Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2006 - (Page 45) Tradition holds that the St. Domingue influx doubled the population of New Orleans. The actual demographics are somewhat more complex. Chartres Street. Snaër’s composition, orphanages, hospitals, and homes for “Mass for Three Voices,” was antholothe elderly — owed their upkeep to gized in the first published history of the generosity of the émigré communiAmerican music, James Trotter’s Music ty. and Some Highly Musical People. Although the vast majority of émiAnother child of émigrés, violin prodi- grés remained in New Orleans, some gy Edmond Dédé (1827?-1901) was were drawn to rural Louisiana. Pierre raised in New Orleans but came into Baily, Pierre Dormenon, and Arnouldhis own as a conductor and composer Louis Dubourg de la Loubère served in France. Relocation to France, a matas judges in the Iberville District, ter of choice for some, was a matter of Pointe Coupée Parish, and necessity for others. The career of Plaquemines Parish respectively. Victor Séjour (1817-1874) illustrates François-Marie Prévost, a physician, both the opportunities available to free successfully performed the state’s first people of color in New Orleans — and cesarean section in Ascension Parish. the barriers that remained firmly in (On two other occasions, Prévost perplace. Séjour was one of 17 authors formed the surgery on slave women, featured in Armand Lanusse’s epochal with the provision that they be set free Les Cenelles (The Hollyberries) (1845), if they survived.) the first poetic work published in the United States by African-American Setting the Record Straight authors. Like fellow contributors (and As time passes, myths inevitably St. Dominguans) Pierre Dalcour and creep into the historical Camille Thierry, Séjour eventually record. A clarification of moved to France in search of a less the émigré legacy restrictive racial climate. While in appears to be in order on Paris, Dalcour, Thierry, and Séjour several fronts. For would have been in the company of instance, it has frequentother writers whose ties to St. ly been stated that St. Domingue (though not Louisiana) Dominguans introduced were equally strong, including opera to New Orleans. Alexandre Dumas père and fils. That In truth, émigrés deserve Séjour thrived Diplomat Jean-Guillaume Hyde de Neuville (1776-1857) overseas is a tribute to his tal- was one of many Frenchmen who fled St. Domingue durent — and to the ing the revolutionary era. Eventually settling in New York, Hyde de Neuville dedicated himself to alleviating financial taste of European audi- difficulties experienced by many of his fellow émigrés. The École Économique, his principal philanthropic ences. That he endeavor, was established in 1809. More than a dozen could not, ultisketches of school activities were made by Hyde de mately, thrive in Neuvilleʼs wife, the baroness, including this graphite drawLouisiana ing from 1810-14. courtesy of The New York Historical Society remains regrettable. credit for nurturing, but Tangible signs of the émigré legacy not for importing opera. are omnipresent in the realms of the The Spanish colonial era arts and learned professions. Less visiwitnessed the birth of ble, but equally critical, is the contribu- the local operatic tradition of skilled craftsmen of St. tion, with the earliest Dominguan descent. Members of the documented performémigré community apprenticed as car- ance, Sylvain, dating to penters, cabinetmakers, hairdressers, May 22, 1796. Not until seamstresses, and bricklayers. Their the early 19th century, however, did craftsmanship was elemental to the the tradition truly flower. And no city’s growth. Some, like François La venue played a more significant role in Croix (d. 1876), a free man of color, the city’s musical efflorescence than rose from relatively modest means to the Théâtre d'Orléans. Two St. great wealth. Many of the philanthrop- Domingue émigrés brought the theater ic institutions that grew up in the secto life: Louis-Blaise Tabary, who initiatond half of the 19th century — ed construction in 1806, and John Davis, who rebuilt the structure in 1819 following a devastating fire. The Théâtre d'Orléans regularly hosted the American premieres of French and Italian operas and exported productions to cities across the Northeast. St. Dominguan entrepreneurship, combined with a local passion for the arts, helped establish New Orleans as one of the nation’s cultural capitals. Another legend concerns the cultivation of sugar. Two men — sugar planter Etienne Boré and his overseer, Antoine Morin, a native of St. Domingue — traditionally have been credited for the birth of the sugar industry in Louisiana. Writing to Pierre Clément Laussat in 1803, the planter recapitulated the history of the sugar industry in Louisiana: the unsuccessful efforts to cultivate sugar Spring 2006/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 45 since 1755; the crop’s temporary abandonment in 1764; Boré's discovery of the granulation process in 1797; and the establishment of approximately seventy sugar works in lower Louisiana in the intervening six-year period. Yet a recent study of early (continued on page 48)
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