The Southwest Louisiana Historical Association's Newsletter
Imperial Calcasieu Notes
February 2004 Vol. 8 No.1 Kathie Bordelon, Editor
February Meeting | November Meeting | Officer Election | Etienne de Bore | Charles-Phillipe Aubry | Contests | Announcements
The February meeting of the Southwest Louisiana Historical Association will be held on Monday, February 16, 2004, in the multi-purpose room of the University United Methodist Church behind Church’s Fried Chicken and Selmart on Ryan Street. Please go to the south entrance off Patrick Street. Refreshments will be served.
Our speaker will be Meredith Miller who will discuss local history. Please bring a guest and support our Association!
At the November meeting of the Association two presenters spoke on the history of the city of DeQuincy, outlining the city’s history and its development as the junction of two railroads. The meeting took place at the Carnegie Branch of the Calcasieu Parish Library.
The city of DeQuincy can trace its beginnings back to 1897 according to Mrs. Lola Mitchell, DeQuincy News correspondent and a former secretary of a railroad official. The community began as a tent city comprised of a restaurant and a boarding house to serve workers laying railroad track for the Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Gulf Line, which later became the Kansas City Southern.
The first settlers arrived and began to erect permanent buildings and homes. By 1903 DeQuincy was large enough to carry the designation of "village," a term the state conferred on small settlements once they attained a certain population. In 1913 DeQuincy became a "town" and finally a "city" in 1947.
The timber industry, agriculture, and the DeQuincy Correctional Institute all contributed to DeQuincy’s growth, but the railroad industry has served as the mainstay of the community throughout its history.
Fred B. Fluitt, Jr., a 42-year veteran of railroading, and the third generation of his family to find employment on the railroads, described DeQuincy’s heyday as a major center for the Kansas City Southern and the Missouri Pacific Lines.
At the height of the rail lines’ glory, DeQuincy housed more than 500 workers in railroad shops, repair crews, engineers, conductors, and office personnel. DeQuincy stood as the center for rail traffic in southern Louisiana and Texas. All rail lines either originated in or passed through DeQuincy, carrying sugar cane and rice from the field to the refinery.
Prior to the development of the automobile and paved roads, passenger trains left DeQuincy bound for Lake Charles four times a day. Other passenger destinations included Beaumont and Baton
Rouge.
With the development of diesel engines and electronic routing, the railroads no longer needed their headquarters in DeQuincy. The shops closed and the crews transferred elsewhere or retired. However, the end of the rail lines did not spell disaster for DeQuincy. The city found new ways to develop and sustain itself and today it continues to enjoy a prosperous existence.
Election of Officers for 2004-2006
The Nominating Committee has put together a slate of officers for the new term.
President – Nell Hayes
1st Vice President – Kitty Walker (programs)
2nd Vice President – Kathie Bordelon (newsletter)
Secretary – Diane McCarthy
Treasurer – George Ann Benoit
Ex Officio
Gingham Ladies Coordinator – Elaine Cameron
Past President – Robert Benoit
Appointments
Webmaster – Pati Threatt
Communications Chairman – Truman Stacey
Scrapbook Chairman – Phyllis Morgan
Any further nominations will be accepted at the April meeting.
Notable Men and Women of Louisiana
(10th article in a series of 20)
by Truman Stacey
The father of Louisiana’s sugar industry was a scion of a noble family in Normandy, but was born “in the Illinois” in Kaskaskia. Jean Etienne de Bore first saw the light of day on December 27, 1742, the son of Louis de Bore and Celestene Therese Carriere.
When he was four years old the family returned to France, where young Etienne was educated in French schools. After he reached maturity he became a musketeer in the King’s Household Guards in 1768, and in 1770 he was promoted to captain of the Second Company of Cavalry of the Mousquetoires Noires.
On November 5, 1771, he was married to Jeanne Marguerite Marie Destrehan des Tours, a member of a prominent and wealthy Louisiana family. With new responsibilities he and his bride returned to Louisiana in 1776 and settled in St. Charles Parish to live the life of a country gentleman and his lady.
In 1781 he was granted extensive property above New Orleans which included the present-day Audubon Park. He embarked upon an agricultural career with the planting of indigo, which the Council of the Indies had introduced in 1723. At first all went well and indigo became one of Louisiana’s agricultural staples alongwith tobacco. By the 1790s the colony’s indigo crops were bringing in $180,000 a year.
Then a couple of years of drought hurt crops, and in 1793 and 1794 a new type of insect attacked the plants and the indigo fields were left with bare stalks. De Bore and other planters were on the verge of bankruptcy.
He decided to gamble on sugar cane, against all of the advices of his in-laws and his friends. The Jesuits had first introduced sugar cane into Louisiana to make molasses, but it never developed into a commercial crop, and all efforts to crystallize the syrup into granules failed. De Bore, nevertheless, was determined to try his hand. Obtaining cane from two of the Spanish growers, Mendez and Soliz, he planted a crop.
He raised a good stand of cane, and by combining a vacuum pan process with the Spanish method of making molasses he was able to crystallize the syrup into sugar granules. He sold his 1796 crop for $12,000 and a new industry was born in Louisiana.
De Bore continued his agricultural career, but also became a community leader. His fame spread and his plantation often had important guests. In 1796 the celebrated French General, Victor Collot, who was traveling through the Mississippi Valley, supposedly gathering material for a book on the fauna and flora, stopped off to visit de Bore. While he was there, the Governor, Baron de Carandolet, sent troops to arrest the general, who was charged with spying upon Spanish fortifications during his travels. The governor was a tempted to arrest de Bore, too, but only gave him a scolding.
In 1798 more illustrious visitors came: three French princes of the blood arrived in Louisiana and of course they visited de Bore. They were the Duke of Orleans, who was to ascend the throne of France when Napoleon was deposed, and his brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and the Count of Beaujolias. De Bore had become one of the social lions of the colony.
When Napoleon snatched Louisiana back from Spain and sent Pierre Clement Laussat as Colonial Prefect to receive control of the colony from Spain, Laussat immediately set up a municipal government for New Orleans in place of the Spanish cabildo, and he named de Bore as the city’s first mayor. His term lasted only three weeks, however, before the United States took possession.
President Thomas Jefferson appointed W.C.C. Claiborne to govern the colony in 1803, and the new governor was shrewd enough to include Frenchmen in the new legislative council. De Bore was one of these. De Bore was appointed speaker pro tem of the legislative council in 1806 and was a member of the Police Jury in 1807.
De Bore was one of the leaders of the movement for immediate statehood for Louisiana, and was pleased to see his efforts succeed in 1812.
De Bore passed away full of years and honors on February 2, 1820. He was given a state funeral and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery.
His children continued to play leading roles in the life of New Orleans. Jeanne Marguerite Marie Isabelle, born in 1773, married Barthemmy Francois Le Breton; and Francoise Elizabeth, born in 1777, married Charles Gayaree, a relative of the Louisiana historian.
The King’s Musketeer proved to be leading citizen of the Republic in the end.
(11th article in a series of 20)
By Truman Stacey
Charles-Phillipe
Aubry was one of the key figures in the transfer of the colony of Louisiana from
France to Spain in 1762. He was also a stalwart soldier of long service to the
French Crown.
Born in France about 1720, Aubry was commissioned a second
lieutenant of infantry in the French Army in December of 1734. He served with
distinction in Bavaria, Bohemia and Italy during the War of the Austrian
Succession until peace was made in 1748.
He was promoted to captain in 1750 and assigned to Louisiana just in
time to fight in the Seven Years War, another of those bitter struggles between
the French and the English. This one had been ignited when a 22-year-old
Virginia militia officer named George Washington ambushed a French party on the
Ohio River in 1754.
Aubry was ordered north to the Illinois country where he assumed
command of the French forces concentrated at St. Louis. In the spring of 1757 he
led a force of 150 French infantry, 100 Indian allies and three pieces of
artillery to found Fort Ascension at the juncture of the Ohio and Tennessee
Rivers. He then led a reconnaissance in force up the Tennessee but encountered
no enemy force. In the fall a Cherokee war party attacked the fort but was
driven off.
The next year he was at Fort Duquesne, where he distinguished himself in several encounters with the English. From there he was dispatched with a force of 500 to relieve Fort Niagara, under siege by the English. There he found himself badly outnumbered, and the relieving force was routed by 800 English and nearly 1,000 Iroquois braves. Aubry himself and 16 other officers were captured by the Indians and tortured before they were rescued by the British commandant.
He was sent to an
English prison in New York, but was exchanged in 1760, and was sent to France.
There he received the Cross of the Order of St. Louis for his services, and was
returned to Louisiana to command this colony’s garrison at New Orleans until the
end of the war in 1762. He was selected to accompany Louisiana Governor
Jean-Jacques Blaise d’Abbadie when the governor went to Mobile to arrange for
the transfer of France’s Appalachian lands to the English, according to the
terms of the peace treaty.
It was not until they returned to New Orleans that they learned that
France had given Louisiana to Spain to prevent the English from taking it, too.
Thereafter the two officials settled down to await the arrival of
Spanish officials. They had their own problems, however. It was necessary to
make peace with the Choctaw and Alabama tribes, who had fought on the side of
the English during the war.
Also, the absence of French officials as well as soldiers during the
war years had created what d’Abbadie called “a tendency to flout authority and
resort to violence” on the part of the colonists. The news of the transfer of
the colony to Spain only aggravated the unruly members of the colony.
D’Abbadi’s sudden death on February 4, 1765, was another blow. That
left Aubry, whose major desire was to hand the colony over to Spain and return
to France, as the chief official and he reluctantly assumed the reins as
governor.
His position was an unpleasant one. The economic condition of the
colony was perilous. The armed forces were scattered from the western frontier
to the Illinois country. At New Orleans he had perhaps 100 men, and many of them
were on the eve of retirement. The best he could do was keep things on an even
keel until the new Spanish governor arrived.
That day finally dawned in 1766 with the arrival of Louisiana’s
first Spanish governor, Don Antonio de Ulloa. Unfortunately, for both Louisiana
and Spain, he had brought only a tiny military force with him, expecting no
trouble. His economic measures outraged the colony’s merchants, and only served
to increase resentment at a new and unfamiliar government.
It was not long, of course, before resentment blazed into action.
Urged on by a few fire brands who were determined to keep the colony French, Ulloa was driven onto a boat, which was then cut adrift, and floated down the
river.
Where was Aubry in all of this? He refused to join the conspirators,
but he also refused to attempt to use military force to stop them because he
could not bring himself to fire on Frenchmen.
Once more the reins of government were in his hand. He waited for
the inevitable Spanish reaction. This came in 1769 with the arrival of General Alexandre O’Reilly with 2,000 soldiers and 46 pieces of artillery. This display
of force overawed even the most volatile of the rebels, and O’Reilly took
possession without a shot being fired. Aubry was relieved to turn affairs over
to O’Reilly and to seek his retirement.
O’Reilly was not long in convincing the colonists that Spain was in Louisiana to stay. Five of the rebel leaders were sent to the firing squad and five others were sent to prison. O’Reilly prudently overlooked the fact that many of the colony’s leading
merchants supported the rebels.
No charges were filed against them.
With the arrival of O’Reilly, Aubry received his wish to resign his
French commission and return to France in 1770.
Unfortunately, the ship carrying him to France, the Pere de Familie, foundered off the coast of Bordeaux and Aubry was among those lost. He served France long and well, but his services were never really appreciated by the crown.
Annual Contests Sponsored by the Association
The two annual contests sponsored by the Association are the Dr. Joe Gray Taylor Louisiana History Essay Contest and the Dr. Donald J. Millet Historical Writing Award.
Last year, the Louisiana History Essay Contest winners were chosen from among the middle school students whose entries in the Region V Social Studies Fair concerned some aspect of Louisiana history. We plan to do the same thing this year as the entries we saw were exceptional. The winners were presented with plaques and savings bonds during the awards ceremony at the end of the fair. The Social Studies Fair is scheduled for March 23 at Burton Coliseum.
The Dr. Donald J. Millet Historical Writing Award is also in the planning stages. The Millet award is presented annually for the best historical writing (book, essay, historical monograph, play, poem, etc.) about a historical subject or person written by a resident of Imperial Calcasieu and written or published during the year preceding the contest. Entries are judged subjectively; that is, judges are asked to rank the works in order of their individual preference. Winners are announced at the spring meeting of the association.
Volunteers to work with both these contests will be requested at the February meeting.
Dues are now payable for 2004. Please send your check for $10/individual or $15/couple to George Ann Benoit
Volunteers needed! Call Robert now if you are willing to work on either of our annual contests: Dr. Joe Gray Taylor Louisiana History Essay Contest or Dr. Donald J. Millet Historical Writing Award.
Copyright 2004 Southwest Louisiana Historical Association
Webmaster: pthreatt@mail.mcneese.edu