The German Ancestors

Jean Baptiste Rodrigue settled in the German community founded by John Law in 1720.  He married Marie Josephe Dervain, a daughter of the original German settlers brought to Louisiana by John Law.  The Rodrigues remained married to German relations for three generations, or until the beginning of the Civil War..

John Law founded the Company of the West, or the Mississippi Company, and in 1717 through the agency of the regent of France, he acquired the proprietary rights to Louisiana. The earliest ancestors of the children and descendants of the Roland J. Miguez and Eve Rodrigue family were two German families that came to Louisiana in 1721. These two families were that of Corentin Dorvain and Marie Onef, and of Joannes Conrad Friderich and Ursula Frey, farming class people from the Rhineland. Joannes Conrad Friderich, the son of Jacob Friderich, and the grandson of Michael Friderich, was born in Rotenburg, Germany, on Oct. 8, 1679. Anna Maria Frederic was born in Feb. 1711/12. Ursula Frey was the daughter of Joannes Frey, who was born in Rauhenfried, Germany. They came in response to Law's plan to populate the Mississippi River above New Orleans with farmers. At this early stage of Louisiana's economic development, food was needed to supply the town of New Orleans, and the peasants of the Rhineland were the best answer to this basic problem of meat, vegetables and fruit. The Germans were settled along the Coast in the Spring of 1722 as engages, or laborers, and at that time they numbered about only about 250 persons. The land of Louisiana at this time was mostly Indian territory, and the small frontier town of New Orleans of about 200 persons was largely filled with the outcasts of French society with a handful of military officers and their men (who were to say the least) of questionable character.

In 1731, the company surrendered its monopoly of land holdings, and the settlers along the German Coast acquired full possession of their lands, and emerged--at this time--as the colony’s “most prosperous small landowning class.”

Rene Dervain and Anna Maria Frederic were the children of these two families who were born in Germany, but came to Louisiana as infants. They married sometime around 1740 along the German Coast of the Mississippi River. Their daughter, Marie Josephe Dervain, was born and baptized Feb. 11, 1747. As an infant Marie Josephe survived the last major Indian attack on the French Louisiana settlements that occurred along the German Coast of the river at the end of the 1740's. Houses were burnt; several people killed; and almost everyone panicked.

In these days of hard life on the frontier there were only about 100 white inhabitants on this stretch of the Mississippi--and slaves numbered about twice that amount. After the Indian attack, the farmers along the Coast began to feel a lack of security in regard to the Indians and a lack of trust in the questionable character of the French soldier; and so they began to leave for other areas. This happened even though the French government in the 1750's largely pacified the Indians with gifts and bribes: in any case, the land along the river remained sparsely populated for some time. 

New Orleans at this time had a population of about 800 whites and 300 blacks, not including women and children, or officers or soldiers. Among the general lack of hygiene in city due to open sewers and gutters was the periodic visitation of the dreaded yellow fever.

Notes: 

These two German families probably came to Louisiana either on March 1, 1721 aboard the Deux Freres, or on June 4, 1721 aboard the Portefaix. For an accurate reference to passanger lists of the ships bound for New Orleans during the Law concession, see Glenn R. Conrad (comp.), The First Families of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Claitor's Publishing Division, 1970); and Alice D. Forsyth and Earlene L. Zeringue (comp. and trans.), German Pest Ships: 1720-1721 (New Orleans: The Genelogical Research Society of New Orleans, 1969).