HAUNTED NEW ORLEANS

NEW ORLEANS HISTORY:
PART ONE

The first colonists to arrive in New Orleans were the French, but the explorers had come first. They included men like LaSalle, who came down the Mississippi River in 1682 and claimed the land where the river ended for France. In 1699, two French-Canadian explorers named Pierre le Moyne and Jean Baptiste le Moyne sailed in from the Caribbean and landed on a tiny bayou they called Pointe du Mardi Gras as the Catholic holiday of Fat Tuesday was to fall the next day.
However, exploring the New World was an expensive proposition and the French were broke. Enter a Scottish man named John Law, who created a New World company in which the French could invest and thereby settle the Lower Mississippi Valley. In reality, the plan was a scheme to bilk money from the investors in return for selling them Louisiana. Law was given a monopoly on trade as well. Later, when it turned out that Law’s company was merely and early version of a “pyramid scheme”, many of the settlers decided to stay on anyway.
During the first year of Law’s operation, he decided that a town should be founded at a spot which could be reached from both Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi. In 1718, this town became La Nouvelle Orleans.
Development of the city began that year, but work was slow, thanks to brutal heat and the rising and falling waters of the Mississippi. There was talk of moving the city because of the danger of flooding, so levees were constructed, which spread out as the city and the plantations of the area grew.

At the same time, John Law was attempting to fulfill his promises to investors that he would have the colony settled with 6,000 settlers and 3,000 slaves by 1727. The biggest problem seemed to be the shortage of women. “The white men,” wrote the colony’s Governor Bienville,” are running in the woods after the Indian girls”.
There was also a lack of education and medical care in New Orleans. Finally, Governor Bienville coaxed the Sisters of Ursuline to come from France and assist the new city. The first Ursulines arrived in 1727 and set to work caring for orphans, operating a school, setting up a free hospital and instructing slaves for baptism. They also provided a safe haven for the young middle class girls who had come in answer to the call for suitable wives. They first arrived in 1728 and continued to come until 1751, marrying those single male colonists who had been unable to snag one of the “professional” girls who had been sent from the Paris jails around 1720.

But things were far from perfect in New Orleans. Problems had started with the local Indian tribes and combined with political problems, the investors in John Law’s company petitioned France to get rid of the unprofitable Louisiana colony. And so they did, leaving behind a sturdy and hard-bitten group of 7,000 colonists with a thriving business industry and an uncertain future.

In 1762, France passed the ownership of Louisiana to Spain in the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau. That same year, Spain entered the Seven Years War (the European arm of the French and Indian War) just in time to share defeat with France. As part of the Treaty of Paris at the end of the war, France had to give up its holdings in North America... however they had just given New Orleans and Louisiana to Spain the year before.
No one in Louisiana had any indication of this for months, when suddenly the colonists found themselves under the control of the much-hated Governor Don Antonio de Ulloa.
In 1768, 600 New Orleans citizens mounted the first revolutionary expedition of Americans against a European government. The ranks were made up of Acadians (French-speaking immigrants from Canada), who had been told they were going to be sold into slavery by the Spanish and German immigrants, who believed the Spanish were going to default on money owed to John Law’s company. By November 1, Don Antonio had escaped to Cuba and his three aides were taken prisoner by the rebels.
His Majesty Carlos of Spain did not find this event amusing in the least and sent a 2,600 man mercenary force to New Orleans to re-take the city. The army was led by Don Alexander O’Reilly, an Irishman in the service of Spain. He later earned the nickname “Bloody O’Reilly” after he sent all of the revolutionaries before the firing squad.
The Spanish took the city back, but not for long. In 1800, the people of New Orleans discovered that the city had been given back to Napoleon of France as a result of the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso. But Napoleon was busy that year conquering the Turks, the Austrians and the Italians, plus ending a slave uprising on St. Domingue. And since New Orleans was struck with a terrible yellow fever epidemic, he allowed the Spanish to continue governing the colony.

Soon, another group began to influence the culture of the city. The residents called them the “Kaintocks” and these buckskin-clad American frontiersman descended on the city in force. The shrewd Americans had realized the thriving port of the city and began bringing keelboats loaded with goods down the Mississippi.
By 1804, the city would belong to America. Napoleon needed money and thanks to some stiff bargaining by President Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Territory, which was over 600 million acres, was soon in the possession of the United States. The cost of the territory, which stretched from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean was around $15 million, which makes it one of the greatest land deals in history!
In 1810, with its mixture of French and Spanish speaking Creoles, Anglo-Americans, slaves and free people of color, New Orleans was established as the largest city in the South and the fifth largest city in America. Louisiana would become the 18th state on April 30, 1812, and barely a month later, Congress declared war on Britain. A few weeks after Mardi Gras in 1814, rumors filled the city that the British were going to attack New Orleans.
The city was defenseless.... word had reached Louisiana that the Capitol and the White House in Washington had been burned and that President James Madison was unable to raise an army because the United States Treasury was empty. This was enough to rally the men of New Orleans!

Another hope arrived... General Andrew Jackson. The crusty Indian fighter came in December was racked with illness. Despite this, he quickly organized a defense of the city. He imposed martial law and enlisted the aid of not only the free people of color in New Orleans, but the nearby Choctaw Indians and the pirate Jean Lafitte as well.
On December 23, 1814 Jackson attacked the British troops who were camped along the banks of the Mississippi. The battles raged back and forth for many days, but finally on January 8, Jackson’s army prevailed. His ragtag troops were made up of Kentuckian Long Rifles, ill-prepared militia men, Indians, Creoles, free men of color and pirates but they savagely attacked the British with only 15 men dead and 40 wounded.
The British were not so lucky. The carnage on their side consisted of 858 dead and about 2,500 wounded. They had nowhere to turn for medical care and legend has it that they sought refuge with the Ursuline Sisters, who would turn no one away. The stories say that many enemy troops were hidden within their walls.

Shortly after the battle, news reached the city that the British had signed a peace treaty at Ghent on Christmas Eve, two weeks before the Battle of New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS HISTORY:
PART TWO

Following the Battle of New Orleans, during the War of 1812, the city was placed under siege once again.. this time by the Protestant Americans who came south to enjoy the new, French-speaking city. New Orleans was already considered the most important city in the south and the Americans were determined to enjoy it. They came in huge numbers and ended up offending the sensibilities of the Creole families of the Vieux Carre, who promptly slammed shut the wrought-iron gates of the Quarter.
After the Louisiana Purchase, altercations between the Catholic Creoles and the Protestant Americans became so frequent that a strip of land between the French Quarter and the American Sector was designated as a “neutral ground”. This literally was an act of Congress in 1807 and the strip later became known as Canal Street.

In 1812, the steamboat NEW ORLEANS arrived in port and ushered in a new age for the city, and a new period of prosperity. The aristocrats of the city filled their lavish mansions with the finest Persian rugs, crystal chandeliers, and the best French wines that money could buy.
However, luxuries aside, New Orleans was not a place for the weak. Located below sea level, in a hot and humid climate, it was a place of oppressive humidity from June to October and was infested with mosquitoes. The city was often hit with terrible cholera and tropical illness epidemics and was labeled a “damp grave” for those foolish enough to live there.
And that’s not to mention the hurricanes, thunderstorms from the Gulf of Mexico, and the frequent floods. The spring flooding was usually pour about two feet of muddy water and debris into the city, not to mention snakes and rats. New levees were constructed each time the devastation would hit the city but each time, the damage was horrible.
In 1832, New Orleans was savaged by a cholera epidemic and in addition, between 1817 and 1860, there were 23 outbreaks of Yellow Fever. This wicked disease was spread by mosquitoes, which bred in household cisterns. The most serious epidemic of yellow fever hit the city in 1853, sending thousands to higher ground in surrounding cities like Natchez and Mobile. Over 8,000 people died before the cool months of Fall arrived.

THE CIVIL WAR IN NEW ORLEANS

In 1860, New Orleans had the largest cotton market in the world and was, by far, the wealthiest city in America. It had been an American city for just over 50 years before it found itself at war. On February 4, 1861 Senator Judah P. Benjamin announced to Congress that Louisiana had seceded from the Union. The state would stand alone for three entire months until it joined the Confederate States of America. When the war began, it would be General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard and his regiment of Louisiana men who would open fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
The war in New Orleans came early and the city spent the greatest amount of the war under Union control, despite being located so far into the enemy territory of the Confederacy.
In April of 1862, a fleet of 24 ships, under command of David G. Farragut, was ordered to sail up river and seize New Orleans. The Confederate defenders did everything they could to stop him. To reach the city, Farragut’s ships had to get past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Phillip.
Commander David Dixon Porter, Farragut’s younger foster brother, came up with a reckless plan. They would send a collection of small sailing vessels, each bearing a huge mortar, into the harbor and anchor them below the forts so that they could pound the defenses in advance of the fleet. They tried this but after six days of battering, the forts remained standing. Farragut decided on an even more daring scheme..... under the cover of night, they would run past the forts, smash the barricades and steam into New Orleans.
At two o’clock in the morning, Farragut’s warships started past the forts. The forts opened fire and the lead ship was hit 42 times. It caught fire but they managed to quench the flames and start forward again. It was a test of sheer will, but the four flagships somehow made it past the forts.
As they approached New Orleans, a makeshift Confederate squadron of 8 ships sailed out to meet them. Farragut sank all but 2 of them and the city surrendered without a shot.

After the surrender, Lincoln named Benjamin F. Butler the military governor of occupied New Orleans. Butler saw no need to be gentle in his position and his methods earned him both admiration and scorn on both sides. He hanged a man suspected of desecrating the American flag, closed a secessionist newspaper and confiscated the property of anyone who would not swear allegiance to the Union.
The women of New Orleans insulted Butler’s men in the streets, calling them names and screeching at them. When a woman in the French Quarter opened her window and emptied the contents of a chamber pot over Admiral David Farragut’s head, Butler issued General Order Number 28. It simply stated that any woman who insulted a member of the United States Army would be treated from that point as a prostitute, in the midst of plying her trade.
Needless to say, the men and women of the south were outraged and called Butler everything from “unchivalrous” to “Beast”. Butler refused to back down and the harassment of his men stopped and no woman was ever arrested.

Butler also tore apart two other old New Orleans institutions... a historical landmark and the institution of slavery.
The statue of Andrew Jackson had been standing in the city’s Jackson Square for six years when the Union troops arrived, honoring the fact that Old Hickory had saved the city from the British in 1815. Butler order these words carved into the pedestal, calculated to enrage the citizens of New Orleans: “The Union must and shall be preserved.”
Butler also quickly turned the friction between masters and slaves to the Union’s advantage. He declared the plantation owners to be disloyal to the Union and he confiscated their property, in this case, their slaves, and set them free. The freed blacks left the plantations and fled behind Union lines. “I was always a friend of southern rights, “ Butler said, “but an enemy of southern wrongs”.

Congress re-admitted Louisiana to the Union in June of 1868. The period from the end of Reconstruction to the depression of the 1890’s was marked by social and political upheaval, a failing cotton market and the loss of the major ports. It would not be until World War I before New Orleans would again be considered a major shipping port.

THE KINGFISH

In 1929, the Great Depression hit America, spelling catastrophe for many New Orleans banks and businesses. Following close behind the disaster came the voice of change for the desperate times. A former patent medicine salesman from northern Louisiana named Huey P. Long suddenly appeared on the scene and made a bid for the position of governor of the state. Long (who would later be nicknamed “The Kingfish”) promised to break that hold that big business had on the wealth of the state and see it re-distributed back among the people. In a state where nearly 12 percent of the population was on federal aid, Long’s promises found an eager audience!
From the day that Long won office as the railroad commissioner at age 25, he set out to break the back of Standard Oil, the Rockefeller-owned driller who was one of the largest in the state. Long was a revolutionary and the people at it up.
After Long was elected governor in 1928, the state legislature in Baton Rouge came under his control. He used his power to revenge himself on the New Orleans politicians and newspapers who had opposed him. After serving as governor, he ran for and won a seat in the US Senate. Before leaving for Washington, he fired the legally elected lieutenant governor and replaced him with two designated successors, thus continuing to control the state from Washington. He even convened 11 special sessions of the state legislature, which passed every bill that he proposed. Long was out of control.... but his reign was quickly coming to an end.

On September 8, 1935, Huey Long was murdered by a Baton Rouge doctor named Dr. Carl Weiss. The doctor’s motive has never been clear and been much debated, although some have stated that he was blackmailed by Long. The stories go that the Kingfish planned to reveal that the doctor’s wife, who came from a prominent St. Landry Parish family, had black blood.
However, the family of Dr. Weiss, who was killed during the assassination attempt, still maintain that he was not the killer at all. They say that he was killed in the crossfire of an assassination by the bodyguards of Huey Long himself!
 

NEW ORLEANS HISTORY:
PART THREE

The people of New Orleans are as strange and wondrous a mix as the city itself, reveling in its French heritage and its segregation from American culture. The melting pot of the city is European, African and Cuban, creating a strange blend of style and usually Catholic-based traditions which sometimes puzzle the outsider.
Of all of the various cultures however, the most famous remain the Creole and the Cajuns...

THE FRENCH CREOLES

In the early days of New Orleans, the French Company if the Indies needed to colonize the territory, so they accepted just about any able-bodied volunteers. As Louisiana was known for being a lawless and distant frontier, it was soon realized that no decent folks would want any part of it. So, the eager “volunteers” usually came from French debtor’s prisons and houses of correction. Among them were 88 “working girls” who were given a choice between prison and the New World.
In 1720, an agent of France named Phillipe, Duc d’Orleans, put a stop to the practice of flushing out the unsavory elements of France and sending them to New Orleans. Of course, this may be why, among modern, upscale residents of the city, you can rarely find anyone who claims an ancestor in New Orleans prior to 1727!
One of the city’s preeminent cultures are the Creoles, although this is confusing as two distinctly separate groups claim the title. White Creoles use the word to describe themselves as people of European colonial ancestry, while the other group are the “mulattos”, “quadroons” and Octoroons” - the light-skinned, part African, Catholics.
Both groups use the word to differentiate themselves as people descended from the European colonists and as long-time familial residents of New Orleans. Both are very proud of their heritage and their culture often sets them apart from other residents of the city, especially in the historic years of the city.

THE CAJUNS

The term Cajun is actually from the word “Acadian”. Acadia was the French Canadian colony founded in 1604 by Samuel de Champlain and now called Nova Scotia. Champlain was joined in 1632 by 300 settlers who were fleeing from religious persecution and they lived in isolation for almost 100 years until the French and Indian War in 1754. After the war, the British demanded the Acadians pledge allegiance to England and give up their Catholic religion. When they refused, they were rounded up separated and deported. Many of them were sent back to France; others to the American colonies and other remained in hiding. They would have remained a lost group had not the Spanish invited them to settle in Louisiana. As Catholics and enemies of the British, the Acadians were ideal Louisiana settlers.
By 1763, the first Acadians had burrowed deep into the Louisiana swamps, living in the swamps and with the Indians, learning to eat crawfish and alligator and building canoe-like boats called “pirogues”. They were isolated from the urban French in New Orleans (and what they considered the uppity Creoles) and their language remained much like the 17th century French of their ancestors. This makes their culture so separate, even today.

CARNIVAL AND MARDI GRAS

Another (huge) part of New Orleans culture is Mardi Gras. In many Catholic dominated cities around the world, the days preceding Easter are called Lent, a period of fasting and penitence. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, which reminds believers of their own mortality... but in New Orleans, the Tuesday before Lent is Mardi Gras... which literally means “Fat Tuesday”... the last gasp of frivolity before a period of austerity.
In New Orleans, the term “Carnival” refers to the season of balls and parades which begin on Twelfth Night (January 6) and continues through Mardi Gras. On that day, one krewe (or club) hosts the first ball of the season. The high point of Carnival is the parade -filled, 4-day weekend that begins on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday and ends in an all-out bash on Mardi Gras day.
That final day (and frankly, the days before it) are a literal riot of people, colors, and of course, copious amounts of alcohol. I can say that everyone should experience Mardi Gras in New Orleans at least one time in their lives... that is if you are not uptight, and if you have no objections to viewing all manner of female anatomy! I don’t recommend it for married men (unless you wife is really free-thinking) or for those who want to enjoy sight-seeing in the city (historical sight-seeing, I mean)

THE PIRATES LAFITTE

Isn’t it interesting how disreputable (albeit colorful) characters of yesterday are often turned into heroes many years later? It’s true that Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre did help to save the city of New Orleans during the War of 1812.... but why not? They had been plundering and robbing the region for years?
The brothers Lafitte were known to have been in New Orleans as early as 1805 and were most likely French. The pirate’s base of operations was in Barataria Bay , near New Orleans, and within striking distance of the Gulf of Mexico, where trading ships made their entrances and exits from the Mississippi River. By 1811, this was a thriving pirate community with 32 armed warships... more than the entire American navy at the start of the War of 1812!
Andrew Jackson enlisted the aid of the pirates in fighting the British at the Battle of New Orleans, after which the men were pardoned of piracy charges. The Lafittes then went right back to piracy. By 1818, they had established a colony of privateers off the coast of Galveston.

CASKET GIRLS AND PROSTITUTES

As mentioned already, some of the very first female settlers in New Orleans were prostitutes who were released from French prisons. For those men not “lucky” enough to snag one of these fine catches, there were also the “casket girls”
These young ladies were imported by the Ursuline sisters to provide suitable wives for the male colonists. These upstanding, middle0class ladies were called “casket girls”, either because of the style of hats they wore, or because of their government issue chests of clothing and linen (it all depends on what history you read). Anyway, they first began arriving in 1728 and continued to come until 1751.
However, prostitution had its roots in the very foundation of the city and continued to play a prominent part for many, many years to come.

In 1744, a French officer commented that there were not 10 women of blameless character in the city of New Orleans, in reference to the many houses of prostitution which operated there. We have no idea if he meant this as a criticism or a compliment!
In 1803, after the puritanical Americans took control, they attempted to clean up the bawdy houses and rowdy atmosphere of the city. The practice of prostitution was then prohibited on the ground floors of any building... so saloons and gambling parlors opened on the ground floors instead! By 1857, madames and their girls were also required to obtain licenses to work.... a service which was personally administered by the mayor!

During the Civil War, the occupying Union Army found the bawdy houses to their liking and a string of them opened along the old basin canal. In the 1870’s, New Orleans’ most famous madame, Josie Arlington, formally opened her own bordello in this neighborhood.
Around the turn-of the-century, Alderman Sidney Story proposed an ordinance to rid the better residential neighborhoods of the bordellos. The sporting houses were then restricted to a single area on the far side of the French Quarter. Ironically, the area came to be called “Storyville” after the alderman.

In Storyville, women such as “Countess” Willie Piazza and Josie Arlington ran pash and luxurious houses with oil paintings, fine wines and potted palms. Many of the houses were staffed by the madame’s stunning octoroon and quadroon “nieces”, who were usually girls whose families had fallen on hard times. The popularity of female Creoles of color in the bordellos caused many old-line Creole families to send their strictly raised daughters to convents until they were old enough to marry.
When World War I began, Josephus “Tea Totaling” Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, threatened to close down the New Orleans naval base if Storyville was not shut down. Because of this, the district was officially closed in 1917 and prostitution once again became a clandestine activity.
Most of the area of Storyville was torn down in the 1930’s to make way for the Iberville Housing Project.

THE MOB IN NEW ORLEANS

One of the most notorious crimes of the 19th century involved the 1890 assassination of David Hennessy, the first superintendent of the New Orleans police department. Nineteen members of a Sicilian gang were accused of the crime but they were acquitted of the crime in 1891. An angry mob then proceeded to break into the Parish prison and hang 11 of the accused men. For years afterward, the slur “Who Killed the Chief?” could lead to an outbreak of violence against Italians.
The upstanding Italians of New Orleans have long been plagued by the reputation of their notorious kinsmen... as New Orleans was a port of entry for many Italians into the United States. It also served as the beginning for many of America’s first Mafia families, who later moved on to Chicago and New York.

The most famous Mafia boss to stay in New Orleans was Carlos “Little Man” Marcello. His family settled in Algiers, the community across the river from New Orleans, and he started out as a small-time hood. By the 1940’s, he had moved into the big business, when he went to work for New York gangster Frank Costello in the slot machine racket. In May 1947, he was made head of the local Louisiana crime family and was said to have organized a number of murders, including the Kennedy assassination.
At his federal bribery trial 34 years later, Marcello swore that he was nothing more than a humble tomato salesman employed by the Pelican Tomato Company... although he did own a little property which was estimated to be worth $30-$40 million. His eventual conviction kept him in jail for six years but in 1989 he returned home to resume his life as a husband, father and grandfather of 11.
Carlos Marcello died in his sleep in 1993 at the age of 83. Many called it the end of the “Godfather” era.

Source:    Taylor, Troy - "Haunting of America" (2001)