonial cities. It is here, in the imagined past, that New Orleans and Saint-Louis most clearly mirror one another. The essays in this section offer two examples of how historical realities are simplified, distorted, or obliterated to minimize the violence of the cities’ common slave and colonial past in order to promote a romanticized present. With editors from three continents and contributors from around the world, this work is truly an international collaboration.

The Kingfish and His Realm

Author : William Ivy Hair
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807141069
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Kingfish and His Realm by : William Ivy Hair

Download or read book The Kingfish and His Realm written by William Ivy Hair and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Creating Freedom

Author : Laurie A. Wilkie
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807125823
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (258 download)

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Book Synopsis Creating Freedom by : Laurie A. Wilkie

Download or read book Creating Freedom written by Laurie A. Wilkie and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2000-10-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians' conception of plantation life in the American South, both post- and antebellum, derives almost exclusively from the written record, hence mainly from the white owners' perspectives. In Creating Freedom, historical archaeologist Laurie Wilkie pulls the half-opened curtain wider by seeking out the experiences of the majority of people who made their home on plantations: the African American laborers. Specifically, Wilkie examines the lives of four black families who lived at Oakley Plantation in south Louisiana's West Feliciana Parish over the course of one hundred years. Using an innovative blend of archaeological evidence and oral interviews, as well as written documents, she builds a composite of their daily existence that is at once riveting and humanizing in its detail and invaluable in its broader applications. Creating Freedom is in part Wilkie's attempt to understand how African Americans at Oakley Plantation, and by extension most southern blacks, endured the violence and oppression of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. It is through their material culture, enhanced by a range of other data, that she descries the complex but uplifting process by which they retained their ties to a cultural past while renegotiating their identity as free persons.

Rites of August First

Author : Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807135704
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Rites of August First by : Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie

Download or read book Rites of August First written by Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rites of August First, J.R. Kerr-Ritchie provides the first detailed analysis of the origins, nature, and consequences of August First Daythe most important annual celebration of the emancipation of colonial slavery throughout the British Empire. Spanning the Western hemisphere, Kerr-Ritchie successfully unravels the cultural politics of emancipation celebrations, analyzing the social practices informed by public ritual, symbol, and spectacle designed to elicit feelings of common identity among blacks in the Atlantic world.

Louisiana Place Names

Author : Clare D'Artois Leeper
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807147397
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Louisiana Place Names by : Clare D'Artois Leeper

Download or read book Louisiana Place Names written by Clare D'Artois Leeper and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2012-10-19 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Aansel to Zwolle, with Mardi Gras Bayou in between, avid writer Clare D Artois Leeper offers her own alphabet of places in Louisiana, both past and present. Louisiana Place Names includes 893 entries that reveal Leeper s distinct view of the state s history. Her unique blend of documented fact and traditional wisdom result in an entertaining guide to Louisiana s place name lore.

The Earl of Louisiana

Author : A. J. Liebling
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807133439
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (334 download)

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Book Synopsis The Earl of Louisiana by : A. J. Liebling

Download or read book The Earl of Louisiana written by A. J. Liebling and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events that began with Governor Earl K. Long's commitment to a mental institution. Captivated by his subject, Liebling remained to write the fascinating yet tragic story of Uncle Earl's final year in politics. First published in 1961, The Earl of Louisiana recreates a stormy era in Louisiana politics and captures the style and personality of one of the most colorful and paradoxical figures in the state's history. This updated edition of the book includes a foreword by T. Harry Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Huey Long: A Biography, and a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Yardley that discusses Liebling's career and his most famous book from a twenty-first-century perspective.

Still Fighting the Civil War

Author : David Goldfield
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 080715217X
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Still Fighting the Civil War by : David Goldfield

Download or read book Still Fighting the Civil War written by David Goldfield and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the updated edition of his sweeping narrative on southern history, David Goldfield brings this extensive study into the present with a timely assessment of the unresolved issues surrounding the Civil War's sesquicentennial commemoration. Traversing a hundred and fifty years of memory, Goldfield confronts the remnants of the American Civil War that survive in the hearts of many of the South's residents and in the national news headlines of battle flags, racial injustice, and religious conflicts. Goldfield candidly discusses how and why white southern men fashioned the myths of the Lost Cause and Redemption out of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and how they shaped a religion to canonize the heroes and deify the events of those fateful years. He also recounts how groups of blacks and white women eventually crafted a different, more inclusive version of southern history and how that new vision competed with more traditional perspectives. The battle for southern history, and for the South, continues—in museums, public spaces, books, state legislatures, and the minds of southerners. Given the region's growing economic power and political influence, understanding this war takes on national significance. Through an analysis of ideas of history and memory, religion, race, and gender, Still Fighting the Civil War provides us with a better understanding of the South and one another.

Spanish New Orleans

Author : John Eugene Rodriguez
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807174890
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Spanish New Orleans by : John Eugene Rodriguez

Download or read book Spanish New Orleans written by John Eugene Rodriguez and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Eugene Rodriguez’s Spanish New Orleans is the first comprehensive academic analysis of how Spain governed the largest imperial city in its North American empire. Rodriguez suggests that the Spanish empire was, at least on the northern edge, slipping into economic and perhaps political independence a decade before the overthrow of its Bourbon Spanish rulers in 1808. His work questions that of earlier historians, who argued that Latin America was fundamentally conservative and complaisant under Bourbon rule. Instead, Spanish New Orleans shows that in the capital of Louisiana, Spanish rulers were slowly losing control of three interwoven aspects of the city: demography, trade, and political discourse. Rodriguez demonstrates how the multiethnic, multilingual population of the city played a central role in encouraging trans-imperial free trade and especially trade with the United States, to the point of economic dependence. This dependence in turn prompted the Bourbon governors in New Orleans to negotiate both economic and political discourse in a city that was steadily moving closer in every way to the United States. Far from being a peripheral city in a peripheral colony, by 1803 New Orleans was reshaping the Spanish empire beyond the comprehension of the Spanish king. Chapters on the city’s foundational merchants, literacy, and the judicial system all point to the unique character of this imperial city on the American periphery. This study marks new methodological paths for historians of Latin America and early U.S. history by making use of enormous data compilations on population, ethnicity, and economics. Rodriguez also analyzes previously ignored eighteenth-century Spanish-language documents, including petitions, postal records, and military rosters, and engages underutilized tools such as signature analysis. Through his use of original sources and innovative methodologies, Rodriguez makes new and intriguing comparisons between New Orleans and other contemporary Spanish imperial cities as well as cities in the then-expanding United States. In Spanish New Orleans, Rodriguez goes beyond simply positioning New Orleans within Spanish imperial history. Taking a broader view, he considers what Spanish New Orleans reveals about the challenges and opportunities faced by the Spanish Bourbon empire, and he sheds light on how a new North American empire could so quickly and easily absorb a Spanish city.

County and City Extra

Author : Deirdre A. Gaquin
Publisher : Bernan Press
ISBN 13 : 1598888056
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis County and City Extra by : Deirdre A. Gaquin

Download or read book County and City Extra written by Deirdre A. Gaquin and published by Bernan Press. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: County and City Extra, Special Historical Edition brings together census population data from the earliest days of our nation and some more recent historical data from other federal statistical agencies. For more than 20 years, the County and City Extra series has provided annual up-to-date statistical information for every state, county, metropolitan area, and congressional district, as well as all cities with populations of 25,000 or more. This historical edition provides key data from all of the censuses from 1790 through 2010. Part A provides an overview with selected national data for all available years from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis Part B includes a similar selection of data for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Part C shows the population of each county from the date of its origins through the 2010 census. Detailed information about the origins of all states and counties is included Part D presents the largest cities for each of the 23 censuses between 1790 and 2010, as well as a table showing the historical populations of all cities with populations of 100,000 or more in 2010. In addition to Parts A, B, C, and D, a section titled "The United States through the Decades" is included highlighting important events in the United States in each decade from 1790 to 2010. This edition also includes several figures on topics such as population growth through the decades, foreign-born residents, fastest-growing counties from 1790 to 2010, life expectancy through the years, and per capita income. In 1790, Virginia was the most populous state with over 800,000 residents (including territories that are now West Virginia and Kentucky) Between the first Census and the Civil War, the U.S population grew by more than 30 percent each decade In 1870, only 3 percent of U.S. residents were 65 years old and over. With increased life expectancy and lower birth rates, the proportion had grown to 13 percent by 2010. The 1900 census showed that Wyoming, Montana, and Nevada had 150 men for every 100 women. In 2010, the ratio was 96.7 men for every 100 women at the national level. Mississippi had the lowest per-capita income throughout the 80-year time period between 1930 and 2010. From 1910 to 1920, Los Angeles experienced growth from Hollywood’s dominance in the film industry. Its population increased by 81 percent that decade and its land area more than tripled.

French and Spanish Records of Louisiana

Author : Henry Putney Beers
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807127933
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (279 download)

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Book Synopsis French and Spanish Records of Louisiana by : Henry Putney Beers

Download or read book French and Spanish Records of Louisiana written by Henry Putney Beers and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2002-03-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing years of extensive research, this authoritative and comprehensive guide to the records generated in the Louisiana Territory during the French and Spanish colonial periods is a major reference work. Henry Putney Beers has painstakingly traced all types of documents, including land, military, and ecclesiastical records; registers of births, marriages, and burials; and private papers. Far more than a mere bibliographical listing, the book provides a complete history and description of these records and their past as well as current locations. When microfilms or other copies of particular bodies of documents exist, Beers describes the circumstances of reproduction and lists the locations of the copies.In the first part of the book, Beers presents a concise account of history and government in Louisiana, concentrating on the formation of a record-keeping bureaucracy. His detailed discussion includes information on available archival reproductions, documentary publications, and the nature and size of holdings in pertinent manuscript collections. Beers's examination of parish, land, and ecclesiastical records will serve as a vital resource. In the remainder of the book, he provides a similarly comprehensive treatment of the records of what are now Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas.Beers traces repositories for these documents far beyond regional confines, locating some in Europe, Canada, and Cuba. For the early migrants to the region -- the Acadians, for example -- he describes source materials at the migrants' points of origin. He also provides information on documents that have been lost or destroyed, an important service that will save researchers much time.French and Spanish Records of Louisiana will prove to be of enormous value to a wide range of people: professional historians, local history buffs, genealogists, lawyers, archivists, and librarians.

The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé

Author : Bryan Wagner
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807170259
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé by : Bryan Wagner

Download or read book The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé written by Bryan Wagner and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although few recognize the name of Bras-Coupé today, Bryan Wagner’s riveting history The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé illustrates why the saga of this notorious escaped slave should be a touchstone among scholars and students of the African diaspora. After losing an arm in a pitched battle with the New Orleans police in the 1830s, Bras-Coupé hid for several years in a swamp near the city. During this time, law enforcement widely publicized their manhunt for him through newspapers, wanted posters, and other media. Messages from the mayor’s office promoted a violent image of Bras-Coupé, casting him as the primary reason police needed the right to use deadly force in the course of their duties. After a former friend betrayed and killed the bandit in July 1837, local officials displayed Bras-Coupé’s corpse in the Place d’Armes, where they ordered slaves to bear witness. The Bras-Coupé legend grew after his death and took on fantastic dimensions. Storytellers gave him superpowers. His skin, it was alleged, could not be punctured by bullets. His gaze could turn men to stone. Folklorists have transcribed many such examples of the tradition, and writers, including George Washington Cable and Robert Penn Warren, have adapted it into novels. Over time, new details appeared in the mythology and the legend transformed. Some said that he was an African prince before he was kidnapped and brought to Louisiana; others, that he was the most famous performer at Congo Square, playing an indispensable role in the preservation of African music and dance. Sidney Bechet, one of the city’s most celebrated composers and reed players, even suggested it was Bras-Coupé who invented jazz. Including fugitive slave advertisements, arrest records, and journalism from the 1830s, this critical edition collects the most important primary materials related to Bras-Coupé’s story. Wagner’s timely and deft examination of this unique historical figure reveals how a single man’s life, shaped by the horrors of slavery and the cultural mélange of Louisiana, can evolve into legend.