Archive obit: Marie Laveau (d. June 15, 1881)
Louisiana Lou
From The Daily Picayune - June 18, 1881
DEATH OF MARIE LAVEAU
A WOMAN WITH A WONDERFUL HISTORY ALMOST A CENTURY OLD,
CARRIED TO THE TOMB YESTERDAY EVENING.
Those who have passed by the quaint old house on St. Ann, between
Rampart and Burgundy streets with the high frail looking fence in front
over which a tree or two is visible, have been within the last few
years, noticed through the open gateway a decrepid old lady with snow
white hair, and a smile of peace and contentment lighting up her golden
features. For a few years past she has been missed from her accustomed
place. The feeble old lady lay upon her bed with her daughter and grand
children around her ministering to her wants.
On Wednesday the invalid sank into the sleep, which knows no
waking. Those whom she had befriended crowded into the little room where
she was exposed, in order to obtain a last look at the features, smiling
even in death, of her who had been so kind to them.
At 5 o'clock yesterday evening Marie Laveau was buried in her
family tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Her remains were followed to
the grave by a large concourse of people, the most prominent and the
most humble joining in paying their last respects to the dead. Father
Mignot conducted the funeral services.
Marie Laveau was born ninety-eight years ago. Her father was a rich
planter, who was prominent in all public affairs, and served in the
Legislature of this State. Her mother was Marguerite Henry, and her
grandmother was Marguerite Semard. All were beautiful women of color.
The gift of beauty was hereditary in the family, and Marie inherited it
in the fullest degree. When she was twenty-five years old she was led to
the altar by Jacques Paris, a carpenter. This marriage took place at the
St. Louis Cathedral. Pere Antoine, of beloved memory, conducting the
service, and Mr. Mazureau the famous lawyer, acting as witness. A year
afterwards Mr. Paris disappeared, and no one knows to this day what
became of him. After waiting a year for his return she married Capt.
Christophe Glapion. The latter was also very prominent here, and served
with distinction in the battalion of men of San Domingo, under D'Aquin,
with Jackson in the war of 1815.
Fifteen children were the result of their marriage. Only one of
these is now alive. Capt. Glapion died greatly registered, on the 26th
of June, 1855. Five years afterwards Marie Laveau, became ill, and has
been sick ever since, her indisposition becoming more pronounced and
painful within the last ten years.
Besides being very beautiful Marie also was very wise. She was
skillful in the practice of medicine and was acquainted with the
valuable healing qualities of indigenous herbs.
She was very successful as a nurse, wonderful stories being told of
her exploits at the sick bed. In yellow fever and cholera epidemics she
was always called upon to nurse the sick, and always responded promptly.
Her skill and knowledge earned her the friendship and approbation, of
those sufficiently cultivated, but the ignorant attributed her success
to unnatural means and held her in constant dread.
Notably in 1853 a committee of gentlemen, appointed at a mass
meeting held at Globe Hall, waited on Marie and requested her on behalf
of the people to minister to the fever stricken. She went out and fought
the pestilence where it was thickest and many alive today owe their
salvation to her devotion.
Not alone to the sick man was Marie Laveau a blessing. To help a
fellow citizen in distress she considered a priceless privilege. She was
born in the house where she died. Her mother lived and died there before
her. The unassuming cottage has stood for a century and a half. It was
built by the first French settlers of adobe and not a brick was employed
in its construction. When it was erected it was considered the
handsomest building in the neighborhood. Rampart street was not then in
existence, being the skirt of a wilderness and latterly a line of
entrenchment. Notwithstanding the decay of her little mansion, Marie
made the sight of it pleasant to the unfortunate. At anytime of night or
day any one was welcome to food and lodging.
Those in trouble had but to come to her and she would make their
cause her own after undergoing great sacrifices in order to assist them.
Besides being charitable, Marie was also very pious and took
delight in strengthening the allegiance of souls to the church. She
would sit with the condemned in their last moments and endeavor to turn
their last thoughts to Jesus. Whenever a prisoner excited her pity Marie
would labor incessantly to obtain his pardon, or at least a commutation
of sentence, and she generally succeeded.
A few years ago, before she lost control of her memory, she was
rich in interesting reminiscences of the early history of this city. She
spoke often of the young American Governor Claiborne, and told how the
child-wife he brought with him from Tennessee died of the yellow fever
shortly after his arrival with the dead babe upon her bosom was buried
in a corner of the old American Cemetery. She spoke sometimes of the
strange little man with the wonderful bright eyes Aaron Burr, who was so
polite and so dangerous. She loved to talk of Lafayette, who visited New
Orleans over half a century ago. The great Frenchman came to see her at
her house, and kissed her on the forehead at parting.
She remembered the old French General, Humbert, and was one of the
few colored people who escorted to the tomb long since dismantled in the
catholic Cemetery, the withered and grizzly remains of the hero of
Castelbar. Probably she knew Father Antoine better than any living in
those days - for he the priest and she the nurse met at the dying
bedside of hundreds of people - she to close the faded eyes in death,
and he, to waft the soul over the river to the realms of eternal joy.
All in all Marie Laveau was a most wonderful woman. Doing good for
the sake of doing good alone, she obtained no reward, oft times meeting
with prejudice and loathing, she was nevertheless contented and did not
lag in her work. She always had the cause of the people at heart and was
with them in all things. During the late rebellion she proved her
loyalty to the South at every opportunity and fully dispensed help to
those who suffered in defense of the "lost cause." Her last days were
spent surrounded by sacred pictures and other evidences of religion, and
she died with a firm trust in heaven. While God's sunshine plays around
the little tomb where her remains are buried, by the side of her second
husband, and her sons and daughters, Marie Laveau's name will not be
forgotten in New Orleans.
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From the New Orleans Democrat - June 17, 1881
Marie Lavaux
Death of the Queen of the Voudous
Just Before St. John's Eve.
"On the eve of St. John
I must wander alone,
In thy bower, I may not be!"
" Marie Glassion, nee Lavaux, was buried yesterdy evening, and her
funeral was attended by large numbers of the colored population. Marie
Lavaux, as is well-known by all the old residents of the city, was the
queen of the Voudous, that curious sect of superstitious darkies that
combined the hard traditions of African Legends with the fetich worship
of our Creole Negroes.
She was a woman of some presence and considerable conversational
powers. Somewhat bent with years when she last officiated as regnant
mistress of her weird domain, she yet retained a remarkable control over
her whilom subjects and impressed them with her sovereignty. As a rule
reticent on subjects other than fetich worship, she was somewhat
loquacious and quite a spirited talker.
Her eyes were peculiar in their look and had considerable magnetism
about them. Her face was of the old Negro type, expressionless except
when highly animated, wrinkled from forehead to chin and with a skin not
unlike parchment.
She was a peculiar character, and one which essentially belongs to
an era of Louisiana long since passed away. That remarkable woman died
at the advanced age of ninety-eight years, and it is curious that her
demise should have happened within a few days of the "eve of good St.
John," which is the anniversary of the Voudous, and which has been
commemorated by the sect under her regency, for the last forty years, on
the twenty-fourth of June of each year. When the next celebration comes,
the Voudous will have no queen and on the eve of St. John Marie Lavaux
will be voudouing with the ghosts of the past and her charms and
incantations, will be of no avail. For she had love charms that brought
lovers together and fearful drugs that sundered loving souls. Among her
people her incantations, fetiches and charms were supposed to be without
fail, and thousands crowded around her to obtain relief, fortune or
revenge. How they were satisfied is neither here nor there, but they
believed in the dark superstition, and faith covered all the faults and
lies that made her a sorceress and a queen. With Marie Lavaux dies the
last of these old Negro Creole characters that had almost risen in New
Orleans up to the standard illustrations.
First went old Zabette, the celebrated cake woman of the St. Louis
Cathedral, who in old times delighted the children and even some of the
grown folks with her home-made pastry and delicious "boiere du pays,"
always kept cool in a bucket of clearest water. Of early mornings
Zabette gave out choice black coffee in tiny cups to her clients, and we
remember an old song composed ex tempore by a representative Creole on a
certain morning succeeding a sleepless night, which she took as the
price of a cup of coffee, and which began in this wise:
"Piti fille, piti fille, piti fille,
Piti fille qui couri dan de lo."
Then went Rose, the coffee woman of the French Market, one of the
comeliest of her race, black as Erebus, but smiling always and amicable
as dawn. Her coffee was the essence of the fragrant bean, and since her
death the lovers of that divine beverage wander listlessly around the
stalls of Sunday mornings with a pining at the bosom which cannot be
satisfied.
Now Marie Lavaux is gone, the least graceful or poetic of these
strange personations of the past, but undoubtedly the most powerful, and
we can say that with her vanishes the embodiment of the fetich
superstition and the last representative of that class whose peculiar
idiosyncracies were derived from the habits and customs of old
Louisiana. Much evil dies with her, but should we not add, a little
poetry?" New Orleans Democrat - June 17, 1881
-----------------------------------------------------------
Another item from the New Orleans Democrat:
A SAINTED WOMAN
"Who has been stuffing our contemporaries in the matter of the
defunct voudou queen, Marie Lavoux? For they have undoubtedly been
stuffed, nay crammed, by some huge practical joker. The informant for
all is evidently the same, as the stories of the Picayune, Item and
States consist admirably in their uniform departure from historical
fact. According to the accounts of these esteemed but deluded
contemporaries, Marie Lavoux was a saint, who had spent a life of
self-sacrifice and abnegation in doing good to her fellow-mortals, and
whose immaculate spirit was all but too pure for this world.
One of them even so far in his enthusiasm as to publish a touching
interview with the sainted woman, in which the reporter boasts of having
deposited a chaste kiss on her holy forehead. We are sorry for that
reporter if his story is true, for if he really believes it all, his
only consolation is in the fact that greenness is the color of hope.
These fictions had one good result, for they created a vast amount of
merriment among the old Creole residents, and in fact among all men of
mature age who knew the social history of their time in New Orleans.
The fact is that the least said about Marie Lavoux's sainted life,
etc., the better. She was, up to an advanced age, the prime mover and
soul of the indecent orgies of the ignoble Voudous; and to her influence
may be attributed the fall of many a virtuous woman. It is true that she
had redeeming traits. It is a peculiar quality of the old race of Creole
Negroes that they are invariably kind-hearted and charitable. Marie
Lavoux made no exception. But talk about her morality and kiss her
sainted brow - pouah!!! The New Orleans Democrat, June 18, 1881
-----------------------------------------------------------
The last account we have of her was published in 1886 by George W.
Cable, one of the most respected Southern journalists of his era:
"I once saw, in extreme old age, the famed Marie Laveau. Her
dwelling was in the quadroon quarter of New Orleans ... In the center of
a small room whose ancient cypress floor was worn with scrubbing,
sprinkled with crumbs of soft brick -- a Creole affectation of superior
cleanliness -- sat, quaking with feebleness in an ill-looking old
rocking chair, her body bowed, her wild, gray witch's tresses hanging
about her shriveled, yellow neck, the queen of the Voodoos. Three
generations of her children were within the faint beckon of her
helpless, wagging wrist and fingers ... one could hardly help but see
that her face, now so withered, had once been handsome and commanding.
There was still a faint shadow of departed beauty in the forehead, the
spark of an old fire in the sunken, glistening eyes, and vestige of
imperiousness in the fine, slightly aquiline nose, and even about her
silent, woebegone mouth ... Her daughter was also present, a woman of
some 70 years, and a most striking and majestic figure. In features,
stature and bearing she was regal. One had but to look at her, and
impute her brilliances -- too untamable and severe to be called charms
and graces -- to her mother, and remember what New Orleans was long
years ago, to understand how the name of Marie Laveau should have driven
herself inextricably into the traditions of the town and the times."
On June 16, 1881, word went out that Marie Laveau was dead. The
Times Democrat wrote, "Much evil dies with her, but should we not add, a
little poetry as well?"
Bill Schenley
Great stuff, Lou. Really, *really* cool.
Here are a few portraits of Marie Laveau:
http://www.storyhouse.org/kristinpic16.jpg
http://www.wendymae.com/voodoo/images/laveau1-2.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/46/Marie-laveau.jpg
http://www.ebsqart.com/Art/5123/226547/MarieLaveau_275_275.jpg
http://www.thescreamonline.com/photo/photo3-1/davis/images/marie.jpg
Dolls:
http://www.folkart.com/faces/ffmarie.jpg
http://www.folkart.com/voodooshop/a7.jpg
http://www.southernelegance.net/mlsnake3.jpg
http://home.xnet.com/~minxkely/barbie/marie3.jpg
Comic book art:
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/laveau7.gif
Her tomb:
http://www.thebluescruisers.com/MarieLaveau.jpg
http://www.cemphotos.com/la/la-stlouis/DSC00065.JPG
Louisiana Lou
> > DEATH OF MARIE LAVEAU
>
> Great stuff, Lou. Really, *really* cool.
>
> Here are a few portraits of Marie Laveau:
> http://www.storyhouse.org/kristinpic16.jpg
>
>
who-knows-what. I didn't realize there was a small ceremony at the tomb
yesterday. Times-Picayune pics:
http://www.nola.com/katrinaphotos/tp/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/nola/view_gallery.ata?g_id=6047
Hey, you included links to portraits, dolls, and pictures of tombs, but
no songs! I wonder how many there are.
Bill Schenley
> pictures of tombs, but no songs! I wonder how
> many there are.
Shel Silverstein's "Marie Laveau," recorded by Bobby Bare, is probably the
most famous ... but there are Papa Celestin's (also recorded by Dr. John)
... John Boutte's, both with the same title ... and "Voodoo To Do," "Hoodoo
In The Court" (about the murder trial she supposedly influenced), "Heebee
Jeebee Blues," "Witch Queen Of New Orleans" (Redbone) and "Dixie Drug Store"
(Grant Lee Buffalo) are a few ... Heh ... There are probably hundreds of
them.