Marie Laveau: A Nineteenth-Century Voudou Priestess

Marie Laveau: A Nineteenth-Century Voudou Priestess
Author(s): Carolyn Morrow Long

Source: Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 46, No.
3 (Summer, 2005), pp. 262-292
Published by: Louisiana Historical Association
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262 LOUISIANA HISTORY
_~~
Marie Laveau. Sketch by E. W. Kemble.

From George Washington Cable, "Creole Slave Songs," Century
Illustrated Monthly Magazine, 31 (1886): 819.
Marie Laveau:
A Nineteenth-Century
Voudou Priestess
ByCAROLYN MORROW LONG
Marie Laveau, New Orleans' world-renowned Queen of the

Voudous,1 has been the subject of newspaper articles, popular
histories, folklore studies, three novels, an M.A. thesis, a Ph.D.
dissertation, a film, an opera, a musical, and a play. Several web
sites are devoted to Marie Laveau. Tour guides offer their spiels
at the site of her home on St. Ann Street and her tomb in St.
Louis Cemetery No. 1. Some elements of the Laveau legend are
based on fact, some contain a kernel of truth, some can be neither
proven nor refuted, and some are pure fantasy. Using nine-
teenth-century newspaper accounts, civil and ecclesiastical re-
cords, and oral histories collected in the late 1930s and early
1940s by the WPA Louisiana Writers' Project, the author has at-
tempted to disentangle the complex threads of this story, separat-
ing verifiable fact from semi-truths and complete fabrication.
Surprisingly, Marie Laveau was seldom the subject of newspa-
per articles during her own lifetime. Despite this paucity of jour-
nalistic coverage, she was famous by the time of her death in the
summer of 1881, and all of New Orleans' English-language dai-
lies-and even the New York Times-carried obituaries and re-
membrances. Opinions regarding Marie Laveau's character were
The author is a retired conservator of paper artifacts and photographs for the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of American History.
'During the nineteenth century the name of this African-based New World religion was usu-
ally spelled Voudou. Voodoo is an Americanized spelling that has taken on the negative con-
notation of meaningless mumbo-jumbo, as in voodoo economics or voodoo science, and is
considered offensive by some people.
263
already divided. The New Orleans Daily Picayune, the Daily City
Item, and the Daily States rejected the idea that she was actually
a Voudou priestess, portraying her instead as a woman of great
beauty, intellect, and charisma who was also pious, charitable,
and a skilled herbal healer. This viewpoint was also embraced by
the New York Times, where a long obituary detailed how the
"beautiful Creole" received "Louisiana's greatest men and most
distinguished visitors ... lawyers, legislators, planters, and mer-
chants, [who] all came to pay their respects and seek her offices."
The New Orleans Democrat, on the other hand, characterized
Marie Laveau as "the prime mover and soul of the indecent orgies
of the ignoble Voudous," and the New Orleans Times announced
that "the spirit of the late Voudou Queen" would be propitiated by
her devotees with "drunken midnight orgies on the bayou."2
Later nineteenth-century literary representations of Marie
Laveau augmented the 1881 obituaries. Opinions were still di-
vided. Helene d'Aquin Allain, in an 1883 travel journal called
Souvenirs d'Amerique, described an unidentified former Voudou
Queen, undoubtedly Marie Laveau, as a "tall, handsome woman,
with regular features, a piercing gaze, and an imposing gait....
Her clothes were meticulous, as was her speech.... [S]he had an
air of faded grandeur and did not appear at all cruel."3 In 1886,
George Washington Cable rendered a sympathetic portrayal in
his Century Magazine article, "Creole Slave Songs," declaring
that he "once saw, in her extreme old age, the famed Marie
Laveau."4 A decidedly unfavorable depiction was offered by
Henry Castellanos in "The Voudous: Their History, Mysteries,
2A11 newspapers cited below were published in New Orleans unless otherwise indi
"Death of Marie Laveau-A Woman with a Wonderful History, Almost a Century Old, Carried
to the Tomb Thursday Morning," Daily Picayune, June 17, 1881; "Wayside Notes-The Death
of Marie Laveau," Daily City Item, June 17, 1881, reprinted in Frederick Starr, ed., Inventing
New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Jackson, Miss., 2001), 70-72, where it is attributed
to Hearn. "Recollections of a Visit on New Years' Eve to Marie Laveau, the Ex-Queen of the
Voudous," Daily States, June 17, 1881; "The Dead Voudou Queen," New York Times, June 23,
1881; "Marie Lavaux-Death of the Queen of the Voudous Just Before St. John's Eve," De-
mocrat, June 17, 1881; "A Sainted Woman," Democrat, June 18, 1881; "Voudou Vagaries-
The Spirit of Marie Laveau to Be Propitiated by Midnight Orgies on the Bayou," Times, June
23, 1881.
3Helene d'Aquin Allain, Souvenirs dAmerique et de France par une Creole (Paris, 1883),
130.
4George Washington Cable, "Creole Slave Songs," Century Magazine, 31 (1886): 818-19.
Cable (1844-1925) was immensely popular in the 1880s, and it was his short stories, novels,
and local-color sketches that brought New Orleans Voudou to a national audience.
MARIE LA VEAU, A NINETEENTH-CENTURY VOUDOU PRIESTESS 265
and Practices," which appeared in the New Orleans Times-

Democrat of June 24, 1894, and was reproduced in his 1895 col-
lection of vignettes, New Orleans As It Was: Episodes of Louisi-
ana Life. Here Castellanos characterized Marie Laveau as a
"procuress" and an "arrant fraud" whose reputation as a worker
of magic was based on illusion. It may have been Castellanos, a
frequent contributor to the Times and the Democrat, who wrote
the vicious rejoinders to the eulogistic obituaries of the Picayune,
the City Item, and the States following Marie's death in 1881.5
It was during the first half of the twentieth century, as local-
color writers and popular historians added new and increasingly
fantastic elements to the legend, that Marie Laveau's reputation
for evil-doing really took shape. Voudou was perceived as irre-
sistibly scary and enticingly erotic, and Marie Laveau, a tempting
combination of black magic with beauty and sexuality, was an
ideal subject. The 1920s also saw the emergence of the notion
that, as Marie grew older, she was secretly replaced by her
daughter, who so greatly resembled her that the two were indis-
tinguishable. Early contributors to the Laveau legend were the
New Orleans journalist G. William Nott ("Marie Laveau, Long
High Priestess of Voudouism in New Orleans," Times-Picayune
Sunday Magazine, November 19, 1922); Lyle Saxon (Fabulous
New Orleans [New York, 1928]); Herbert Asbury (The French
Quarter, [New York, 1936]); and Zora Neale Hurston ("Hoodoo in
America," Journal of American Folklore, 1931; and Mules and
Men [Philadelphia, 1935]).
In 1946, information made available through the work of the
Louisiana Writers' Project was incorporated into Robert Tallant's
flamboyant and sexually titillating Voodoo in New Orleans, re-
plete with lurid tales of nudity, drunkenness, devil worship,
snake handling, blood drinking, the devouring of live chickens
and dead cats, and interracial orgies. Tallant recombined and
sensationalized the Writers' Project narratives, concocting ficti-
tious interviews when needed to prove some point, stirring in du-
bious "facts" gleaned from printed sources, and cobbling them
together into a smoothly written melange. Here the concept of
5The Times and the Democrat merged in December 1881, shortly after Marie Laveau's
death. Henry Castellanos, "The Voudous: Their History, Mysteries, and Practices," Times-
Democrat, June 24, 1894; New Orleans As It Was: Episodes of Louisiana Life (1895, reprint
ed., Gretna, La., 1990), 90-101. Castellanos (1828-1896) was a criminal lawyer and local-color
writer.
the mother-daughter duo, "Marie I" and "Marie II," was further
developed.6 Voodoo in New Orleans has been the primary vehicle
for the perpetuation of the Laveau legend, influencing virtually
everything written in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Only in the 1990s did a few scholars begin to reexamine the
role of Marie Laveau as a female religious leader and community
activist, harkening back to the acclamatory language of the 1881
obituaries while adding new claims of social activism.7
Ancestors
From Marie Laveau's 1881 obituaries in the Picayune, the City

Item, and the States originated some of the most persistent ele-
ments of the Laveau legend. Her father was reported to be "a
rich planter, who was prominent in all public affairs and served
in the Legislature of this State," implying that he was a white
man. Her mother, according to the newspapers, "was Marguerite
Henry . . . [a] beautiful woman of color." In reality, both of
Marie's parents were free mulattos.
Marie Laveau's maternal lineage begins with her enslaved
great-grandparents, Marguerite and Jean Belaire.8 At the age of
twenty Marguerite, along with her young daughter Catherine,
was listed in the 1756 property inventory of the white Creole
6Robert Tallant, Voodoo in New Orleans (1946; reprint ed., Gretna, La., 1983). Tallant
(1909-56) was a New Orleans author who served as an editorial assistant to Lyle Saxon, direc-
tor of the Louisiana Writers' Project.
7See Barbara Rosendale (Duggal), "Marie Laveau: The Voodoo Queen Repossessed," Folk-
lore and Mythology Studies, 15 (1991): 37-58, reprinted in Sybil Kein, Creole (Baton Rouge,
2000), 157-78; Ina Johanna Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen Marie Laveaux: A Study of
Spiritual Power and Female Leadership in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans" (Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Temple University, 1994); Rachelle Sussman, "Conjuring Marie Laveau: The Syncretic
Life of a Nineteenth-Century Voodoo Priestess in America" (M. A. thesis, Sarah Lawrence
College, 1998); Susheel Bibbs, Heritage of Power: Marie LaVeau-Mary Ellen Pleasant (San
Francisco, 1998); Sallie Ann Glassman, Vodou Visions: An Encounter with Divine Mystery
(New York, 2000); Martha Ward, Voodoo Queen: The Many-Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau
(Jackson, Miss., 2004).
8The identity of Marie Laveau's maternal great-grandparents is known from the will of h
grandmother, Catherine Henry, in which Catherine declared herself to be "the daughter of
Marguerite and of Jean Belaire, both dead a long time." Acts of Octave de Armas, vol. 10, p.
359-360, act 213, Notarial Archives Research Center (hereafter NARC); typed translation,
Robert Kornfeld, "Marie Laveau" manuscript, 1943, box 13, Lyle Saxon Papers, Special Col-
lections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University.
Henry Roche dit Belaire.9 Although Marguerite's partner, Jean

Belaire, appears nowhere in the records of the Roche family, his
name indicates that he was also the bondsman of Henry Roche
dit Belaire. Marguerite and Jean were probably among the Afri-
can captives imported to Louisiana from the area of the Senegal
and Gambia rivers by the French Company of the Indies between
1719 and 1743. Marguerite, and perhaps Jean as well, may have
been a Wolof from present-day Senegal, a people noted for their
trading and marketing traditions and considered to be extraordi-
narily intelligent and handsome.10 It may be from these ancestors
that Marie Laveau inherited her remarkable qualities.
Marie Laveau's grandmother Catherine, the daughter of Mar-
guerite and Jean Belaire, was born in the Roche household
around 1753, and there she spent the first thirty years of her life.
During that time she gave birth to two mixed-race children who
may have been fathered by Henry Roche. A Roche family inven-
tory of 1782 lists Catherine, a twenty-eight-year-old negress, her
mulatto infant Joseph, and an unnamed ten-year-old mulatto girl
who was likely Catherine's daughter Marguerite, the mother of
Marie Laveau.1" Catherine was sold in 1784, passed through the
hands of two more owners, and in 1788 became the property of
the free woman of color Francoise Pomet.12
9The 1756 inventory was included in the marriage contract of Henry Roche dit Belaire an
Catherine Laurandine, February 24, 1756, attached to the succession of Catalina Laurandine,
wife of Enrique Roche, September 11, 1782, document no. 748, file no. 3432, Judicial Records
of the Spanish Cabildo, microfilm The Historic New Orleans Collection (hereafter THNOC);
original in box 40, Louisiana Historical Center at the Old Mint, Louisiana State Museum (here-
after LHC). Such inventories often specified whether the slave was a Creole of Louisiana or a
native of Africa, sometimes stating his or her African nation, but the Roche inventory is silent
regarding Marguerite.
l?Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1995), 29-55;
"Slaves Landed in Louisiana by French Slave Trade: Numbers and Origins," 35; "French
Slave-Trade Ships from Africa to Louisiana," 60. While only one-third of the Africans brought
to Louisiana by the French were women, almost all of those women were Wolofs. Gwendolyn
Midlo Hall, "African Women in French and Spanish Louisiana: Origins, Roles, Family, Work,
Treatment," in Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie, eds., The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race
in the Early South (New York, 1997), 248-49.
111782 inventory attached to the succession of Catherine Laurandine, wife of Henry Roche
dit Belaire, document no. 748, file no. 3432, Judicial Records of the Spanish Cabildo, micro-
film THNOC; original in box 40, LHC.
12All slave transactions were located through Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's Louisiana Slave Da-
tabase and Louisiana Free Database 1719-1820 (Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana
History and Genealogy, 1699-1860, CD-ROM (Baton Rouge, 2000) and accessed at the
NARC. Sale of Catalina and two-year-old son Josef by Henrique Roche to Bartholeme
In 1795, at the age of forty-two, Catherine finally purchased her

freedom from Frantoise Pomet for 600 pesos cash. In 1798, she
bought a piece of property on the uptown side of St. Ann Street
between Rampart and Burgundy, and here she commissioned the
construction of the simple Creole cottage that would later become
famous as the home of Marie Laveau.13 By the 1820s she was us-
ing the name Catherine Henry, derived from Henry Roche dit
Belaire, her first owner and the possible father of her children.
Catherine Henry was enumerated in the 1820 census and was
listed in the city directory as a trader or marchande, meaning
that she sold foodstuffs or merchandise on the street or operated
a market stall. She died in 1831 at the age of seventy-eight.14
Catherine's daughter Marguerite was not sold along with her
mother, but remained enslaved in the household of Henry Roche
dit Belaire. In his 1788 will, Roche bequeathed the sixteen-year-
old mulatress to his legitimate daughter, Elizabeth. The condi-
tions of this will were not carried out, and the following year Mar-
guerite was sold from the succession of Henry Roche to Francois
Langlois. In 1790, Langlois freed Marguerite gratis for "good ser-
vices and various particular deeds."'15
Marguerite subsequently became the concubine of Frenchman
Henri D'Arcantel (1754-1817), chief official for the accounting
office of the army and royal household during the Spanish ad-
ministration. On various occasions she used the surnames
Henry, San Marre, and D'Arcantel. The Spanish census of 1795
Magnon, Acts of Raphael Perdomo, September 30, 1784, vol. 4, p. 426 verso; Sale of Catalina
and son Josef by Bartolom6 Magnon to Joseph Viscot (Bizot), Acts of Raphael Perdomo, Au-
gust 5, 1784, vol. 4, p. 430; Sale of Cathalina and nursing infant (probably her third child,
Celestin) by Josef Visot (Bizot) to Francisca Pomet f.w.c., Acts of Raphael Perdomo, August
12, 1788, vol. 12, p. 354, NARC.
13Emancipation of Catarina by Francisca Pomet, Acts of Carlos Ximines, January 13, 1795,
vol. 9, p. 12; Sale of lot on St. Ann Street by Miguel Meffre to Cathalina Pomet [Henry], Acts
of Pedro Pedesclaux, vol. 31, p. 185-186, NARC.
14United States Census for New Orleans 1820, Catherine Henry, Rue Ste. Anne, sheet 72,
line 11, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA). Funeral of Cath-
erine Henry, St. Louis Cathedral (hereafter SLC), June 18, 1831, vol. 9, part 1, p. 137, act 709,
Archdiocesan Archives (hereafter AA); all sacramental records cited are from the registers for
slaves and free persons of color.
15Will of Enrique Roche, Acts of Pedro Pedesclaux, April 26, 1788, vol. 3, p. 567, NARC;
Sale of Margarita to Fran,ois Langlois from the succession of Enrique Roche, no. 03-S-083-
001-1789, Hall, Louisiana Slave Database, original at LHC; Emancipation of Margarita by
Fran9ois Langlois, Acts of Pedro Pedesclaux, October 16, 1790, vol. 11, p. 720, NARC.
lists Henri D'Arcantel sharing his home in the Vieux Carre with a
free mulatress named Marguerite. The sacramental registers of
St. Louis Cathedral show that a free quadroon boy named Miguel
Germelo, son of Don Enrique D'Arcantel and Margarita San
Marre, free mulatress, was baptized in 1795 and died six months
later. Marguerite had at least three other children with DAr-
cantel: Marie Louise, Antoine, and Adelaide (Adelaide died at the
age of six in 1815). In his 1817 will, Henri D'Arcantel left a be-
quest to "the mulattress Marguerite who cared for me well in my
illness . . . to her married daughter Marie Louise . . . and to
[Marie Louise's] brother Antoine.",16
Although Marguerite's relationship with Henri D'Arcantel
lasted from about 1795 until his death in 1817, her famous
daughter, Marie Laveau, was born of a relationship with Charles
Laveaux. (Note that while Marie's name is popularly rendered as
Laveau, her father signed his name Laveaux). Laveaux was a
prosperous free man of color who traded in real estate and slaves
and owned several businesses. He was born about 1774 to a free
negress named Marie Laveaux. From several sources one hears
that he was the son of Charles Laveau Trudeau, surveyor general
under the Spanish government, but this claim is not supported by
archival evidence.17
16Hy. D'Arcantel and Marguerite, free mulatress, 1795 Census of New Orleans, Databases
of Household Censuses for New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola, compiled by Virginia
Meacham Gould, in Hall, Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy,
1699-1860; Baptism of Miguel Germelo D'Arcantel, SLC, July 30, 1795, vol. 5, 218, act 867;
funeral of Germano D'Arcantel, SLC, October 26, 1795, vol. 2, p. 133 verso. Funeral of Ade-
laide D'Arcantel, natural daughter of Marguerite, SLC, August 28, 1815, vol. 7, p. 36 verso, act
374, AA. Will of Henri D'Arcantel, October 22, 1817, Recorder of Wills, Will Books, vol. 3, p.
65-66, microfilm City Archives, New Orleans Public Library (hereafter NOPL); also cited by
Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 242. Marguerite Henry, deceased, was listed in Cath-
erine Henry's succession documents as one of Catherine's four natural children and the mother
of Marie Louise and Antoine D'Arcantel and of Marie Laveau. Quittance and discharge by the
heirs of the late Catherine Henry, Acts of Octave de Armas, November 28, 1832, vol. 17, act
547, NARC.
17Louisiana Writers' Project workers were obviously pursuing the connection between
Charles Laveaux and Charles Laveau Trudeau. Staff member Catherine Dillon refers to
Charles Laveaux in her unpublished "Voodoo" manuscript as "a descendant of the Laveau
Trudeau family." "Voodoo/Marie the Great," 8, folder 319, Louisiana Writers' Project files,
Federal Writers' Collection, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, La, Watson Memo-
rial Library, Cammie G. Henry Research Center (hereafter LWP). Mary Gehman, in her 1994
Free People of Color of New Orleans (New Orleans, 1994), 56, also makes this assertion, but
provides no documentation. Ina Fandrich, in her 1994 dissertation (pp. 244, 304, n. 19) repeats
the story, basing her statement on Charles Laveaux's "close association with members of the
Trudeau family," without offering any proof of this association. In Voodoo Queen (p. 67),
Owing to misinformation published in the 1881 obituaries,

there is considerable confusion regarding Marie's birth date. She
was reported by the newspapers to have been ninety-eight years
old at the time of her death, making her birth date 1783, and to
have married at the age of twenty-five, from which has been de-
duced a birth date of 1794. A quantity of archival evidence leads
me to conclude that her birth occurred in 1801. A September 16,
1801, entry in the St. Louis Cathedral Register of Baptisms of
Slaves and Free Persons of Color is probably hers: "Marie [no
surname], a free mulatto girl born the tenth day of this present
month, daughter of Marguerite, free mulatress, and an unknown
father." The godmother was called Catherine. The name of the
child's mother and godmother are consistent with those of Marie
Laveau's mother and grandmother. The six-day-old infant was
baptized by Fray Antonio de Sedella, better known as Pere An-
toine.18 Although Charles Laveaux's name does not appear on the
baptismal record, he later acknowledged Marie as his natural
daughter and maintained a close relationship with her."
Domestic Life
The 1881 obituaries spoke of Marie Laveau's marriage to the

carpenter Jacques Paris and of his mysterious disappearance or
death a year later. In this case, the Laveau legend is more or less
accurate. On July 27, 1819, Charles Laveaux accompanied Marie
to the notary's office to enact her marriage contract with Jacques
Paris, a free quadroon who had immigrated to New Orleans from
Saint-Domingue following the Haitian Revolution. As her wed-
ding dot, Laveaux gave his daughter a piece of property at 207
Love Street (now 1930 North Rampart) in the Faubourg Marigny.
Marie and Jacques were married by Fray Antonio Sedella at St.
Louis Cathedral on August 4, 1819.'9
Martha Ward shows Charles Laveau Trudeau and Marie Laveaux as the parents of Charles
Laveaux in her chart, "Genealogy of the Widow Paris born Laveau."
18Baptism of Maria, SLC, September 16, 1801, vol. 7, part 1, p. 41 verso, act 320, AA. Ina
Fandrich, writer of the 1994 dissertation on Marie Laveau, announced her discovery of this
baptismal record in "The Lowdown on Laveau-1801 baptismal certificate holds long-lost truth
about legendary voodoo priestess, researcher claims," Times-Picayune, February 17, 2002,
Metro section, B 1-2.
19Marriage contract between Santyaque Paris and Marie Laveaux, July 27, 1819, typed
translation LWP folder 319, p. 4a-6. This is cited by the LWP as Acts of Hugues Lavergne,
Although it is widely believed that Jacques Paris and Marie

Laveau had no children, baptismal records exist for two daugh-
ters, Marie Angelie and Felicite. Marie Angelie Paris, legitimate
child of Marie Laveau and Jacques Paris, was born November 27,
1822, and baptized in 1823. Felicite Paris was baptized in 1824.
The girl was stated to be seven years old at the time of her bap-
tism, meaning that she was born in 1817, two years before Marie
and Jacques were married. The baptismal register records Fe-
licite as the daughter of "the late Jacques Paris and [Marie] Cath-
erine Lilavoix [Laveau]."20 Marie Angelie and Felicite never re-
appear in the archival record-they most likely died in childhood.
The fate of Jacques Paris remains a mystery; no documentation of
his death has been discovered. His daughter Marie Angelie
would have been conceived in March 1822, and his demise or dis-
appearance could have occurred at any time after that. Marie
Laveau was henceforth known in official records as the Widow
Paris.
The obituaries also told of Marie Laveau's second marriage to
"Capt." Christophe Glapion, who "served with distinction" in
D'Aquin's colored Battalion of Men of Santo Domingo in the Bat-
tle of New Orleans. This has given rise to the notion that Chris-
tophe was a man of color from Saint-Domingue. By 1826, Marie
had indeed entered a relationship with Louis Christophe Dominic
Duminy de Glapion, but they were unable to marry because of
Louisiana's anti-miscegenation laws. Christophe Glapion was a
white man, the legitimate son of an aristocratic family of French
descent. His grandfather, the Chevalier Christophe de Glapion,
sieur du Mesnilgauches in the province of Normandy, had been a
Cabildo official under the Spanish administration. His father,
Denis Christophe Dominic Duminil de Glapion, was a planter in
St. John the Baptist Parish on the "German Coast" above New
Orleans. Christophe Glapion was born and baptized there in
1790.21 His 1815 military records reveal that he was a private in
vol. 1, act 5, and is listed as such in Lavergne's index, but the document is now missing. Mar-
riage of Santiago Paris and Maria Labeau, SLC, August 4, 1819, vol. 1, act 256, p. 59, AA.
20Baptism of Angelie Paris, SLC, February 14, 1823, vol. 18, act 13, p. 2 verso; baptism
Felicite Paris, SLC, November 17, 1824, vol. 18, act 857, p. 170, AA.
21The Glapion family is discussed in Stanley C. Arthur, Old Families of Louisiana (1931;
reprint ed., Baton Rouge, 1971), 68, and in Albert J. Robichaux, Jr., German Coast Families:
European Origins and Settlement in Colonial Louisiana (Rayne, La., 1997), 71. The Chevalier
de Glapion's service with the Cabildo is detailed in Laura Porteous, "Renunciation made by
Barthelemy Fabre D'Aunoy's all-white Company of Louisiana Mi-

.22
According to the Laveau legend, Marie Laveau acquired her

home on St. Ann Street through the agency of Voudou magic.
This tale originated with G. William Nott's 1922 Times-Picayune
article, "Marie Laveau, Long High Priestess of Voudouism in New
Orleans: Some Hitherto Unpublished Stories of the Voudou
Queen." In Nott's version, a wealthy young man was arrested for
a crime he did not commit. His father solicited the intervention
of Marie Laveau, offering a handsome reward if she would obtain
his son's release. On the day of the trial, Marie placed three
Guinea peppers in her mouth, prayed before the altar of St. Louis
Cathedral, then walked next door to the Cabildo and deposited
the three peppers under the judge's bench. When a verdict of not
guilty was announced, "The joy of the anxious father may well be
imagined. His first act was to find Marie Laveau, and as a recom-
pense for her miraculous intervention he gave her the deed to a
small cottage."23
As we have learned, the cottage at 152 St. Ann Street was ac-
tually the home of Marie's grandmother, Catherine Henry. In
1832, following Catherine's death, Christophe Glapion bought the
property from her succession.24 This dwelling is described in
printed sources and in the Louisiana Writers' Project interviews
as a typical four-room wooden Creole cottage with a low, sloping,
shingled roof, situated in a large yard full of flowers and fruit
trees and surrounded by a high fence. It was home to Marie and
Christophe for the rest of their lives, and their descendants con-
tinued to reside there until 1897.
Daniel Fagot of his office of Regidor and receiver of fines forfeited to the Royal Treasury of
this city to Don Cristoval de Glapion, 1776, translated from the original in the Cabildo at New
Orleans," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 14 (1931): 372-82. A copy of Christophe Glapion's
1790 baptismal record from St. Charles Borromeo church in St. John the Baptist parish was
deposited with the notary Felix de Armas, vol. 38, act 1, January 3, 1833, NARC.
22Muster roll of Capt. Barth6lemy Favre's (Fabr6 D'Aunoy's) Company of Louisiana Militia,
pension and bounty land files, War of 1812, NARA. Thanks to Ina Fandrich for directing the
author to this source.
23G. William Nott, "Marie Laveau, Long High Priestess of Voudouism," Times-Picayune
Sunday Magazine, November 19, 1922, 2.
24Purchase of St. Ann Street cottage by Christophe Glapion from sheriff's auction, Septem-
ber 28, 1832, Conveyance Office Book 12, p. 246, New Orleans Civil District Court.
Marie Laveau's 1881 obituaries stated that fifteen children

were the result of her marriage to Christophe Glapion. While
this is an exaggeration, it may be that the little house on St. Ann
Street indeed sheltered fifteen youngsters. Documentation exists
for seven daughters and sons born to Marie and Christophe:
Marie Heloise Euchariste (1827-1862), Marie Louise Caroline
(died in infancy, 1829), Christophe (died in infancy, 1831), Jean
Baptiste (died in infancy, 1832), Fransois (1833-1834), Marie
Philomene (1836-1897), and Archange (1838-1845).25 In addition,
Marie helped to raise the children of her daughters Heloise and
Philomene. The Picayune's Guide to New Orleans for 1897 also
reported that Marie "used to gather from the streets the young
orphans whom no one else laid claim to and give them the shelter
of her charitable roof."26
A recent addition to the Laveau legend suggests that Marie
Laveau and Christophe Glapion were anti-slavery activists, buy-
ing slaves in order to free them and participating in the activities
of the Underground Railroad. While we would like to believe that
Marie and Christophe attempted to subvert the institution of
slavery, the archival evidence proves otherwise. Between 1828
and 1854 the couple bought and sold eight slaves: Eliza, Molly
and her sons Richard and Louis, Peter, Irma and her son Ar-
mand, and Juliette. Peter, Irma, Armand, and Juliette were
short-term investments. Eliza, Molly, and Molly's children
served the Laveau-Glapion household for many years, but they
too were eventually sold.27
25Baptism of Marie Heloise Glapion, SLC, August 19, 1828, vol. 21, p. 220, act 1232. Bap-
tism of Marie Louise [Caroline] Glapion, SLC, September 10, 1829, vol. 22, act 317, p. 56;
funeral of Caroline Laveau, SLC, December 9, 1829, vol. 9, part 1, p. 2, act 8. Funeral of
Christophe (no surname, natural child of Marie Laveau), SLC, May 21, 1831, vol. 9, part 1, p.
129, act 848. Funeral of Jean Baptiste Paris (natural child of Marie Laveau), SLC, July 12,
1832, vol. 9, part 2, p. 274, act 1730. Baptism of Fran,ois Glapion, SLC, May 13, 1834, vol.
23, part 3, p. 403, act 2715; funeral of Fran,ois Glapion, SLC, May 18, 1834, vol. 10, part 3, p.
301, act 2019. Baptism of Ph6lonise Lavan, SLC, April 1, 1836, vol. 25, act 100, p. 35; cor-
rected baptism of Philomene Glapion, SLC, May 31, 1836, unnumbered vol. for 1838, act 363.
Birth Certificate for Philomene Glapion, Orleans Parish, vol. 4: 159, Louisiana Division of
Archives, Records Management, and History, Baton Rouge (hereafter LDA). Baptism of Ar-
change Edouard (no surname, child of Marie, libre), SLC, May 7, 1839, unnumbered vol. for
1838, act 438. Death certificate for Archange Glapion, January 9, 1845, vol. 10, p. 297, LDA.
26Picayune's Guide to New Orleans 1897, 32-33, NOPL.
27Sale of Eliza by John Woolfolk to Christophe Glapion, Acts of Carlisle Pollock,

March 14, 1828, vol. 24, p. 178; sale of Peter by Arnold Bodin to Christophe Glapion, Acts of
Joseph Lisbony, April 12, 1848, vol. 3, act 84; sale of Peter by Christophe Glapion to Pierre
The notion of Marie and Christophe's anti-slavery stance re-

sults from the fact that three of these slaves, Irma, Armand, and
Juliette, were designated as statu liber. This term is defined in
the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825: "Slaves for a time or statu libri
[the singular is liber] are those who have acquired the right of
being free at a time to come, or on a condition that is not yet ful-
filled, or in a certain event that has not happened, but who, in the
mean time, remain in a state of slavery."28 They were usually less
expensive than "slaves for life."
The notarial acts detailing the sale of Irma and Juliette to
Marie Laveau were first discovered by Ina Fandrich and included
in her 1994 dissertation "Mysterious Voodoo Queen Marie
Laveaux: A Study of Spiritual Power and Female Leadership in
Nineteenth-Century New Orleans." Here Fandrich asserted that
although Marie and Christophe "occasionally engaged in buying
and selling enslaved persons," this was "not an investment strat-
egy, but was always connected with a stipulation to liberate their
'purchase."' This claim was subsequently repeated by Susheel
Bibbs (Heritage of Power, 1998), and Martha Ward (Voodoo
Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau, 2004).29 Examination
of the chain of ownership for Irma and Juliette shows that it was
not Marie Laveau or Christophe Glapion who made the promise
of liberty to these women, nor was it they who freed them.
In 1838, Marie Laveau paid $750 cash to the merchant Pierre
Oscar Peyroux for Irma, a twenty-year-old quadroon, designated
as statu liber. Along with Irma came her twenty-one-month-old
Maurice Mervoyer, Acts of Jean Agaisse, October 24, 1849, vol. 7, act 109, p. 220. Sale
Molly and her son Richard by Pierre Joseph Tricou to Marie Laveau, Acts of Carlisle Pollock,
February 7, 1838, vol. 60, p. 19. On November 5, 1840, Marie sold Molly, Richard, and her
new child Louis to Christophe Glapion for $800 (this was obviously a simulated sale made for
the purpose of paying Marie's debt to Tricou, and Molly and her children stayed in the Laveau-
Glapion household), Acts of Achille Chiapella, November 5, 1840, vol. 3, act 325, p. 633,
NARC.
28Article 37, Louisiana Civil Code of 1825.
29Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 253, 309 n. 53. Bibbs, Heritage of Power: Marie
LaVeau-Mary Ellen Pleasants, 19, 58. Ward, Voodoo Queen, 13, 80-88. Ward also cites the
case of the slave Alexandrine, known as "Ninine," who was purchased, statu liber, by Jean
Jacques Christophe Paris on May 19, 1838, and sold ten days later to Adrien Dumartrait. Acts
of L. T. Caire, vol. 65A, act 407, NARC. Ward construes this to mean that Christophe
Glapion, masquerading as Jacques Paris, had bought Ninine in order to unite her with Dumar-
trait, her white lover, who would subsequently free her. City directories and civil records,
however, prove that Jean Jacques Christophe Paris was not Glapion in disguise, but a clerk
who lived near Marie Laveau in the Vieux Carre and died in 1843.
daughter, Coralie, who was already free. In conformity with the

stipulation of the Black Code against separating children under
ten from their mothers, Coralie was to stay with Irma until her
tenth birthday. No instructions regarding Irma's manumission
were included in the act of sale, but it was specified that she was
not to be mortgaged or sold.30
The Peyroux family, including Pierre Peyroux's wife and chil-
dren and his unmarried sister Constance, lived around the corner
from Marie and Christophe on the corner of Burgundy and Du-
maine. Pierre Peyroux had acquired Irma from Constance Pey-
roux for $1,500, paying Constance half the price and owing the
remainder. He subsequently signed a promise of freedom in
which he agreed, as a "mark of his benevolence," that Irma would
be free when she reimbursed him for her purchase price of
$1,500-plus the legal fees for her emancipation-and Peyroux in
turn repaid the $750 owed to his sister.3"
While in Marie Laveau's possession, Irma gave birth to a son,
Armand, who, following the status of his mother, was also statu
liber.32 Marie subsequently used Irma and Armand as collateral
for a loan, violating the terms of her purchase agreement with
Pierre Peyroux. On October 21, 1839, she returned Irma, Coralie,
and one-year-old Armand to Peyroux's sister Constance for a re-
fund of $750. It was stipulated in the notarial act that as soon as
Irma, or a third party acting on her behalf, paid the other half of
the original $1,500 purchase price, she and all her children-
Coralie, Armand, and any others to whom she might give birth-
would be free.33
30Sale of Irma by Pierre Oscar Peyroux to Marie, f.w.c., Widow of Santiague Paris, Acts of
L. T. Caire, August 10, 1838, vol. 66A, act 594 (569), p. 235-36, NARC. This sale is also cited
in Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 309 n. 52, and Ward, Voodoo Queen, 86-7.
31Sale of Irma by Constance Peyroux to Pierre Oscar Peyroux, Acts of L. T. Caire, Febru-
ary 13, 1838, vol. 63A, p. 166, act 87 (86); promise of freedom by Pierre 0. Peyroux to the
slave Irma, Acts of L. T. Caire, May 19, 1838, vol. 65A, p. 346, act 411, NARC.
32Article 196 of the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825 states that "The child born of a woman
after she has acquired the right of being free at a future time follows the condition of the
mother and becomes free at the time fixed for her enfranchisement, even if the mother should
die before that time."
33Sale of Irma by Widow L. Paris to Demoiselle C. Peyroux, Acts of L. T. Caire, Octo-

ber 21, 1839, act 676, NARC. A receipt from the Bureau of Mortgages, also dated October 21,
was attached to the act of sale as proof that the Widow Paris had repaid the mortgage of $35.88
from Fernand Durcy resulting from "a judgement rendered by the city court dated February 23,
1833."
Irma never raised the funds to procure her freedom. She died
three years later "at the home of her mistress [Constance Pey-
roux] corner Dumaine and Burgundy." The St. Louis Cathedral
funeral record describes her as an "American quadroon, natural
daughter of an unknown father, and Helene, mulatress slave of
Mademoiselle C. Peyroux."34 Irma's children, Coralie and Ar-
mand, were emancipated by the Peyroux family in 1850.35
In 1843, Christophe Glapion purchased the eighteen-year-old
mulatress Juliette for the bargain price of $210. The notarial act
refers to this young woman as "Juliette-called Nounoute-born
September 1, 1825 and baptized with the name Clemence, daugh-
ter of Alexandrine, slave of Jeanne Gabrielle Redonne, the Widow
of Jean Baptiste Montignac." Like Irma, Juliette was designated
as statu liber. Glapion bought her with the understanding, re-
sulting from the promise of her deceased mistress, that she was
to be emancipated on her twenty-fifth birthday, September 1,
1850.36
Juliette made repeated attempts to escape from bondage.
When she was acquired by Christophe Glapion, having already
passed through two owners after being sold from the succession of
Madame Montignac, she was described as being prone to mar-
ronage (running away). Christophe sold Juliette three months
later, revealing, when required to list her defects, that "the slave
absented herself while in his possession."37
Juliette changed hands twice more before she was purchased by
Marie Laveau, again for $210, in 1847. Marie assumed the obli-
gation to free Juliette on the first of September, 1850.38 True to
34Funeral of Irma, slave of Constance Peyroux, SLC, March 22, 1842, vol. 11, part 2
(slaves), p. 312, act 766, AA.
35Slaves Emancipated by the Council of Municipality No. 1 (May 27, 1846-June, 1850),
May 7, 1850, microfilm NOPL.
36Will of Jeanne Gabrielle Bidonne [sic], Widow of Jean Baptiste Montignac, July 19, 1841,
filed with Judge Joachim Bermudez, Will Book 6, p. 356 and 361, microfilm NOPL.
37Sale of Juliette by Pierre Allarde (testamentary executor of Jeanne Gabrielle Redonne,

Widow of Jean Baptiste Montignac) to Catherine Victoire Racquie, September 21, 1841, Acts
of Paul Bertus, vol. 2, act 136 sale of Juliette by Madame Racquie to Leonard Levesque, Acts
of Paul Bertus, September 5, 1842, vol. 3, act 99; sale of Juliette by Leonard Levesque to
Christophe Glapion, Acts of Jean Agaisse, August 17, 1843, vol. 1, p. 108, act 48; sale of Juli-
ette by Christophe Glapion to Gustave Ducros, Acts of Charles Boudousquie, November 11,
1843, vol. 13A, act 19 1, NARC.
38Sale of Juliette by Gustave Ducros to Marie Marsoudet, Acts of Charles Boudousquie,

June 8, 1846, vol. 21, act 128. Sale of Juliette by Marie Marsoudet to Pierre Monette f.m.c.,
MARIE LAVEAU, A NINETEENTH-CENTURY VOUDOU PRIESTESS 277
form, Juliette ran away, and was discovered in the home of Char-
lotte Miles, a free woman of color. According to Miles, "Nounoun"
represented herself as free and had formed an alliance with a
"white Frenchman named Jean who walked arm in arm with her
in the street."39 Juliette had been missing for most of the time
that Marie Laveau owned her. Marie made a profit when she
sold Juliette for $300 to a free woman of color named Sanite Cou-
vreure, who kept the slave for a little over a year before re-selling
her. Juliette was formally emancipated by her final owner, Au-
gustus Reichard, in 1852, two years after the date agreed upon in
every act of sale.40
Christophe Glapion, like many New Orleanians of the time,
speculated in stocks, loans, land, and slaves. Owing to a series of
unwise business decisions, by the 1850s he was deeply in debt to
the Citizens Bank of Louisiana. He also may have been ill and
feared that his death was imminent. Probably desperate to put
his affairs in order, he tried unsuccessfully to collect his military
pension and bounty lands, disposed of his real estate holdings,
and sold the family's remaining slaves.
In 1850, Christophe sold Molly's son Richard, by then a "likely"
young man of fifteen, to the notorious slave trader Elihu Cres-
well.4' In 1852, Christophe sold Molly and her eleven-year-old
son Louis to the free man of color Philippe Ross, a family friend.
Molly had served the Laveau-Glapion family for twelve years. In
Acts of Charles Boudousquie, June 20, 1846, vol. 21, act 135. Sale of Juliette by Pierre Mon
ette to Marie Laveau, November 15, 1847, Acts of Paul Laresche, act 223, NARC. Sale of
Juliette to Laveau also cited in Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 309 n. 52, and Ward,
Voodoo Queen, 87-8.
39State v. Charlotte Miles. The defendant was charged with harboring the runaway No
oun [Juliette], slave of "Madame Parisse," First District Count, 1848, quoted in Virginia
Meacham Gould, "In Full Enjoyment of Their Liberty: The Free Women of Color of the Gulf
Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola, 1769-1860" (Ph.D. dissertation, Emory Univer-
sity, 1991), 160.
40Sale of Juliette by Marie Laveau to Sanit6 Couvreure, f.w.c., Acts of Jean Agaisse,
April 27, 1848, vol. 6, act 42, p. 79-80; sale of Juliette by Sanit6 Couvreure to Augustus Reich-
ard, Acts of Jean Agaisse, March 24, 1849, vol. 7, p. 50, act 23, NARC; manumission of Juli-
ette by Augustus Reichard, Acts of Achille Chiapella, May 22, 1852, vol. 27, act 385, p. 1153,
NARC.
41Sale of Richard by Christophe Glapion to Elihu Creswell, Acts of S. H. Lewis, March

1850, Conveyance Office Book 51, p. 475. For more on Creswell, see Walter Johnson, Soul
Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 120, 168, and Jud
K. Schafer, Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 199
178-79.
1854, Christophe finally sold Eliza, after twenty-six years of ser-

vice, to Pierre Monette, also a free man of color and family
friend.42
When Christophe Glapion died without a will on June 26, 1855,
the Laveau-Glapion family was plunged into financial crisis. The
St. Ann Street cottage, which was in Christophe's name, was
seized and sold at a sheriffs auction to satisfy his creditors and
pay for his funeral. He had no other financial assets.
Marie Laveau is said to have accumulated wealth, property,
and power through her Voudou practice, extending her influence
to every segment of New Orleans society and controlling the ac-
tions of policemen, judges, and city officials. Her innate spiritual
abilities were supposedly augmented by the family secrets
gleaned from her work as a hairdresser, and by her network of
spies among the servants of the elite. In actuality, Marie was
never wealthy. In 1855 she lacked the funds to buy her own
home, and the Citizens Bank of Louisiana, the judge, and the
sheriff were not intimidated by the fact that she was the famous
Queen of the Voudous. Marie, her daughters, and her grandchil-
dren would have been evicted had their friend Philippe Ross not
purchased the cottage from the sheriffs auction and charitably
allowed the family to continue living there.43 It was only twenty
years later that Marie's daughter Philomene was able to put the
property in her own name and donate legal use of it to her
mother.44
Voudou
New Orleans Voudou grew out of traditions introduced by the

first enslaved Africans and combined with European magic and
42Sale of Molly and Louis to Philippe Ross f.m.c., Acts of A. E. Bienvenu, April 26, 1850,
vol. 5, act 63. Sale of Eliza by Christophe Glapion to Pierre Monette, f.m.c., Acts of A.E. Bi-
envenu, April 26, 1854, vol. 5, act 62, NARC.
43Death certificate for Christophe Glapion, June 26, 1855, vol. 17, p. 42, microfilm NOPL.
Citizens' Bank of Louisiana v. Estate of Christophe Glapion, docket no. 10.323, Fifth District
Court, original document in NOPL. Purchase of 152 St. Ann by Pierre Crocker, f.m.c., agent
for Phillipe Ross, f.m.c., from sheriffs auction, July 23, 1855, Conveyance Office Book 68, p.
332, Civil District Court.
44Sale of 152 St. Ann for $2,000 by Eugenie Alsar, Widow of Philippe Ross, to Philomene
Glapion; donation of usufruct of 152 St. Ann by Philomene Glapion to Marie Laveau, May 13,
1876, Acts of Octave de Armas, vol. 97, act 56, NARC.
folk Catholicism. This emerging religion was reinforced by the

arrival of refugees fleeing the Haitian revolution during the early
nineteenth century. Two-thirds of these newcomers were Afri-
cans or people of African descent, and an undetermined number
were devotees of Vodou (the preferred spelling for the Haitian
religion). New Orleans Voudou also absorbed the "conjure" be-
liefs of blacks imported from Maryland, Virginia, and the Caroli-
nas during the slave trade of the 1830s-50s. Nineteenth-century
newspaper articles and the Louisiana Writers' Project interviews
demonstrate that the religion practiced by Marie Laveau and her
followers represents a blend of African, European, and Haitian
influences that is unique in North America.
Although Voudou was a favorite topic of nineteenth-century
New Orleans journalists, there is almost no published documen-
tation of Marie Laveau's role as a Voudou priestess. We can only
speculate that sometime in the 1820s or 1830s she assumed lead-
ership of a multiracial religious congregation and began to hold
weekly ceremonies at her home on St. Ann Street, provide consul-
tations and gris-gris for clients, and preside over the annual St.
John's Eve celebrations at Lake Pontchartrain.
During the antebellum period, newspaper coverage focused on
police disruption of Voudou ceremonies and the arrest of partici-
pants for "illegal assembly" of slaves and free persons. The earli-
est such article, titled "Idolatry and Quackery," appeared in the
Louisiana Gazette in 1820. The Gazette reported that "For some
time past, a house in the suburb Treme [the neighborhood behind
the Vieux Carre] has been used as a temple for certain occult
practices and the idolatrous worship of an African deity called
Vaudoo. It is said that many slaves and some free people [includ-
ing one white man] repaired there of nights to practice supersti-
tious, idolatrous rites, to dance, carouse, &c." Among the ritual
objects seized by the police was the "image of a woman, whose
lower extremities resemble a snake."45
The most detailed descriptions come from June and July of
1850, when the Third Municipality Guard conducted a series of
raids on Voudou services, arresting female slaves, free women of
color, and white women on charges of illegal assembly.46 The
45"Idolatry and Quackery," Louisiana Gazette, August 16, 1820.
46Third Municipality Guard, Mayor's Book 1838-1850, vol. 7, June 27, 1850, p. 495, mic
film NOPL; also cited by Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 496, 234, n. 33; Third Mu-
priestess cited in the police reports and newspaper stories was

not Marie Laveau, but a free negress named Betsy Toledano, who
claimed to be practicing the religion learned from her African
grandmother. Ceremonies, consisting of chanting and dancing,
were held in a remote wooded area near the St. Bernard Canal
and at Milneberg on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. A "large
quantity of nonsensical paraphernalia" such as "banners, wands,
[and] enchanted rods" was reported to have been confiscated by
the guardsmen.47 Betsy Toledano and her co-religionists were
also arrested at Toledano's home on Bienville Street in the Vieux
Carre. The Daily Crescent described "the rude chapel [with] walls
hung round with colored prints of the saints," and an altar on
which were found "bowls . .. containing stones varying from the
size of gravel to the largest pavers," and "goblets and vases filled
with unknown liquids."48
Marie Laveau was never listed among those arrested during
the summer crackdown of 1850. She did, however, lodge a com-
plaint against the Third Municipality Guard for confiscating a
wooden statue to which she laid claim.49 In this first appearance
of her name in the New Orleans newspapers, the Daily Picayune
reported that "Marie Laveau, otherwise Widow Paris ... the head
of the Voudou women, yesterday appeared before Recorder
Seuzeneau and charged Watchman Abreo . . . with having by
fraud come into possession of a statue of a virgin worth fifty dol-
lars." The Daily Delta described this object as "a quaintly carved
figure resembling something between a centaur and an Egyptian
nicipality Guard, Mayor's Book 1838-1850, vol. 7, July 2, 1850, p. 507, microfilm NOPL. Th
Third Municipality consisted of the Faubourg Marigny (the neighborhood below the Vieux
Carr6) and outlying areas extending back toward Lake Pontchartrain.
47"Great Doings in the Third Municipality," Daily Picayune, June 29, 1850; "A Singular
Assemblage," Bee, June 29, 1850; "A Mystery of the Old Third," Daily Crescent, June 29,
1850; "Another Voudou Affair," Daily Crescent, July 4, 1850; "More Voudouism," Weekly
Delta, July 8, 1850.
48"The Rites of Voudou," Daily Crescent, July 31, 1850; "The Voudous in the First Munici-
pality," Louisiana Courier, July 30, 1850; "Unlawful Assemblies," Daily Picayune, July 31,
1850; "More of the Voudous," Daily Picayune, July 31, 1850.
49Third Municipality Recorder's Office Judicial Record Books, 1840-1852, vol. 3, State v.
Abreo, July 2, 1850, p. 206; Third Municipality Guard Mayor's Book, vol. 7, June 30, 1850, p.
502, microfilm NOPL.
mummy."50 This, of course, brings to mind the "woman with the

lower extremities of a snake" described in the 1820 Louisiana
Gazette article. The fact that Marie was referred to as the "head
of the Voudou women" seems to indicate that, although Betsy
Toledano acted as both scapegoat and spokeswoman, Marie
Laveau was actually the reigning queen.
Marie Laveau's name reappeared in the local news columns on
July 11, 1859, when it was reported that she had been summoned
before the recorder's court of the Third District.5" According to
the Crescent, "the notorious hag who reigns over the ignorant and
superstitious as the Queen of the Voudous was complained of by
her neighbor, Bernardo Rodriguez, residing on Love Street be-
tween Union and Bagatelle ... for disturbing his peace and that
of the neighborhood with their fighting and obscenity and infer-
nal singing and yelling. . . . A description of the orgies would
never do to put in respectable print." Although the newspapers
reported that "Her majesty, Queen Marie, was duly sent after,"
there was no further coverage of the incident, and the outcome is
unknown.52
The most important of the Voudou ceremonies was held on St.
John's Eve (June 23) on the Lake Pontchartrain shore between
Spanish Fort and Milneburg. During the Reconstruction era be-
tween 1863 and 1877, and continuing into the Jim Crow years of
the 1880s and 1890s, newspaper coverage focused on this event.
The Voudou community, led by Marie Laveau, presumably had
celebrated St. John's Eve at the lakeshore for decades. The first
newspaper account of the event, however, did not appear until
June 5, 1869. The local news column of the Commercial Bulletin
50"Curious Charge of Swindling," Daily Picayune, July 3, 1850; "Recorder Seuzenea

Court," Louisiana Courier, July 3, 1850; "Obtaining a Statue under False Pretenses," Daily
Delta, July 3, 1850; "The Virgin of the Voudous," Daily Delta, August 10, 1850.
5'Each of New Orleans' three municipalities (later districts) had an elected magistrate called
a recorder who handled minor infractions like vagrancy, larceny, drunkenness, assault and
battery, prostitution, and unlawful assembly-the charge under which Voudou devotees were
usually arrested.
52"Local Intelligence-Recorder Long's Court," Daily Crescent, July 12, 1859; "Supersti-
tious," Daily Picayune, July 12, 1859; "Police Matters-Recorder Long's Court," Daily True
Delta, July 12, 1859. Marie Laveau indeed owned property at 207 Love Street between Union
and Bagatelle, the gift of her father on the occasion of her marriage to Jacques Paris; in 1832
she donated it to her young daughter Marie Heloise Euchariste Glapion. The city directory for
1859 indicates that 207 Love Street was occupied by Melas Wilder's Grocery and Coal Yard,
not by any member of the Laveau-Glapion family. It is nevertheless possible that Marie
Laveau or her daughter were using this location as a Voudou temple.
reported that "June is the time devoted by the voodoo worshipers

to the celebration of their most sacred and therefore most revolt-
ing rites. Midnight dances, bathing and eating, together with
other less innocent pleasures, make the early summer a time of
unrestrained orgies for the blacks." Here we find another of the
rare appearances of the name Marie Laveau, and this only to an-
nounce her retirement: "This season is marked by the coronation
of a new voodoo queen in the place of the celebrated Marie
Laveau, who has held her office for a quarter of a century and is
now superannuated in her seventieth year."53
Every summer throughout the 1870s, New Orleans journalists
made the trip to Lake Pontchartrain on St. John's Eve, always
hoping to see the Queen of the Voudous, and always disap-
pointed. Undeterred, the newspapers continued to publish their
annual St. John's Eve "orgy stories" of bonfires, bloody animal
sacrifice, savage drumming, chanting, dancing, drunkenness,
nude bathing, and prostitution. Many reporters were of the opin-
ion that the St. John's Eve celebrations had degenerated from a
genuine African-based religious observance into "a time of unre-
strained license for the negroes, when they can get drunk and
indulge in their idiotic pranks without fear of interference from
the police."54
In 1875, the St. John's Eve festivities were covered by virtually
every newspaper in town-the Bee, the Commercial Bulletin, the
Picayune, and the Times. The Times article, describing a cere-
mony held at the end of the Milneburg wharf, was particularly
detailed and has a ring of authenticity: "Stretched on the floor in
the middle of the room was a sheet, the corners of which were
ornamented by bouquets in china vases. At each side and be-
tween the bouquets stood a lighted candle, and in the center a
great nougat pyramid. The lateral intervals were further fur-
nished with plates containing cake and bonbons, and bottles of
majorca, whiskey, brandy, vinegar, and water." Three men and
three women "moved to and fro in a monotonous, swaying dance
... accompanying themselves [with] an unintelligible chant, as
53"Voodooism," Commercial Bulletin, June 25, 1869.
54"Voudou Vagaries-The Worshipers of Obeah Turned Loose," Times, June 26, 1874.
Blake Touchstone, in his article "Voodoo in New Orleans," Louisiana History, 13 (1972): 380,
noted that during the St. John's Eve ceiebrations some "entrepreneurial Voodoos profited from
curious spectators ... charging admission to old shanties where [mulatto girls] served as danc-
ers and harlots."
dreary as their motions.... [Then] the chant changed to a discord

more rapid and grotesque.... The group seemed suddenly to be-
come excited, their contortions increased, they clung to each other
in a state of semi-frenzy, and one woman, reeling over apparently
in an epileptic fit, fell to the floor." One of the men seized a bottle
of wine from off the white sheet and "distributed it plentifully
over the room, sprinkling it upon the company."
The priest appears to have been possessed by Dambala, the ser-
pent deity of Haitian Vodou: "He closed his eyes, protruded his
head, and, hissing like a snake, moved about [like] a madman.
Circling the entire apartment, he seized each spectator by two
hands, and giving them a nervous shake, dropped them to clasp
those of another.... Swallowing a mouthful of liquid from one of
the bottles he squirted it over the victim's entire face and body."
Some of the participants were "taken bodily upon the back of the
operator and borne around the room." The "work was still in en-
thusiastic progress" when the Times reporter left at 3:30 in the
morning."5
The Louisiana Writers' Project interviews provide a valuable
counterpoint to these journalistic portrayals of Voudou. The
Writers' Project, a program created during the Great Depression
under the auspices of the federal Works Projects Administration,
was directed by Lyle Saxon between 1936 and 1943. Because
Saxon had a particular interest in Marie Laveau and Voudou, he
dispatched his fieldworkers to collect archival material and inter-
view elderly black New Orleanians on the topic. The informants,
many of whom had grown up in Marie's St. Ann Street neighbor-
hood, were born between 1853 and 1878. While some narrators
seem to be describing the original Marie Laveau-the elderly
Widow Paris who died in 1881-few of them could have seen her
as the officiating priestess. Many spoke of a younger woman,
known to them as "Marie Laveau," who lived in the home of the
Widow Paris and would have been continuing the traditions es-
tablished by the first Marie.
Writers' Project informant Marie Dede (b. 1866) grew up in the
St. Ann Street neighborhood, and as a child was constantly in
and out of the Laveau-Glapion cottage to play with Marie
Laveau's grandchildren. Mrs. Dede recalled that Marie would not
55"Fetish Worship-St. John's Eve at Milneburg-A Voudou's Incantation-Midnight

Scenes and Orgies," Times, June 25, 1875. See also "St. John's Eve-After the Voudous-
Some Singular Ceremonies-A Night in Heathenness," Daily Picayune, June 25, 1875.
let the children enter the front room, which was used for services,
but "we used to peep in there all the time. She had so many can-
dles burning ... I don't see how that house never caught on fire.
... She had all kinds of saints' pictures and flowers on the altar."
Marie Laveau also "had a big [statue ofl St. Anthony ... and she
would turn him upside down on his head in her yard when she
had 'work' to perform."56 St. Anthony was traditionally enlisted to
find lost articles and bring back strayed lovers. Marie Laveau's
inverting the figure to arouse the spirit and induce him to act in
her behalf is an example of "reversal of the normal order," a prac-
tice found in both European and African-American magic.
Several of the male interviewees had been members of Marie
Laveau's Voudou congregation. These men also described altars
in the cottage on St. Ann Street. According to Raymond Rivaros
(b. 1876), "In the front room she had an altar for ... good luck
charms, money-making charms, husband-holding charms. On
this altar she had a statue of St. Peter and St. Marron, a colored
saint." St. Peter, analogous to the Haitian Vodou spirit Legba, is
believed to open the door to the spirit world, guard the home
against intruders, invite customers into one's place of business,
and remove barriers to success. St. Marron, a folk saint unique to
New Orleans, was the patron of runaway slaves; the name de-
rives from the French word marron, meaning a runaway.
In the back room, said Rivaros, Marie had an altar for bad
work. On it she prepared charms to kill, to drive away, to break
up love affairs, and to spread confusion. It was surmounted by
statues of "a bear, a lion, a tiger, and a wolf." Charles Raphael (b.
1868) corroborated Rivaros's description. The altar in the back of
the house, he said, "took the width of the room, and had large
plaster statues of a bear, lion, and tiger, paper flowers, and can-
dles. She had a big statue of the Sacred Heart [of Jesus] in the
bedroom."57
56Marie Ded6, interview by Robert McKinney, n.d. In this and other LWP interviews I h
converted the stereotypical "Negro dialect" in which these interviews were originally written to
standard English spelling. Unless otherwise specified, the Marie Laveau interviews are found
in Louisiana Writers' Project (hereafter LWP) folder 25, Northwestern State University of
Louisiana at Natchitoches, Watson Memorial Library, Cammie G. Henry Research Center,
Federal Writers' Collection.
57Raymond Rivaros, interview by Hazel Breaux, n.d. Charles Raphael, interview by Hazel
Breaux and Jacques Villere, n.d., LWP.
The LWP informants called Marie Laveau's weekly ceremonies

parterres or layouts, referring to the custom of "spreading a feast
for the spirits" on a white cloth on the ground or the floor, on
which were arranged offerings of herbs, food, liquor, candles, and
coins. (Note that the 1875 New Orleans Times article also refers
to this practice.) The music at these services was provided by a
group of young singers and an old man who played the accordion.
A core group of devotees, called "co-workers" were always pre-
sent.
Raymond Rivaros told his interviewer, "The color of [Marie's]
dress depended on the work she was doing; brown was for bad
work, white and blue for good work. Her co-workers wore the
same color dress.... They were all barefoot. Zizi played ... the
accordion.... There was a big chair, like they use in church for
the bishop, and Marie sat in it at the opening of the meeting.
Then she would tell the people to ask for what they want, sprin-
kle them with rum, and start the dances . . . I have seen those
men turn the women over like a top. They had large handker-
chiefs that they would put around the women's waist, and would
they shake! There were more white people at the meetings than
colored. The meeting lasted from seven to nine o'clock and they
would have things to eat and drink."58
In addition to holding regular services for her followers, Marie
Laveau also gave private consultations and made and sold gris-
gris. While some informants declared that Marie was a kind and
charitable woman whose fundamental purpose was service to her
community, most were of the opinion that she marketed her ex-
pertise to whoever could pay the highest price. According to Jo-
seph Alfred (b. 1855), Marie Laveau "only worked for the rich
people. She never went to jail either. She was in with all of the
lawyers, policemen, judges, and big city officials." Marie Dede
said that clients "paid [Marie Laveau] plenty of money to win
cases in the courts or to get husbands for them. She got a hun-
dred dollars for getting a man for a white woman. The colored
people could not afford her high price." But we also hear that
Marie worked pro bono for community members who needed help.
According to Raymond Rivaros, "A poor woman came crying to
Marie that her son was in jail but she had no money. Marie
Laveau told her to go home and not to worry. Within an hour she
58Rivaros interview.
came to the woman's house with the son and never asked a penny
for her work."59
A number of the LWP interviewees offered their recollections of
the annual St. John's Eve ceremonies. Their accounts differ
widely, but most agreed that there were bonfires, bathing in the
lake, chanting and dancing, and a communal feast. Some inter-
viewees emphasized the religious aspect of St. John's Eve, and
others spoke of it as a celebratory and even commercial event, at
which white "sports" would pick up women of color. Those who
described events of the late 1870s and 1880s must have been re-
ferring to the second Marie Laveau.
Oscar Felix (b. 1868) provided a detailed description of the St.
John's Eve celebrations, which were held outdoors on the lake
shore near Milneburg. An altar was surmounted by a big cross
and held candles, offerings, and pictures of St. Peter and St.
John. "They celebrated St. John's Day because they wanted to be
like him. He was a great man and always did what was right."
The service began with Roman Catholic prayers. "Everybody
would kneel before the altar and rap on the ground three times,
one-two-three . . . in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. After that we would sing in Creole . . . the leader would
begin with praise to St. John. [It] was just like a mass in a regu-
lar church."
Following the religious portion of the ceremony, said Mr. Felix,
the participants would dance: "One man would have two women
on each side of him and they would put metal rings on their knees
that would jingle and rattle. He would first turn one [woman]
around and then he would turn the other ... then he would dance
with one and then the other." After the dance, "everybody would
bow down on their knees . . . and say the 'Our Father.' Of course
we all would stay afterwards and eat and drink and have a good
time. There was chicken ... cakes, and liquor ... also red beans
and rice to eat."60
Charles Raphael had also been a participant in the St. John's
Eve ceremonies. He recalled that the worshipers did the "fe
chauffe" dance-the name derives from faire chauffer, meaning
"make it hot" or "heat it up." These dances, according to Mr.
59Joseph Alfred, interview by Robert McKinney, n.d., LWP; Dede interview; Rivaros inter-
view, LWP.
60Oscar Felix, interview by Edmund Burke, March 14, 1940, LWP.
Raphael, resembled those of the "bands of Negroes who dress in

Indian Chief costumes on Mardi Gras and dance on the Claiborne
Avenue neutral ground."'6l
By the late nineteenth century the legal system, public opinion,
and the Christian churches were united in their crusade against
African-based religion and magic. Private ceremonies and the St.
John's Eve celebrations at Lake Pontchartrain were routinely
broken up by the police, and New Orleans Voudou, as an organ-
ized religion, was going underground.
Final Years
After Marie Laveau's alleged retirement from leadership of the

Voudou congregation in 1869, she devoted her time to charitable
works and the Roman Catholic faith. An 1871 Daily Picayune
article reports her erecting altars at the parish prison, where she
comforted and prayed with men condemned to the gallows: "For
more than twenty years, whenever a human being has suffered
the final penalty in the Parish Prison, an old colored woman has
come to his cell and prepared an altar for him. This woman is
Marie Lavan [sic], better known as the Priestess of the Vou-
dous."62 As Marie became incapacitated by old age, she retired to
her cottage on St. Ann Street, where her daughter Philomene
cared for her and where she was surrounded by her grandchil-
dren.
Marie Laveau died at home on June 15, 1881. The Louisiana
Writers' Project informants spoke of her lavish funeral, attended
by a large crowd that included members of the white elite.63 Al-
though the newspaper obituaries and official cemetery records
attest that she was interred in her family tomb in St. Louis
Cemetery No. 1, some of the elderly New Orleanians interviewed
by the LWP were convinced that Marie's remains rest in a wall
vault in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, known as the "Wishing
61Raphael interview. This statement provides an interesting link between the dances per-
formed at the St. John's Eve ceremonies and the practices of today's black "Mardi Gras Indian"
gangs.
62"The Condemned-The Decorations of the Altar," Daily Picayune, May 10, 1871.
63Death certificate for Marie Glapion born Laveau, June 16, 1881, vol. 78, p. 1113, micro-
film NOPL. Funeral: Rose Legendre (b. 1868), interview by Maude Wallace, March 20, 1940;
Laura Hopkins (b. 1878), interview by Maude Wallace, March 4, 1940, LWP folder 43.
Vault."64 Today both gravesites are visited by devotees who draw

cross-marks on the marble slab and leave offerings.
The Second Marie Laveau
What of the theory that, as the original Marie Laveau grew

older, she was gradually and secretly replaced by her daughter,
creating the illusion that one woman of imperishable beauty
reigned as Queen of the Voudous until the turn of the twentieth
century? Was there, in fact, a second Marie Laveau who imper-
sonated the Widow Paris and succeeded her in the 1870s-90s, or
is this simply the invention of popular historians and local-color
writers?
Nineteenth-century newspaper articles cited various women
and men-Mamma Caroline, Madame Frazie, Malvina Latour,
Jean Mallarne ("Congre Noir"), and "Pedro Prince of Darkness"-
as having replaced or succeeded Marie Laveau, but nowhere do
we find any suggestion that either of her surviving daughters,
Marie Heloise or Marie Philomene, became the new Queen of the
Voudous.65
Lyle Saxon, in his 1928 collection of local-color sketches, Fabu-
lous New Orleans, was the first to proclaim that the original
Marie Laveau was succeeded by her daughter, born February 2,
1827.66 Zora Neale Hurston declared, in her 1931 Journal of
American Folklore article and her 1935 book Mules and Men, that
the first Marie Laveau was "a small black Congo woman," the
second "a mulatto of very handsome body and face," and the third
64Burial of Dame Christophe Glapion, Burial Book, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (January 17,
1881-January 8, 1883), June 16, 1881, p. 467, AA; ownership record for tomb 7, alley 2 left
facing St. Louis St., book 1, p. 13, New Orleans Archdiocesan Cemeteries. LWP informants
who believed Marie Laveau was interred in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 were Emile Labat (un-
dertaker, birthdate unknown), interview by Zoe Posey, December 5, 1940; Aileen Eugene
(birthdate unknown), no interviewer, n.d.; John Slater (birthdate unknown), interview by
Robert McKinney, June 18, 1937; Josephine Jones (birthdate unknown), no interviewer, n.d.
For more on Marie Laveau's burial place and the rituals performed in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
and No. 2 , see Carolyn Morrow Long, "Voodoo-Influenced Rituals in New Orleans Cemeter-
ies and the Tomb of Marie Laveau," Louisiana Folklore Miscellany, 14 (1999): 1-14.
65Mamma Caroline, "St. John's Eve-The Voudous," Daily Picayune, June 4, 1873; Ma-
dame Frazie, "Fetish Worship," Times, June 25, 1875; Malvina Latour, "A Voudou Dance,"
Times-Democrat, June 24, 1884, reprinted in Starr, ed., Inventing New Orleans, 72-6; Jean
Mallarne ("Congre Noir") and "Pedro Prince of Darkness," Picayune's Guide to New Orleans,
1900.
66Lyle Saxon, Fabulous New Orleans (1928; reprint ed., Gretna, La., 1988), 243.
"an octoroon of great beauty born February 2, 1827."67 In 1940,

Catherine Dillon of the Louisiana Writers' Project completed a
book-length "Voodoo" manuscript that remains unpublished.
Here she coined the names "Marie I" and "Marie II," again citing
the birth date of February 2, 1827.
Robert Tallant incorporated much of Dillon's work into his 1946
Voodoo in New Orleans, giving final shape to the "Marie I/Marie
II" theory: "There is evidence that a dynasty was established in
an attempt to pass the rule of the cult from mother to daughter.
It seems also to have been a deliberate attempt to found a legend
of immortality." Following her "retirement," Tallant tells us, the
Widow Paris "entered her home on St. Ann Street and she did not
leave it until her death six years later." This marked the emer-
gence of "Marie II," a younger woman who "walked the streets of
New Orleans and lived in the St. Ann Street cottage." Sometimes
"a passerby told of having seen a withered crone with yellow skin
and wisps of white hair showing from beneath a dingy tignon and
announced he had seen 'Marie Laveau's mother.' The neighbor-
hood and the generations were changing, and though people were
well aware of the existence of Marie Laveau, they were forgetting
the Widow Paris."68
Were it not for the Louisiana Writers' Project interviews, the
legends surrounding "Marie I" and "Marie II" could be dismissed
as so much literary hooey. But the LWP narratives actually rein-
force the idea that there was an older and a younger Marie
Laveau. While a few of the most senior informants remembered
Marie as an ancient, wrinkled crone with snow white hair who
"looked like a witch" and was "so old she could hardly walk,"
those who would have been children and young adults in the
1870s-90s described a tall, handsome, energetic woman of middle
age, known to them as Marie Laveau, who lived in the cottage on
St. Ann Street. Everyone commented on her majestic stride, say-
ing that she "walked like she owned the city."69 Who was this
woman?
67Zora Neale Hurston, "Hoodoo in America," Journal of American Folklore, 44 (1931):

315-16; Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (1935; reprint ed., New York, 1990), 191-95.
68Tallant, Voodoo in New Orleans, 52, 73-4.
69Descriptions of the elderly Marie Laveau are from Marguerite Gitson (b. 1854), interview
by Zoe Posey, February 20, 1941, LWP; Anita Fonvergne (b. 1860), interview by Hazel
Breaux, April 13, 1939, LWP; Alice Zeno (b. 1867), interview by Hazel Breaux, n.d., LWP;
The most obvious candidate is Marie Heloise Euchariste, Marie

Laveau's first daughter with Christophe Glapion. The Febru-
ary 2, 1827, birthdate cited by Saxon, Hurston, Dillon, Tallant,
and most subsequent writers is indeed that of Heloise Glapion.
Heloise disappears from the archival record after 1850, when she
was enumerated in the United States census, along with two of
her children, in the household of the Widow Paris.70 An affidavit
given in 1881 by her son, her sister Philomene, and several family
friends indicates that Heloise died at age thirty-five in June
1862.71 If this is true, she could not have been the Voudou priest-
ess encountered by the LWP interviewees in the later nineteenth
century. Because the 1881 testimony cannot be corroborated by a
death certificate or burial record, Laveau researchers Ina Fan-
drich and Martha Ward have concluded that Heloise Glapion died
years later and was, in fact, the second Marie Laveau.72 The more
likely scenario is that during the chaotic summer of 1862, when
the nation was embroiled in civil war and New Orleans was occu-
pied by federal troops, Heloise Glapion's death simply went unre-
corded.
There is also the possibility that Marie Philomene, the younger
daughter of Marie Laveau and Christophe Glapion, inherited her
mother's title. Philomene Glapion, said to have been tall and
strikingly beautiful, became the domestic partner of a white man,
Emile Alexandre Legendre, with whom she shared a home on
Dauphine Street in the Faubourg Marigny and had seven chil-
dren. Following Legendre's death in 1872, Philomene return-
ed to her mother's cottage on St. Ann Street and continued to
and Rose Legendre (b. 1868, married to Marie Laveau's grandson), interview by Maude Wal-
lace, March 20, 1940, LWP. The majority of informants described the younger Marie Lavea
The quote "she walked like she owned the city" is from Marie Brown, interview by Zoe Po
April 14, 1941.
70United States Census for New Orleans, 1850, Widow Paris, sheet 178, line 3, microfilm
NARA. Heloise had five children with the free man of color Pierre Crocker: Joseph Eugene,
Esmeralda, Marie, Adelai Aldina, and Victor Pierre.
71Succession of Eloise (Heloise) Euchariste Glapion, November 28, 1881, judgment no.
4597, Civil District Court; original in NOPL; typed copy LWP folder 499. In this document, in
which Heloise's son Victor Pierre Crocker petitioned the court to be put in possession of his
mother's property, he declared that "his mother, the late Eloise Euchariste Glapion ... departed
life in this city in the month of June, 1862." His statement was supported by affidavits from
Philomene Glapion and four family friends. Victor Pierre Crocker waited until 1881 to open
his mother's succession because he intended to sell her house.
72Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 271; Ward, Voodoo Queen, 165.
MARIE LAVEAU, A NINETEENTH-CENTURY VOUDOU PRIESTESS 291
reside there, along with her adult children and their families, un-
til her death in 1897.73 Several of the LWP interviewees remem-
bered "Madame Legendre" as a very strict Roman Catholic who
detested Voudou, and reporters who interviewed her in later
years were guaranteed an outburst of indignation at the mere
suggestion that her mother had been a Voudou priestess.74 Al-
though Philomene is the only woman of the right age and physi-
cal appearance documented to have lived in the Laveau-Glapion
cottage during the years in question, all of the evidence argues
against her being the successor to the Queen of the Voudous.
I regret to say that, having pondered this question for years, I
am still unable to identify the second Marie Laveau. Felicite and
Marie Angelie, Marie's daughters from her marriage to Jacques
Paris, presumably died as children, and the granddaughters who
grew up in the Laveau-Glapion household are much too young to
have been the Voudou Queen of the later nineteenth century.
The Widow Paris and this other, younger woman-maybe even
several others-have merged to form a single identity, the legen-
dary Queen Marie Laveau.
There were many Voudou priestesses in nineteenth-century

New Orleans-how can we explain the enduring celebrity of
Marie Laveau? In addition to her genuine spiritual gifts, she pos-
sessed beauty, charisma, and a flair for showmanship. She was
connected by blood and domestic partnership to several prestig-
ious Creole families of both European and African descent. She
was taken up by white New Orleanians and by visitors to the city,
who were welcomed at her ceremonies and numbered among her
clients. Her obituary not only appeared in the local newspapers,
but was published in the New York Times. She was written about
by George Washington Cable, one of the most widely read authors
of his day. Her reputation may have been augmented by the
73Philomene's children with Alexandre Legendre were Fidelia, Alexandre, No

Eugenie, Blaire, Charles, and Etienne (Eugenie, Charles, and Etienne died in infancy)
certificate for Philomene Legendre, June 11, 1897, vol. 114, p. 15, microfilm NOPL
interred in the family tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, where her inscription can still
Burial Book 1893-1900, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, p. 189, AA.
74Philomene's reaction to reporters who introduced the topic of Voudou is found in "
tious Fiction: Cable's Romance About Marie Laveau and the Voudous," Daily Picayun
11, 1886, and in "Voudouism-A Chapter of Old New Orleans History," Daily Picayune
22, 1890.
deeds of her successor. Interest in Marie Laveau, fueled by popu-

lar culture and the promotional tactics of New Orleans' tourism
industry, continues to the present.

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Marie Laveau: A Nineteenth-Century Voudou Priestess

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Who was Marie Laveau?

Who was Marie Laveau?

What was Marie Laveau's role in New Orleans society?

What was Marie Laveau's role in New Orleans society?

Marie Laveau: A Nineteenth-Century Voudou Priestess

Author(s): Carolyn Morrow Long

Marie Laveau. Sketch by E. W. Kemble.

Marie Laveau, New Orleans' world-renowned Queen of the

and Practices," which appeared in the New Orleans Times-

From Marie Laveau's 1881 obituaries in the Picayune, the City

Henry Roche dit Belaire.9 Although Marguerite's partner, Jean

In 1795, at the age of forty-two, Catherine finally purchased her

Owing to misinformation published in the 1881 obituaries,

The 1881 obituaries spoke of Marie Laveau's marriage to the

Although it is widely believed that Jacques Paris and Marie

Barthelemy Fabre D'Aunoy's all-white Company of Louisiana Mi-

According to the Laveau legend, Marie Laveau acquired her

Marie Laveau's 1881 obituaries stated that fifteen children

26Picayune's Guide to New Orleans 1897, 32-33, NOPL.

27Sale of Eliza by John Woolfolk to Christophe Glapion, Acts of Carlisle Pollock,

The notion of Marie and Christophe's anti-slavery stance re-

28Article 37, Louisiana Civil Code of 1825.

daughter, Coralie, who was already free. In conformity with the

33Sale of Irma by Widow L. Paris to Demoiselle C. Peyroux, Acts of L. T. Caire, Octo-

37Sale of Juliette by Pierre Allarde (testamentary executor of Jeanne Gabrielle Redonne,

38Sale of Juliette by Gustave Ducros to Marie Marsoudet, Acts of Charles Boudousquie,

41Sale of Richard by Christophe Glapion to Elihu Creswell, Acts of S. H. Lewis, March

1854, Christophe finally sold Eliza, after twenty-six years of ser-

New Orleans Voudou grew out of traditions introduced by the

folk Catholicism. This emerging religion was reinforced by the

45"Idolatry and Quackery," Louisiana Gazette, August 16, 1820.

priestess cited in the police reports and newspaper stories was

mummy."50 This, of course, brings to mind the "woman with the

50"Curious Charge of Swindling," Daily Picayune, July 3, 1850; "Recorder Seuzenea

reported that "June is the time devoted by the voodoo worshipers

53"Voodooism," Commercial Bulletin, June 25, 1869.

dreary as their motions.... [Then] the chant changed to a discord

55"Fetish Worship-St. John's Eve at Milneburg-A Voudou's Incantation-Midnight

The LWP informants called Marie Laveau's weekly ceremonies

60Oscar Felix, interview by Edmund Burke, March 14, 1940, LWP.

Raphael, resembled those of the "bands of Negroes who dress in

After Marie Laveau's alleged retirement from leadership of the

Vault."64 Today both gravesites are visited by devotees who draw

The Second Marie Laveau

What of the theory that, as the original Marie Laveau grew

"an octoroon of great beauty born February 2, 1827."67 In 1940,

67Zora Neale Hurston, "Hoodoo in America," Journal of American Folklore, 44 (1931):

68Tallant, Voodoo in New Orleans, 52, 73-4.

The most obvious candidate is Marie Heloise Euchariste, Marie

72Fandrich, "Mysterious Voodoo Queen," 271; Ward, Voodoo Queen, 165.

There were many Voudou priestesses in nineteenth-century

73Philomene's children with Alexandre Legendre were Fidelia, Alexandre, No

deeds of her successor. Interest in Marie Laveau, fueled by popu-

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