Southern Folk Artist & Antiques Dealer/Collector: My paintings of Marie Laveau, New Orleans Voodoo Queen

Monday, May 9, 2016

My paintings of Marie Laveau, New Orleans Voodoo Queen

Marie Laveau

Marie LeVeau was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo renowned in New Orleans. Historical records surmise that Marie LaVeau was born free in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, about 1801. She was the natural daughter of two free persons of color, both biracial, one of whom was Creole. On August 4, 1819, she married Jacques Paris, a free person of color who had emigrated from Haiti. Their marriage certificate is preserved in St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. The wedding Mass was performed by Father Antonio de Sedella, the Capuchin priest known as Pere Antoine. Jacques Paris died in 1820 under unexplained circumstances. She took a lover, Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, with whom she lived until his death in 1835. He was a white man of noble French descent. They were reported to have had 15 children including Marie Laveau II, born c. 1827, who sometimes used the surname "Paris" after her mother's first husband. The Laveau-Glapion family lived in the original French section of the New Orleans, now known as the Vieux Carré or French Quarter, in a cottage on St. Ann Street between Rampart and Burgundy. It was built around 1798 by Marie's grandmother, Catherine Henry, but after they moved in the property became legally owned by de Glapion. After his death, the family was heavily in debt, rumored to be so because of de Glapion's unwise business speculations.The St. Ann Street property was seized, but LaVeau, her daughters and her grandchildren were allowed to remain in residence when a kind friend bought the house.