Earlier I linked to Ormonde's post at Through the Dust on the gumbo mixture of ancestry in New Orleans. My own heritage is a prime example of that mix.
On my mother's side, those who came before were French, Cajun French, Spanish, and German. My father's ancestors include French, English, Portuguese, and Hispanic from South and Central America. I think that's it, of what I know.
As we were growing up in New Orleans, we were aware that my mother's maiden name was shared by a group of African Americans in the city. Their spelling of the name was different by one letter. One of my cousins, who had desires and pretensions of moving into old New Orleans society, made much of dismissing the African American folks in New Orleans as being of an entirely different family, because of that one letter difference in spelling.
I never thought much about the black families with the same name, because it didn't really matter to me, and because I didn't care about being part of old New Orleans society - which was a big deal back in the day, with those in "Society" with a big "S" having large influence, not only in the social life of the city, but also in politics and civic affairs. Of course, one had to be white to belong.
The Carnival balls, in which their daughters were queens and maids, and the débutante balls and parties of those same daughters were written up at great length in the local papers. We knew well the names of the families in the top tier.
It's already too late to make this long story short, but I'll try to get to the point of the post. My brother-in-law, the husband of my deceased sister, took up genealogy rather late in his life, mainly searching for his family, but he also plunged into our family history, so that his children would have the information, if they wanted it.
He located our Spanish great-great-great-grandfather. I'm not sure how many "greats", maybe more, but he traced the family back to the times when, for a man to have a wife and a mistress, a woman of color, and a family by both women was not uncommon. He found that our ancestor had, indeed, followed the custom and had a wife and several children and a woman-of-color mistress and several children by the mistress.
One of his sons by his wife grew up and married and had a family and took a woman-of-color mistress and had several children by her. Another son by his wife, married, had a family, took a mistress of color, had a family, and then took another mistress of color, and had several children by the second mistress. One wife, two mistresses, and three families!
It turns out that the African-Americans in New Orleans, very likely, share an ancestor with us. We are family. My cousin, the cousin with pretensions to being a part of old New Orleans society, was not speaking to me at the time that I learned about this - she took umbrage quite easily over minor words and actions, and stopped speaking to various people, for varying periods of time - but I made sure to tell her sister the news about our newly-discovered cousins. I know. Bad me.
When she was young and unmarried, that same cousin worked as a secretary for one of the movers and shakers in New Orleans. One day, a black man came in the office to see her boss, and when she asked for his name, he gave the same family name as hers. There was that one letter difference, but the names were pronounced exactly the same. She had to go to her boss and give him her own family name, followed by the visitor, a black man. She was not amused.
I'll give her this, she told stories on herself that set us to laughing, and she did not mind that. On another occasion, a man named Fuchs came to see her boss. She had him spell his name, she wrote it down, and, as she handed the paper to her boss, she saw what she had written and turned crimson. She had not written Mr. Fuchs, but had changed one letter, and I'll leave it to your imagination to determine which one.
She was engaged to her husband for at least fifteen years, before they married and had one child when she was in her forties - à propos of nothing.
Mimi, it's time for a family reunion with all sides of the family represented.
ReplyDeleteDid your cousin, in the later years of her engagement, refer to her future husband by that good old Southern term "gentleman friend of long standing"? When I first moved down here I occasionally heard it used by prim or coy middle-aged maiden ladies. Haven't heard it for many years now.
ReplyDeleteMy immediate supervisor,twenty years or so my junior, is from a family with a fairly unusual surname, long resident in the South. He has discovered that there are a couple of African-Americans on campus who share that surname and he enjoys kidding them about it. He is utterly oblivious to the fact that they may not share the joke. Over here in South Carolina such shared surnames are more often an indicator of past ownership, mixed with a greater or lesser degree of semi- or non-consensual sex, than an indicator of the type of long-past consensual relationships that you describe in Louisiana.
Ormond, you're right, like the Jeffersons.
ReplyDeleteLapin, she called him her fiancé. There was a plan to get married, but it moved forward slowly, very slowly.
I believe that the mistresses were, for the most part, free women of color. Of course, I could be wrong.
I'd have been safe from more than I wanted to know if one of my mother's cousins hadn't compiled a genealogy many years ago.
ReplyDeleteWith family in the American South as long as mine, I suppose it's inevitable that some were slave owners. It has made me sensitive to the kind of careless "joke" you mention, Cwazy Wabbit. It least it's not under my surname, so I suppose I'm "safe."
I did once feel the weight, personally, of racist history in my country; I recommend the experience, but it's not one I care to re-do.
But one of my co-worker's - she who was recently on Tyneside and is now safely back home - MP can relax once more - discovered that one of her great-aunts (gt-gt) probably - was left at the end of the Civil War with a barren plantation and no living close male relatives. She married the most agriculturally-knowledgeable and capable of her former slaves and the plantation continued as a going concern. Needless to say the young lady, landowner though she was, was no longer received in Society - in fact neither my friend nor her mother were aware of their cousins until a genealogically-minded relative uncovered their existence.
ReplyDeleteMy co-worker is also a cousin of the late Senator Strom Thurmond (see what you missed, MP?). Could there be a hereditary predisposition here?
At first, I had titled my post "My Randy Spanish Ancestors", but I dropped the "randy". I try to maintain a little dignity here.
ReplyDeleteI can remember as I was growing up, when a person of Spanish descent became excited or lashed out with biting words, I would often hear the comment, "That's the Spanish blood in her/him". My half-Spanish grandfather was one of the sweetest men I've ever known, but when he lost his temper - which was not often - it was a scary sight.
Our family genealogists uncover secrets that are not necessarily received with joy by other family members.
Hmm. Strom Thurmond.
On the subject of family members not speaking to the rest of the family, one of my wife's aunts stopped speaking to the rest of the family for years.
ReplyDeleteOne day out of the blue, she called up my father-in-law, her brother, to apologize. It seemed that she had been losing her hearing over a period of time and at family gatherings couldn't hear conversations. She concluded that the rest of the family was muttering things about her behind her back and so retaliated by giving them the silent treatment.
Years later, after getting hearing aids, she decided that she had been wrong and, to the joy of all, rejoined the family.
Paul, your story has a happy ending. I wish mine did.
ReplyDeleteMy youngest sister periodically dropped out of contact with us for years at a time, for reasons that were never explained. Sadly, we had not heard from her for three years, when we got the phone call that she was ill - the day before she died. We made it there for the funeral.