Feb 10, 2017 Orange County Review
So much has transpired since I last wrote and that was just last week! There is no way I can get it all into this one column, but please be patient. I will reveal all in due time!
One mystery has been solved and additional data has been added to our bank of primary resources. William Taylor did indeed have several children baptized who were born to women he enslaved, but not across the river. I have now learned through discussions with a noted Pointe Coupee historian, Brian Costello, that there existed during Taylor’s lifetime a Catholic Church by the name of St. Francis, which was only a short distance from Lakeland.
Mr. Costello provided a list of those slaves owned by Taylor and baptized at St. Francis from the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge. The data included the date of baptism; the child’s name, gender and age; the mother’s name and the names of the sponsors. The sponsors were other enslaved people and most often also were owned by the Taylors.
Through Mr. Costello, I was also able to find the elusive list of Freedmen’s Bureau Labor Contracts for the Taylor Plantation from 1867.
A plethora of informative lists was then at my disposal: baptisms, shoe sizes, clothing distribution, conveyances of property, inventory of Taylor’s will and the 1867 labor contracts, each with reoccurring names distinct from the names of those purchased with the Lakeland Plantation transfer from the Poydras estate. I’ll remind you that Taylor was by law prohibited from selling these individuals away from Lakeland. Armed and optimistic, I reviewed again the 1870 Census record.
Thomas Brashear, a close friend of Lucy and William Taylor, owned land that joined the Briers, Taylor’s larger plantation on Bayou Latanache. It was Brashear’s name and the location of his property relative to the Taylors’ “Latanache” land that enabled me to examine which, if any, of the former slaves had settled in the same neighborhood. It is relevant to note that the 1867 labor contracts indicated that many of those with names that matched previous documents were contracted to work on the Taylor plantation. It is a logical to look for them in the same geographic area three years later. The 1870 Census is the first official record of former enslaved people that would include name (first and last), place of birth, estimated year of birth, spouse and children.
I found the following: existing on or near the Taylor land were several households with given names that match those of people Taylor enslaved. The census contains surnames or occupations that in some cases match those assigned to slaves by Taylor, which can be seen on earlier lists. I also learned the names and ages of spouses and children.
In this “settlement” of newly freedmen who can be verified as having been enslaved by William Taylor are both Virginia-born men and women. They are John and Jane Davis (born about 1822 and 1830); Nancy Cooper (born about 1823); Eugenia Cook (born about 1800); James Cooper (born about 1818); Mary Goffney (born about 1813); Mary Virginia (born about 1830); Betty McDonnal (born about 1814); Elvira Briggs (born about 1820); Luke and Mary Ann Long (born about 1814 and 1820); Austin Dickerson (born about 1821); Edmund Labuzan (born about 1820) and Randall and Mary Jones (born about 1821 and 1825).
Until next week, be well.