The “Other” Colonial America: An overview of Clayton
Library’s research material on New France

“Columbus discovered America. Then Englishmen came over, and they made colonies. After the English were here for a while, they had a revolution and became Americans, but they decided to keep speaking English so they could understand each other and use the same books. They also kept the same laws and made a congress that was like a parliament. That is why we all speak English and England is our Mother Country.”

Remember the fourth grade? And does the above look strangely familiar? What bliss! What clueless bliss! Believe it or not, to millions of Americans (including, I suspect, a few genealogists), this bolognious monograph pretty much sums up the essentials of America’s colonial history.

Those of us with ties to the “other” American colony—New France—have an entirely different view of American history. What kind of history essays would fourth-graders be writing today had the French and Indian War swung the other way or had the Louisiana Purchase been red-lined from the FY03 federal budget. And suppose Providence had not permitted the Frenchmen of New Orleans to be drawn into the insurrection of 1768-69 until they had grown up in strength sufficient to overcome the forces of Spanish governor O’Reilly!

Well, the purpose of this article is not to re-write history or to promote French-American nationalism but rather to address Clayton Library’s fine collection of material available to researchers interested in locating their roots in the “other” colonial America—New France. Within its ill-defined borders, along a wide croissant of water-front real estate extending from Mobile and New Orleans, up the Mississippi Valley and into and beyond the Illinois Country, the French established numerous military posts and settlements linking the Gulf Coast with the French-Canadian population centers at Quebec and Montreal. And they left plenty of genealogical records—here, in Canada, and in France; many of these records even found their way to Spanish and other European archives. French colonial sources in the Clayton Library are dispersed almost as much as the settlements of New France; however, once located, these sources are relatively easy to use. Researchers will need to look not only in the Louisiana section—the largest source of this data—but also in the USA, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Illinois sections, plus the Canadian and French sections. Don’t read French? Not to worry. A facility in the French language, although certainly helpful, is not generally required unless one seeks to do in-depth research in primary sources, a few (make that very few) of which are available on microfilm in the second-floor microprint area.

Space in this article does not permit the coverage of all French colonial sources, so the scope has been limited to those relating to the Gulf Coast and the lower Mississippi Valley; although, we will touch on a few other areas of passing interest.

For those not familiar with French colonial history in the region, I would strongly suggest taking time to read Marcel Giraud’s excellent, multi-volume work, Histoire de la Louisiane française. Three of these volumes, entitled A History of French Louisiana, are available in English translation, unfortunately, not at Clayton. Check with the main library (CEN 976.3 G522):

• Volume 1 (translation by Joseph C. Lambert), The Reign of Louis XIV, 1698-1715 (Baton Rouge, 1974).
• Volume 2 (translation by Brian Pearce), Years of Transition, 1715-1717 (Baton Rouge, 1993).
• Volume 5 (translation by Brian Pearce), The Company of the Indies, 1723-1731 (Baton Rouge, 1991).

Also of interest—although severely lacking in documentation—are the first three volumes of Charles Gayarré’s work, History of Louisiana. Originally published in 1903, volumes 1 and 2 cover the French period; volume 3, the Spanish. GEN 976.3 G285 LA.

For an excellent history of the founding of the French post at Mobile (and to find quite a few genealogical references), see Jay Higginbotham’s Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1702-1711 (Mobile, 1977), GEN 976.1 H635 AL.

If you need general information on the Acadian experience, see Carl A. Brasseaux’s excellent work, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765-1803 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1987), GEN 976.3 B823 LA.

To get an idea as to what kinds of French colonial materials exist (not all of which are available at Clayton), examine one of the many books that address this subject. These include, for example:

• John Francis McDermott, ed., The French in the Mississippi Valley (Urbana, Illinois, 1965), 973.04944 M134 USA. Included in this text is the chapter, “Manuscript Sources in Louisiana for the History of the French in the Mississippi Valley” by Winston De Ville (pp. 217-232), which gives a compact overview of available manuscript sources (now somewhat outdated, as the locations of some of the described materials have changed).
• Henry Putney Beers, The French in North America: A Bibliographical Guide to French Archives, Reproductions, and Research Missions (Baton Rouge, 1957), SR 973.04944 B415 USA. This is actually a history of the American and Canadian institutions and individuals involved in the acquisition of originals or reproductions from French archives and manuscript collections.
• A much more recent source is Henry Putney Beers’ French and Spanish Records of Louisiana: A Bibliographical Guide to Archives and Manuscript Sources (Baton Rouge, 1989), GEN 976.3 B415 LA. This text provides not only an overview of available records sources but places these records in their historical context and discusses their handling and organization over the years.
• Another useful reference, especially for secondary sources, is the bibliographical listing by Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad, A Bibliography of Scholarly Literature on Colonial Louisiana and New France (Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992). This book is not available at Clayton.

The French were great record keepers, and church, notarial, and census records of New France are numerous. For New Orleans, which was the center of French government in the Province of Louisiana from 1718 to 1767, baptism, marriage, and funeral records for the period have been published in the first two volumes of Archdiocese of New Orleans Sacramental Records (New Orleans, 1987 and 1988), GEN 976.3 S123 LA. Although significant gaps exist, especially for funeral records, researchers will find valuable material in these two volumes, which contain abstracts of sacramental records from the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans and the Saint Charles Borromeo Church on the German Coast (more about the German Coast later). Baptismal records are virtually complete for the Saint Louis Cathedral from 1744 to the end of the colonial period, and marriage records are complete from 1721 to 1733 and from 1759 to 1767. Gaps in the New Orleans church marriage records are filled to some extent by marriage contracts contained in the records of the French Superior Council; these have been abstracted by Alice Daly Forsyth and Ghislaine Pleasonton in Louisiana Marriage Contracts: A Compilation of Abstracts from Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana During the French Regime, 1725-1758 (New Orleans, 1980), GEN 976.3 F735 LA.

Other significant church records for the French colonial period include those abstracted in Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records, volume 1, 1707-1769 (Baton Rouge, 1978), GEN 976.3 C363 LA. Most notable in this volume are the records of the parish of Saint François de Pointe Coupée, established in 1728. Also of interest in this volume is the set of church records carried to Louisiana by the Acadians during the Grand Dérangement (the Acadian expulsion from what is now Nova Scotia). This latter set of records is from the parish of Saint Charles-aux-Mines in Acadia and spans the period from 1707 to 1748.

If you are able to trace an ancestor to New Orleans in the early eighteenth century, be sure to follow-up on the possibility that that ancestor came to New Orleans from Mobile, which had been established more than a decade prior to the founding of New Orleans. Many French colonial families appear first in the Mobile area then in New Orleans or its environs. A good place to look is Love’s Legacy: The Mobile Marriages Recorded in French, Transcribed, with Annotated Abstracts in English, 1724-1786 by Jacqueline Olivier Vidrine (Lafayette, 1985), GEN 976.1 V654 ALA. See also the two works by Winston De Ville: Mobile Funerals, 1726-1764: Alabama Church Records of the French Province of Louisiana (Ville Platte, Louisiana, 1994), GEN 976.1 D494 ALA; and Gulf Coast Colonials: A Compendium of French Families in Early Eighteenth Century Louisiana (Baltimore, 1968), GEN 976.3 D494 LA.

Many French-speaking colonists in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast had their origins in Canada, and we find records of these individuals beginning in Quebec and Montreal, extending down into the Illinois Country, and into Louisiana and the Mississippi-Alabama gulf coast. Indeed, the founders of Mobile, New Orleans, and Natchitoches were all French Canadians. If you think your Gulf Coast or Mississippi Valley French ancestor had Canadian roots, be sure to check the following references, one in the Louisiana section, two in the Canadian:

• Cyprien Tanguay, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu’à nos jours [Genealogical dictionary of Canadian families from the founding of the colony up to our day], 2 volumes, originally published in 1871-1890 and reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company (Baltimore, 1967), GEN 976.3 T164 LA. This work contains genealogical data on not only those inhabitants who remained in Canada but also those who relocated to Louisiana and the Illinois Country. Volume 1 spans the years 1608 to 1700; volume 2, the years 1701 to 1763.
• René Jetté, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec des origines à 1730 (Montreal, 1983), GEN 971.4 J58 CANADA. This volume, like the Tanguay work noted above, draws on early French Canadian parish records and, in many instances, traces individual families back to their seventeenth-century origins in France. This is a “must see” volume for anyone researching early French inhabitants in Louisiana, but you must look for it in the Canadian section.
• Edouard-Zotique Massicotte, Canadian Passports, 1681-1752 (New Orleans, 1975), GEN 971 M417 CANADA. This is actually a reprint of a 1926 publication, to which was added a new introduction and an index. In controlling access (from Canada) to trade with the Indian tribes of New France, the French authorities imposed the requirement for individuals to purchase a congé de traite [trade passport] that allowed them to move trade goods to and from the frontier. The progenitors of many Mississippi Valley families can be found in Massicotte’s compilation.

• Natalia Maree Belting, Kaskaskia Under the French Regime (New Orleans, 1975), originally published in 1948 as Illinois Studies in Social Sciences, Volume XXIX, Number 3. GEN 977.3 B453 ILL.
• Margaret Kimball Brown and Lawrie Cena Dean, editors, The Village of Chartres in Colonial Illinois, 1720-1765 (New Orleans, 1977). GEN 977.3 V713 ILL. This work provides full-text (French and English) transcripts of individual records.

For Natchitoches Post:

• Winston De Ville, Marriage Contracts of Natchitoches, 1739-1803 (Nashville, 1961). GEN 976.3 D494 LA.
• Winston De Ville, Natchitoches Documents 1732-1785: A Calendar of Civil Records from Fort St. Jean Baptiste in the French and Spanish Province of Louisiana (Ville Platte, Louisiana, 1994). GEN 976.3 D494 LA.
• Elizabeth Shown Mills, Natchitoches, 1729-1803: Abstracts of the Catholic Church Registers of the French and Spanish Post of St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1977). GEN 976.3 M657 LA.
• Elizabeth Shown Mills, Natchitoches Colonials: Census, Military Rolls, and Tax Lists, 1722-1803 (Chicago, 1981). GEN 976.3 M657 LA.

• Winston De Ville, First Settlers of Pointe Coupée: A Study Based on Early Louisiana Church Records, 1737-1750 (New Orleans, 1974). GEN 976.3 D494 LA.
• Bill Barron, Census of Pointe Coupée Louisiana, 1745 (New Orleans, 1978). GEN 976.3 C396 LA. Appendix I of this text (over half the book) contains a useful cross-reference to De Ville’s First Settlers of Pointe Coupée.

• Winston De Ville, Opelousas: The History of a French and Spanish Post in America, 1716-1803 (Ville Platte, 1986). GEN 976.3 D494 LA.

• J. Hanno Deiler, The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana and the Creoles of German Descent (Baltimore, 1970), originally published in 1909. GEN 976.3 D324 LA. This is an interesting (although poorly documented) analysis of the German colonists who were recruited by Scottish financier John Law to populate his Louisiana concessions. The bulk of these German colonists settled, beginning in 1722, on land just up-river from New Orleans in present-day Saint Charles and Saint John the Baptist parishes. The region, from very early times, was known as the Côte des Allemands, and although the description of a river bank as a “coast” is a bit of a stretch, the standard translation has come down to us as “the German Coast.” Within a couple of generations, the German colonists who settled this area were completely absorbed into the French culture.
• Helmut Blume, The German Coast During the Colonial Era, 1722-1803, translated and edited by Ellen C. Merrill (Destrehan, Louisiana, 1990). This is a much more up-to-date book than the one by Deiler and contains excellent source citations. Unfortunately, this book in not currently available at Clayton.
• Albert J. Robichaux, Jr., German Coast Families: European Origins and Settlement in Colonial Louisiana (Rayne, Louisiana: Hébert Publications, 1997). This is an edited compilation of materal contributed by over 60 researchers who drew from primary and secondary sources found in over 35 archives and libraries in the U.S. and Europe. Purpose of this work was to determine the places of origin of the families recruited by John Law in 1720 to colonize Law’s Louisiana concessions in New France. This is a well documented piece that brings a considerable amount of new informatin to print concerning the Law colonists. This book is not yet available at Clayton Library.

For an idea as to the volume of material available in French archives, find, in the French section of the Library, the four-volume set, Les archives nationales: état général des fonds (Paris, Archives Nationales, 1980), GEN 944 A673. This is a high-level calendar of holdings of the French National Archives. In volume III, Marine et outre-mer, on pages 316-317, is to be found a listing of the 60 articles that make up the series Correspondence à l'arrivée: Louisiane, coded C 13. This consists of correspondence received in France from the French governing officials in the Province of Louisiana. The records span the period from 1678 to 1819 and include correspondence from four governors of the Province of Louisiana (Bienville, La Mothe-Cadillac, Vaudreuil, and Kerlerec) plus those of several ordonnateurs (d’Artaguiette, Duclos, Hubert, La Chaise, Salmon, Lenormant de Mézy, and Michel). Back in the Louisiana section of the library, a more complete description of the items in this collection can be found in General Correspondence of Louisiana: 1678-1763, edited by Dunbar Rowland (New Orleans, 1976), originally published in 1907 as the Fifth Annual Report, Department of Archives and History, State of Mississippi. GEN 976.3 R883 LA.

On page 383 of the volume described above (Marine et outre-mer), one finds listed the very important series Recensements [census records]. Contained within this set is the fascinating collection (coded G 1 464) of passenger lists of ships embarking from France for the Province of Louisiana (1726-1737) and census records (1706-1732) of those individuals already in the Province of Louisiana. Although the source material calendared in the État général des fonds is not available at Clayton, one can find, in the Louisiana section, name listings extracted from that material. See especially The First Families of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1970), GEN 979.3 C754 LA, a two-volume set compiled and edited by Glenn R. Conrad. To avoid considerable frustration in searching the Conrad volumes, use the very excellent index by Donna Rachal Mills, The First Families of Louisiana: An Index (Tuscaloosa, 1992), GEN 976.3 C754 LA. See also the lesser work by Neil J. Toups entitled Mississippi Valley Pioneers (Lafayette, [1970]), GEN 976.3 T726 LA. Also of use, although poorly edited, is the work by Charles R. Maduell, entitled The Census Tables for the French Colony of Louisiana from 1699 through 1732 (Baltimore, 1972).

Even a brief overview of Clayton’s holding related to New France must include a few comments on Bill Barron’s The Vaudreuil Papers: A Calendar and Index of the Personal and Private Records of Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, Royal Governor of the French Province of Louisiana, 1743-1753 (New Orleans, 1975), GEN 976.3 B277 LA. This work provides a doorway into a remarkable collection of papers owned by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Clayton does not own microfilms of this collection, but Barron’s work provides an excellent description of each document in the collection, and copies of these documents may be ordered from the Huntington Library. Material includes census records (Pointe Coupée, German Coast, Arkansas Post, the Illinois Country), lists of soldiers and officers, inquiries and reports on individuals in the colony, orders to post commandants, and many other fascinating items. Some of the material found in the Vaudreuil Papers has been published. Winston De Ville, a prolific writer on topics related to colonial Louisiana, has brought to print several important items from this collection, including the following:

• “Inhabitants of the German Coast, 8 February 1749,” New Orleans Genesis, vol 7, no. 26 (March 1968), pp. 146-149.
• “General Report of Troops According to the Seniority of Each Officer, ca. 1750,” Louisiana Genealogical Register, vol. 15, no. 1 (March 1968), pp. 7-8.
• “Louisiana Officers in 1750,” Louisiana Genealogical Register, vol. 17, no. 4 (December 1970), pp. 314, 321.
• “French Soldiers in Louisiana, 1751,” Louisiana Genealogical Register, vol. 15, no. 3 (September 1968), pp. 85-87.
• “Arkansas Post: The Census of 1749,” The Genealogical and Historical Magazine of the South, vol. 3, no. 3 (August 1986), pp. 34-36.

Other periodicals to examine include Louisiana Genealogical Register, Louisiana History, and New Orleans Genesis. Also, do not overlook the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, which, from time to time, has published some excellent material of interest to researchers on the posts and settlements of New France. No doubt, much more could be written about Clayton Library’s collection of materials on New France, but I hope this article has described at least the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Left untouched in this article is a mountain of material covering the period of Spanish domination of Louisiana, a fascinating and surprisingly well documented area in which to conduct genealogical research.

If you have a family branch that extends into the “other” American colony, the Clayton Library can offer some very exciting research opportunities.