Tureen
Adolphe Himmel for Hyde & Goodrich, New
Orleans
1861-1877
Coin silver
1986.14
Image 6 of 7
Engraved 'To F and M.B.' on front; 'From your Father / M.B. / Dec. 16th
1874.' on back
This Rococo Revival style tureen was given by New Orleanian M. Burwin as a
wedding present to his son in Boston in 1874, twenty years after its
manufacture.
On the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets in 1838, the St. Louis
hotel opened. It was also called the City Exchange Hotel. Two years later it
burned down but was quickly rebuilt. The main entrance to the hotel led into the
exchange, a beautiful domed rotunda where every afternoon between noon and 3
p.m. the auctions were held. In this elegant hotel, the center of Creole society
before the Civil War, was located perhaps the most infamous of the slave auction
blocks. There was more than one.
In 1842, George Buckingham reported walking through the rotunda. The
auctioneers, he said, were "endeavouring to drown every voice but his own. ...
One was selling pictures and dwelling on their merits; another was disposing of
some slaves. These consisted of an unhappy family who were all exposed to the
hammer at the same time. Their good qualities were enumerated in English and in
French, and their persons were carefully examined by intending purchasers, among
whom they were ultimately disposed of, chiefly to Creole buyers; the husband at
750 dollars, the wife at 550, and the children at 220 each."
A wooden block that was once used in slave auctions
On the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets in 1838, the St. Louis
hotel opened. It was also called the City Exchange Hotel. Two years later it
burned down but was quickly rebuilt. The main entrance to the hotel led into the
exchange, a beautiful domed rotunda where every afternoon between noon and 3
p.m. the auctions were held. In this elegant hotel, the center of Creole society
before the Civil War, was located perhaps the most infamous of the slave auction
blocks. There was more than one.
In 1842, George Buckingham reported walking through the rotunda. The
auctioneers, he said, were "endeavouring to drown every voice but his own. ...
One was selling pictures and dwelling on their merits; another was disposing of
some slaves. These consisted of an unhappy family who were all exposed to the
hammer at the same time. Their good qualities were enumerated in English and in
French, and their persons were carefully examined by intending purchasers, among
whom they were ultimately disposed of, chiefly to Creole buyers; the husband at
750 dollars, the wife at 550, and the children at 220 each."
Bell from Bernard de Marigny's Fontainebleau Plantation, cast in
1825.
Belle Grove plantation- Capital
Belle Grove plantation- Capital
Belle Grove plantation- Capital
Elegant furniture, clothes and bedding, are displayed among the more crude
items. “Slavery produced the wealth and allowed planters to have china, silver,
glassware and silk clothing.
Elegant furniture, clothes and bedding, are displayed among the more crude
items. “Slavery produced the wealth and allowed planters to have china, silver,
glassware and silk clothing.
Masters and Mistresses
Louisiana's planters, both white and free black, were among the wealthiest in the South. Many planters were good businessmen, buying and selling crops and slaves at the best price. They poured profits back into their plantations, while spending at least some of their earnings on luxurious consumer goods. Fine furniture, tableware, artwork, clothes, and jewelry added to the planter family's comfort and allowed them to show off their wealth to friends and business associates. The wealthiest planters also kept houses in New Orleans, where they stayed during the winter cultural season.
Although men owned and controlled most large holdings in Louisiana and throughout the South, women contributed significantly to the daily operation of plantations and frequently ran them in their husbands' absences. While the master supervised the slaves in the fields, the plantation mistress managed the domestic labor force for the entire household, directing the upkeep of all plantation buildings and the production, purchase, and distribution of food and clothing. In her spare time, the mistress bore and cared for numerous children, heirs to her husband's cotton or sugar estate.
Because plantation homes were so far apart, their mistresses so busy, and their masters so protective of white women, planter women lived in relative isolation from one another. Their letters reveal that they tried to maintain ties with friends and family, visiting other plantations or venturing to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and other towns, where they attended balls, concerts, operas, and plays.
Elegant furniture, clothes and bedding, are displayed among the more crude
items. “Slavery produced the wealth and allowed planters to have china, silver,
glassware and silk clothing.
Free woman of color Marie Therese Carmelite Anty Metoyer’s portrait,
painted circa 1830. She was the wife of Auguste Metoyer and the granddaughter of
Marie Therese Coincoin.
Some of Louisiana's most prosperous planters and farmers were free African
Americans, the owners of more property than free blacks in any other state. In
1860 there were 472 free black Louisianians whose average real estate holdings
were worth over $10,000. Far behind Louisiana in second place was South
Carolina, whose 162 free blacks in the same category had an average real estate
holding of less than $5,000 in 1860. In addition, three out of every ten free
black estate owners in Louisiana were women.
The free black Metoyer family lived in the Natchitoches area and acquired
vast holdings of land and slaves during the antebellum period. In 1830, at the
height of their affluence, the Metoyers owned more slaves than any other free
black family in the United States. This family traced its beginnings to
Marie-Thérèze, also known by her African name of Coincoin, who created an empire
with her fourteen children on the small plot of land that her white common-law
husband, Pierre Metoyer, left her in 1778.
Slave Collar
c. 1840
The sound of this belled collar made any slave wearing it easier to locate.
Resourceful slaves silenced the bells by stuffing them with mud.
Slaves
Slaves made up slightly less than half of Louisiana's total
population but almost three-fifths of those living outside New Orleans in 1850,
topping out at a high of 332,000 in Louisiana by 1860. Nine out of ten slaves in
Louisiana worked on rural farms and plantations.
Slaves performed most of the manual, skilled, and domestic tasks on
Louisiana plantations. Men and women labored in the fields and houses, the men
specializing in skilled work and women assuming primary care of children. Most
slaves worked from sunrise to sundown and beyond, although slaves often worked
around the clock during the grinding season on sugar plantations.
Through perseverance, many slaves maintained stable families, although
reluctantly permitted to take on partners at other plantations and rarely
allowed to marry in formal church ceremonies. Familial ties were subjected to
the whims and fortunes of the plantation master, who often broke up families by
selling off unneeded members. Most planters, however, encouraged family
formation, both to increase their holdings and to discourage adult slaves from
running away from children and spouses.
Slaves, especially on large plantations, were able to carve out some space
of their own and create a sense of community, developing values, activities, and
identity separate from that of white plantation society. This community also
developed a hierarchy, and slaves living in the quarters often saw slaves who
worked closely by their masters and mistresses as informers and did not trust
them. Hunters were held in high regard, since they were trusted enough by their
masters to carry arms and supplied the slave community with meat. Religious
leaders and midwives were also high within the social order.
Slaves reinforced their community ties by gathering together to eat, dance,
sing, and tell stories. Through folklore and song, slaves passed down their
collective historical memory from one generation to the next. Few masters
allowed slaves to learn to read and write, and legislation passed in Louisiana
in 1830 made teaching slaves to do so a crime. Slaves thus conveyed knowledge
orally, just as their ancestors did in Africa and colonial Louisiana.
Chest of drawers, or semainière
Dutreuil Barjon, Jr., c.
1855
Mahogany, yellow pine
1980.169.04
Barjon Jr. (c. 1821-1870) was a free man of color cabinetmaker who took
over his father's New Orleans workshop in 1855.
Chest of drawers, or semainière
Dutreuil Barjon, Jr., c.
1855
Mahogany, yellow pine
1980.169.04
Barjon Jr. (c. 1821-1870) was a free man of color cabinetmaker who took
over his father's New Orleans workshop in 1855.
Chest of drawers, or semainière
Dutreuil Barjon, Jr., c.
1855
Mahogany, yellow pine
1980.169.04
Barjon Jr. (c. 1821-1870) was a free man of color cabinetmaker who took
over his father's New Orleans workshop in 1855.
Tureen
Adolphe Himmel for Hyde & Goodrich, New
Orleans
1861-1877
Coin silver
1986.14
Engraved 'To F and M.B.' on front; 'From your Father / M.B. / Dec. 16th
1874.' on back
This Rococo Revival style tureen was given by New Orleanian M. Burwin as a
wedding present to his son in Boston in 1874, twenty years after its
manufacture.
The large market for silver goods kept New Orleans silversmiths busy. They
supplied fine silver products to wealthy urban dwellers and to planters
throughout the Mississippi Valley region. In addition, some silversmiths
contracted with large retail establishments, like Hyde and Goodrich and D. H.
Holmes, to provide them with merchandise. Many leading Louisiana silversmiths
were German immigrants.
Furniture makers also flourished in New Orleans, supplying a large urban
and agrarian market.
A perique tobacco cutter of about 1850, a remarkable specimen of plantation
craftsmanship.
Perique is a type of tobacco only grown in Saint James Parish, Louisiana,
Often considered the truffle of pipe tobaccos known for its strong, powerful,
and fruity aroma. When the Acadians made their way into this region in 1776, the
Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes were cultivating a variety of tobacco with a
distinctive flavor. A farmer named Pierre Chenet is credited with first turning
this local tobacco into what is now known as Perique in 1824 through the
technique of pressure-fermentation.
A French mid 19th century Old Paris porcelain perique tobacco container
A life-size carving of an Indian maiden. “This would be put outside a
tobacco shop to let people know what they sold,”
A life-size carving of an Indian maiden. “This would be put outside a
tobacco shop to let people know what they sold,”
A life-size carving of an Indian maiden. “This would be put outside a
tobacco shop to let people know what they sold,”
A life-size carving of an Indian maiden. “This would be put outside a
tobacco shop to let people know what they sold,”
Servant of the Douglas Family c. 1850
Individual portraits of domestic servants, like this one of a Douglas
family servant, are extremely rare.
Gift of the Douglas Family
For the first four decades of the nineteenth century blacks, both slave and free, made up a majority of the New Orleans populace. In 1810 nearly two-thirds of all New Orleanians were black. By 1840, however, the percentage of African Americans in the Crescent City dropped to two-fifths and declined even further over the two decades preceding the Civil War, primarily because more whites moved into the city and more slaves were needed in rural cotton and sugar fields.
A few masters, like New Orleans commission merchant and real estate investor John McDonogh, freed their slaves on the condition that they leave Louisiana or the United States entirely. McDonogh worked with the New York City and the American Colonization Societies to send freed slaves to Africa. McDonogh's slaves worked for their freedom, gradually over many years amassing enough earnings to be applied to their purchase price.
Free blacks composed about forty percent of the African-American population in New Orleans, reaching a high of forty-six percent in 1820, although their number was greater in 1840 than in any other decade: almost 20,000 out of a total New Orleans population of slightly over 100,000. A growing slave and white immigrant population in the 1830s reduced the proportion of free blacks in the total populace.
In response to increasing discrimination, oppression, and restrictive legislation in Louisiana and throughout the South, several free black New Orleanians moved to Haiti, Mexico, France, and other foreign destinations. Some returned to Louisiana after the Civil War.
Free blacks played an important role in the New Orleans economy, where labor was often in short supply. Many owned successful businesses or engaged in the professions and amassed substantial estates that included real, personal, and slave property. Among free blacks women outnumbered men two to one and often established long-term relations with white men. United States laws--unlike those of France, Spain, and their former colonies--prohibited interracial marriages. In response, whites and free blacks or slaves formed common-law unions or traveled to France, Mexico, and the Caribbean to wed legally.
A few masters, like New Orleans commission merchant and real estate investor John McDonogh, freed their slaves on the condition that they leave Louisiana or the United States entirely. McDonogh worked with the New York City and the American Colonization Societies to send freed slaves to Africa. McDonogh's slaves worked for their freedom, gradually over many years amassing enough earnings to be applied to their purchase price.
Free blacks composed about forty percent of the African-American population in New Orleans, reaching a high of forty-six percent in 1820, although their number was greater in 1840 than in any other decade: almost 20,000 out of a total New Orleans population of slightly over 100,000. A growing slave and white immigrant population in the 1830s reduced the proportion of free blacks in the total populace.
In response to increasing discrimination, oppression, and restrictive legislation in Louisiana and throughout the South, several free black New Orleanians moved to Haiti, Mexico, France, and other foreign destinations. Some returned to Louisiana after the Civil War.
Free blacks played an important role in the New Orleans economy, where labor was often in short supply. Many owned successful businesses or engaged in the professions and amassed substantial estates that included real, personal, and slave property. Among free blacks women outnumbered men two to one and often established long-term relations with white men. United States laws--unlike those of France, Spain, and their former colonies--prohibited interracial marriages. In response, whites and free blacks or slaves formed common-law unions or traveled to France, Mexico, and the Caribbean to wed legally.
Labor
New Orleans was home to many skilled workers during the antebellum period, among them native whites, immigrants, free blacks, and slaves. Demand for skilled labor was high, as were wages. Free blacks dominated such skilled trades as carpentry, masonry, and barrel making, and male slaves were highly skilled in these and other trades, such as bricklaying, painting, blacksmithing, shoemaking, and baking. Several free black and slave women plied their trade as seamstresses.
Although many city slaves were skilled workers, most were domestic
servants. They cared for their masters' homes, families, gardens, and animals,
shopped and sewed for the household, and ran numerous errands. The number and
appearance of one's servants indicated the urban resident's wealth and social
standing. Thus, many prominent whites and free blacks in New Orleans and Baton
Rouge outfitted their domestics in great finery when making public appearances.
Like many of the city's skilled laborers, domestics were sometimes hired
out and earned extra money for themselves as well as their masters. Masters also
occasionally gave their favorite servants monetary or material presents. With
these earnings domestic slaves purchased their freedom or more commonly bought
items not supplied by their masters, such as gold jewelry and other luxury goods
Municipal Services
New Orleans officials provided residents with some services, many at the taxpayers' expense. The city maintained a police force, jails, courts, schools, waterworks, and a gas-lighting system. City workers and hired slaves also cleared roads, drained swamps, and collected garbage.
Authorities commissioned architect Benjamin Latrobe to design and build a
system to supply water to New Orleans houses and businesses in 1811. The War of
1812 and other commitments delayed Latrobe's project until 1819, and he had not
finished construction when he died of yellow fever in 1820. The city took over
Latrobe's waterworks and completed them in 1822. Average daily consumption of
water by 1837 was 250,000 tons, carried through 18 miles of cast-iron pipe.
Many residents were not connected to the city's waterworks, its expense
making access to all a difficult task. Others preferred not to drink water taken
from the Mississippi River. They relied on water collected in cisterns to supply
their drinking and washing needs.
Because city services did not meet the needs of most New Orleanians, some
established benevolent and voluntary associations to provide mutual support and
defray the costs of living and dying in the Crescent City. Poor and
working-class people, religious groups, immigrants, and people of like
occupation pooled their resources to benefit needy members with such expenses as
medical bills, funeral and burial costs, and support for widows and orphans.
Architecture
Antebellum New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and surrounding plantations boasted many large public and private buildings in the Federal, Tudor, Italianate, and Greek, Egyptian, Roman and Gothic Revival styles. Among the many types of residential houses built in the Crescent City during this period were creole cottages, shotgun and double shotgun houses, and camelbacks.
The large market for silver goods kept New Orleans silversmiths busy. They supplied fine silver products to wealthy urban dwellers and to planters throughout the Mississippi Valley region. In addition, some silversmiths contracted with large retail establishments, like Hyde and Goodrich and D. H. Holmes, to provide them with merchandise. Many leading Louisiana silversmiths were German immigrants.
Furniture makers also flourished in New Orleans, supplying a large urban and agrarian market.
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Thomas Cantwell Healy after George
Peter Alexander Healy
1861
Loaned by the Louisiana Historical Society
Thomas Healy's older brother, George Peter Alexander Healy, an
internationally known portraitist, was commissioned in New Orleans to paint a
large portrait of Beauregard. Thomas followed George to South Carolina as his
assistant, continuing the painting until they had to evacuate the area following
Beauregard's firing on Fort Sumter. Thomas returned to New Orleans, his
sympathies being with the Confederacy, and his brother returned to his home in
Massachusetts, describing himself as "a Northern man, with Northern feelings and
anti-slavery principles." Thomas was then commissioned to create the smaller
painting shown here, faithfully copying his own brother's earlier portrait but
adding the soldiers and the cannon in the lower left. A respected painter,
Thomas never achieved the recognition or accomplishments of his older
brother.
P. G. T. Beauregard
P. G. T. Beauregard
One of the most notable Louisianians to serve in the Civil War was P. G. T. Beauregard, a graduate of West Point and the Confederacy's first brigadier general. As commander of Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, Beauregard ordered the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, firing the first shot of the Civil War. Liky many Civil War troops and officers, Beauregard received his early combat experience in the Mexican War of 1846-48.
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Thomas Cantwell Healy after George
Peter Alexander Healy
1861
Loaned by the Louisiana Historical Society
Thomas Healy's older brother, George Peter Alexander Healy, an
internationally known portraitist, was commissioned in New Orleans to paint a
large portrait of Beauregard. Thomas followed George to South Carolina as his
assistant, continuing the painting until they had to evacuate the area following
Beauregard's firing on Fort Sumter. Thomas returned to New Orleans, his
sympathies being with the Confederacy, and his brother returned to his home in
Massachusetts, describing himself as "a Northern man, with Northern feelings and
anti-slavery principles." Thomas was then commissioned to create the smaller
painting shown here, faithfully copying his own brother's earlier portrait but
adding the soldiers and the cannon in the lower left. A respected painter,
Thomas never achieved the recognition or accomplishments of his older
brother.
Civil War-era newspaper printed on bright pink flowered wallpaper.
Newspaper features news stories and advertisements for slaves.
Carpetbag
c. 1870
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