From the antebellum period through the 1860s, free women of color in New Orleans had several avenues to employment and entrepreneurship open to them in ways that Black women in other states had not yet been granted. Not only did free Black women in New Orleans find work as laundresses, nannies, nurses, and housekeepers, more than 50% of properties owned by Black individuals in the city up to 1866 were owned by Black women, especially those who operated boarding houses. Boarding houses offered business travelers a simpler, more affordable alternative to luxury hotels, which catered to wealthy clientele and were more suited to stays of weeks or months at a time. As the Colored Conventions movement ramped up in the 1850s-1870s, Black men visiting the city for the conventions, at which Black citizens discussed at first abolition and later the rights to citizenship offered by the 14th Amendment to the US constitution, would often opt to stay at boarding houses, most of which were operated by free Black women.

Mary Ann Jones was one such entrepreneur. She operated a boarding house and lived on Customhouse Street (today Iberville Street) in the busy downtown area of New Orleans, an easy walk to and from the river ports and railroads. Her occupation in the 1861 and 1866 city directories identify this line of work as operating “furnished rooms.” This occupation also appears by Mary Ann’s name in the Register of Free Colored Persons Entitled to Remain in the State. These Registers were the result of an 1830 law enacted by white city officials in an effort to restrict Black citizens’ rights. Free Black individuals were required to register with the city to prove their free status as citizens born in the state of Louisiana (by providing birth or baptismal certificates, or papers showing their mother’s free status, as the status of children depended on the status of their mother), or proving that they were gainfully employed if they had been born out of state. Registration cost fifty cents. If a person could not pay, did not register, or could not prove their employment or born-free status, they risked expulsion from the state, imprisonment, and enslavement, even if their family had been free for generations.

Records show that Mary Ann had been enslaved by Olive Morse as the result of a sheriff’s sale purchase in 1849, with a man named Joseph Castanedo representing Olive on her account, but there are differing records as to how Mary Ann was emancipated. There is some confusion over this record, as Olive and Ruggles were not married until 1852, so the sheriff’s sale is part of Mary Ann’s history that we are still investigating. Additionally, there are discrepancies in the Register, as Mary Ann possibly appears in the Register twice. One record in the Register shows a Mary Ann freed in December 1854 by Mrs. O.R. Morse (i.e., Olive Ring Morse). Another shows the story we had uncovered prior to beginning our research in the Registers: that Mary Ann had been freed by her sister, Maria Martin, as the result of a court case.

Several Black individuals sued for their freedom or the freedom of loved ones in antebellum New Orleans. Many were successful. In 1855, Maria Martin hired the firm of Race & Foster to represent her in court. Her case was announced in English and French in an October issue of the Picayune, which indicated that Maria’s case was to “secure the emancipation, with privilege of remaining in the state” for both Mary Ann, around 40 at the time, and for a 19-year-old named James Ingraham, whose relationship to either Maria or Mary Ann is not yet known. We have not yet found further information about this case, but given the timing of the case and Mary Ann’s potential emancipation by Olive Morse, it’s possible that there were discrepancies and that ultimately the case was settled out of court, with Mary Ann gaining her freedom.

Both entries for Mary Ann in the Register show that she is around 40 at the time of registration, that her occupation is “furnished rooms,” that she, like Maria Martin, was born in Virginia, and that she stood at either 5’3” or 5’5”. We are continuing our research to determine if these entries do in fact refer to the same woman, or, if they represent two different women, if both of them were at one point enslaved by Olive Morse. We also hope to determine whether or not Mary Ann was one of the many women in her occupation who owned the building where she leased rooms.

Born in Kentucky, David Wilson lived on Calliope Street in New Orleans between 1861-1880, and worked as a barber from roughly 1854-1890. Census records show us that David’s wife Winnie was born in Virginia, and lived with him from at least 1860-1880, and a woman named Sally Butler, possibly a widowed daughter or Winnie’s daughter from a previous marriage, worked as a housekeeper and lived in David’s home from around 1870-1880. David’s block of Calliope Street was in the Second Ward of the First District of New Orleans, and newspapers, primarily the New Orleans Republican, report David’s active involvement in the Second Ward Radical Republican Club, one of many of his memberships in civic organizations.

David arrived in New Orleans in 1835, likely having been forcibly removed from his birth state. In 1853, when he was 30 years old, he was enslaved by a man named William Wilson, a clerk (and later co-proprietor) for the St. Charles Hotel. William Wilson worked alongside Ruggles Morse as a clerk at the St. Charles, and in 1853, William sold David to Ruggles for $300. Ruggles Morse had a record for purchasing enslaved individuals from their enslavers and selling them back, either to the same person or to another close associate, after a year or two. By 1854, David had been sold back to William Wilson, who emancipated him on September 30th of that year. At this time, David had already begun working as a barber. Barbershops were a mainstay in luxury hotels, which may have been where David learned his trade. David appears to have been given, and/or chose to keep, the name Wilson as his own surname.

By the early 1860s, David was active in civic organizations and was a strong advocate for Black representation in local politics and public education. His connections with other prominent, politically active Black citizens in New Orleans such as C.C. Antoine, Solomon Moses, and future Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana Oscar J. Dunn grew when David was elected as a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1867, representing New Orleans’s Second Ward. The Convention met to discuss Reconstruction in Louisiana and reform the State Constitution to reflect the rights of citizenship promised to Black individuals in the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution. David spoke and read frequently at these meetings, which were held from November 1867 through March 1868. The minutes of these conventions show that David was especially passionate about public education, advocating that all children “regardless of race, color, or previous condition [i.e., enslavement]” should have access to publicly-funded schooling up to age 21. David himself would have had limited resources available for schooling: it was illegal in the 1850s in New Orleans to teach a Black individual to read or write. Being a barber, however, likely would have opened David up to opportunities for self-education through community connections.

David’s portrait was included with other members of the convention, shown in the image to the right. David’s portrait is at the top, directly to the left of the eagle.

While it is not yet known when David passed away, he was active in local politics and organizations until at least 1892, when he and F.C. Antoine were sworn in as officers of the Damon Lodge No. 1 chapter of the Knights of Pythias. This fraternal group met at the corner of Camp and Common Streets – the same cross streets of the City Hotel, where David likely provided unpaid labor for Ruggles Morse decades earlier.

Joe

Joe was thirteen when enslaved by Morse, and would have been nineteen when seeking self-emancipation. Morse purchased several enslaved individuals in 1853, including three teenage boys who came to Morse through notorious slave trader Matilda Kendig Bushey: John, age 16, and Charles, age 15, were purchased by Morse on November 14th; Joe followed a week later on November 21st. Prior research had uncovered a newspaper article stating that the wait staff at the Arcade Hotel were entirely people of color, and the notice of Joe’s escape to freedom helps to corroborate this fact. It was also written of the Arcade’s dining halls that meals could be had “at almost all hours,” indicating that wait staff worked long days, or were called to service at patrons’ whims.

Joe, we learn from the Picayune notice, was around 5’8″ tall with curly hair, and was well-known as a waiter at the Arcade Hotel, which was under Ruggles Morse’s proprietorship. Joe had a light skin tone – according to Morse (who spelled his name “Jo”), “he is not unfrequently (sic) taken for a white boy.” While he may have risked a one-way ride on the Pontchartrain line from the Faubourg Marigny to Milneburg for 15 cents, Joe may also have chosen to leave New Orleans on foot, under the cover of the woods and swamps that the railroad ran alongside.

After nearly six years of waiting tables without pay, Joe’s self-emancipation was well timed. On June 1st, 1859, a month before Joe escaped to the railroad, a fire destroyed most of the Arcade Hotel’s dining room and a large part of the hotel itself. A smaller fire broke out in one of the Arcade shops on June 21st. The entire city of New Orleans was planning for Independence Day festivities by the end of June, and two slave auctions were set to be held in the Arcade on July 2nd, giving Joe ample opportunity to use the flurry of activity as a cover to slip away. Nearly two weeks after his escape, on July 12th, it was reported that due to the damage from the fire, the Arcade Hotel was to be torn down and replaced with a new building (this became the St. James Hotel, which opened in 1860 under Morse’s proprietorship). Morse’s business partner George Moore sold three other enslaved people on Morse’s behalf between July 20^th-25^th while Morse was out of town: Henry, age 20, on July 20th; John, age 22 (whom Morse had purchased a week before Joe), on July 21st; and Abraham, age 43, on July 25th. Abraham was sold back to his original enslaver, Catherine Digges Haney… the sister of Elias W. Digges, Morse’s predecessor as proprietor of the Arcade Hotel. It’s possible they intended to sell Joe to a new enslaver as well.

Joe likely succeeded in escaping the New Orleans area. His name did not appear among the arrests reported in the newspaper, and Morse did not seem to try to replace Joe, whose position no longer existed after the hotel was slated to be torn down. Given Joe’s description in Morse’s notice, it is not unlikely that he may have tried to pass for white as he sought a free life elsewhere, something that many other freedom seekers with mixed Black and white heritage opted to do during this time. Passing for white may have opened opportunities unavailable to those legally registered as Black in many parts of the country, such as passage on public transportation, employment opportunities, and options to own real estate or open a bank account.

Our paper trail runs dry for Joe after this, but his story is one of many showing the bravery and resilience of those who chose to liberate themselves from positions of enslavement and begin new lives.

In 1865, Oliver Warfield was working as a deckhand and living on Casa Calvo Street in the Algiers district of New Orleans. In April of that year, the Picayune published a draft announcement for military service, and Oliver’s name was on the list. Given the timing of this draft, it’s likely that if Oliver served in the military, it would not have been for long, and he most likely would have fought for the Union, as New Orleans had been under Union occupation since 1862. Since he was familiar with maritime trades, it’s possible that he would have served in the navy.

Oliver’s emancipation is a part of his history that we are continuing to research. He would have been identified as a free man of color when the draft notice was published, but no city directories were published in New Orleans between the critical years of 1862-1865 when it was under occupation, so few written records exist that can help us fill in the gaps from those years. In April 1859, at the age of 20, Oliver had been enslaved by notorious slave trader Joseph Bruin and was forcibly brought to New Orleans, where he was purchased by Ruggles Morse. Oliver was enslaved by Morse, likely laboring in some capacity at the City Hotel, until 1860, when Morse sold him to Swedish immigrant Andrew Oliver Jackson, a stevedore who lived on Chartres Street. It was likely through Jackson that Oliver Warfield learned ship trades. When A.O. Jackson passed away in 1862, Oliver was one of the enslaved individuals listed in his succession papers – identified as property to be given to Jackson’s widow Mary Lee. Whether Mary emancipated Oliver herself or if Oliver was manumitted by Union occupation after 1862 is not yet known.

Oliver was most likely born in Maryland, and while research continues, records indicate that he may have been born free. His father or grandfather may have been Charles Warfield, a free man of color who appears on the Maryland census for 1840 listing an infant boy at home – Oliver was born ca. 1839. The 1850 census for Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania lists Oliver Warfield, 11 at the time, in the home of a wealthy white woman originally from Connecticut named Eliza Wright. Oliver is the only Black individual listed in the household, and is the same age as one of Eliza’s sons. Oliver’s birth state is listed as Maryland, and other than Eliza herself he is the only individual in the household indicated to have been born outside of Pennsylvania. In 1850, Pennsylvania was a free state, and Wilkes-Barre is around 125 miles overland away from New York City, where Joseph Bruin was known to ship out from. Bruin was based in Alexandria, Virginia, and had been one of the slave traders who enslaved and sold Black fugitives who had sought self-emancipation on the ship Pearl in an 1848 attempt to flee from Washington, DC to New Jersey. We do not yet know if Bruin or another slave trader captured and enslaved Oliver sometime before 1859, but it is likely that he was one of many free Black individuals who were forcibly removed from their home states and sold into enslavement. It is also possible that Oliver returned to Maryland after the conclusion of the Civil War. As we continue our research, we hope to discover more about Oliver’s life before he was brought to New Orleans, as well as after his emancipation.

Louisiana’s legal history is unlike that of any other US State, with the state and city judiciaries operating under civil law, rather than common law, a holdover from Spanish and French colonial rule. Laws in Louisiana sometimes worked in favor of Black citizens, particularly up until the 1840s when the population of New Orleans included thousands of free Black citizens working in multiple occupations, many of whom were entrepreneurs. White lawmakers made freedom more difficult for Black citizens to both obtain and maintain throughout the 1850s as war was looming. Under civil law, children of enslaved Black mothers were required to remain with their mother until the age of ten. The status of the mother, free or enslaved, would be passed on to her children, regardless of their father’s status. If an enslaved Black mother was sold from one enslaver to another, her children went with her up to the age of nine, but the family remaining together was not guaranteed unless their new enslaver purchased her children as individuals. If an enslaved child was not purchased as an individual, they would be sent back to their original enslaver once they turned ten.

This law would have weighed heavily on at least three women who were enslaved by Ruggles Morse: Louise, whose son Jim was six years old in April 1848; Hagar, whose son Jefferson was seven in May 1848; and Flora, whose children Alonzo, Henry, and Hailly were ages nine, seven, and four respectively in May 1859. Flora, Alonzo, Henry, and Hailly were enslaved by Morse, likely at the City Hotel, for a very short period of time – a little over a month. Morse tended to do business with people he was already associated with, either in the hotel business or other ventures, including the pharmaceutical firm of E.B. Wheelock & Co. It was Wheelock who first enslaved Flora and her children in Louisiana, and it was another of Morse’s business partners, C.E. Girardey, who tried to sell Flora, Alonzo, Henry, and Hailly in an 1859 auction in the lobby of the City Hotel. Though the auction occurred in March, the enslaved family was not sold until May, when Wheelock, acting as Morse’s agent, sold them to a man named John O’Neill. It is possible that during the short few weeks that her family was enslaved at the City Hotel, Flora provided unpaid labor for Morse – she is described as “a good cook, washer, and ironer,” and likely would have worked in the kitchen or laundry room of the hotel.

During the antebellum and war period, and rippling out through the later 19th century, white businessmen, slave traders, and lawmakers invented racial descriptors for nonwhite enslaved individuals – Black and Indigenous – based on their parentage or assumed heritage. Girardey described Flora, Alonzo, Henry, and Hailly as Black, indicating that the children’s father was also Black – had he been white or mixed-race, the children would more likely have been described differently at the time. We do not yet know the identity of their father, or if Flora considered him to be her husband. We also do not yet know if the family became separated in any way after Alonzo turned ten, or if any members of the family tried to reconnect after the war by placing Lost Friends advertisements in the paper. The story of Flora and her family is one that we hope to piece together further as our research continues.