François Fortier (b.1697) immigrated in 1720 from France to Biloxi, Mississippi, and moved later to Natchez, Louisiana and then to New Orleans. He married Gabrielle Moreau either in France or Louisiana. Descendants and relatives lived in Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland and elsewhere, and many intermarried with Acadians or others who had moved to Louisiana from Canada. Includes ancestry in Canada, France and elsewhere.
A study of Louisiana French Creole sugar planters’ role in higher education and a detailed history of the only college ever constructed to serve the sugar elite The education of individual planter classes—cotton, tobacco, sugar—is rarely treated in works of southern history. Of the existing literature, higher education is typically relegated to a footnote, providing only brief glimpses into a complex instructional regime responsive to wealthy planters. R. Eric Platt’s Educating the Sons of Sugar allows for a greater focus on the mindset of French Creole sugar planters and provides a comprehensive record and analysis of a private college supported by planter wealth. Jefferson College was founded in St. James Parish in 1831, surrounded by slave-holding plantations and their cash crop, sugar cane. Creole planters (regionally known as the “ancienne population”) designed the college to impart a “genteel” liberal arts education through instruction, architecture, and geographic location. Jefferson College played host to social class rivalries (Creole, Anglo-American, and French immigrant), mirrored the revival of Catholicism in a region typified by secular mores, was subject to the “Americanization” of south Louisiana higher education, and reflected the ancienne population’s decline as Louisiana’s ruling population. Resulting from loss of funds, the college closed in 1848. It opened and closed three more times under varying administrations (French immigrant, private sugar planter, and Catholic/Marist) before its final closure in 1927 due to educational competition, curricular intransigence, and the 1927 Mississippi River flood. In 1931, the campus was purchased by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and reopened as a silent religious retreat. It continues to function to this day as the Manresa House of Retreats. While in existence, Jefferson College was a social thermometer for the white French Creole sugar planter ethos that instilled the “sons of sugar” with a cultural heritage resonant of a region typified by the management of plantations, slavery, and the production of sugar.
While New Orleans is recognized the world over for the French Quarter and Mardi Gras, Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, is not as well known. However, Metairie does have a rich history all its own. What was once described two centuries ago as "a tongue of land to lend pasturage" has become the second largest unincorporated city in the nation. The explorer La Salle noticed the river bend that is now Metairie when he descended and ascended the Mississippi River in the Spring of 1682. Almost simultaneously with the founding of New Orleans in 1718, John Law's Company of the West began granting land to European investors and to a handful of Canadians struggling to survive along the Gulf Coast. The settlers helped feed the city, provided it with critical building materials, and enhanced its value as a port. As with many colonial frontiers throughout the history of the world, missionaries stood in the vanguard of Metairie's evolution. French and Spanish friars, then European priests, and finally native clergy provided leadership and stability as a progressive community began to emerge from the marsh and swamp.
The story of Antoine is emblematic of countless enslaved people whose lives and contributions have been overlooked. Antoine, the enslaved gardener of Oak Alley Plantation, was the first person to successfully propagate the pecan tree yet he exists only as a footnote in the bigger story of Oak Alley Plantation. His pioneering work enabled large groves of trees to be planted creating a lucrative commercial crop and though his horticultural achievement has long been legend, virtually nothing is known about his life. Historian Katy Morales Shannon utilizes extensive research and period documents to expose his story and explore the lives of the enslaved community in which he lived. The life of this truly revolutionary enslaved man is revealed through the lives of his family and friends, the community they built, and the bonds they forged during their enslavement and their life as free people.
