On May 22, 1909, the St. Landry Clarion ran three short notices on one page. Cotton was failing in Lafayette. Potatoes were failing in Avoyelles. Oats and hay were succeeding in East Baton Rouge with USDA help. This is what those three pieces document together.
Blog
When You Are Not the First Researcher in the Room: Working from Compiled Records Without Inheriting Their Conclusions
Compiled records, published articles, and family historian notebooks are research maps, not source documents. A four-step method for using another researcher’s work without adopting their conclusions.
Aurelia Godfrey Mitchell: The Lafayette Parish Widow Who Built the South Liberty Oil Field
Aurelia Godfrey Mitchell was born in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, in 1859 and died in Liberty County, Texas, in 1940. Between those two dates she built an oil and gas estate the Supreme Court of Texas construed twice. The wells still produce under her name today.
General Order No. 28 and the Women of Occupied New Orleans, May 15, 1862
On May 15, 1862, two weeks into the federal occupation of New Orleans, Major General Benjamin Butler issued General Order No. 28. The order disciplined gestures and ignited a propaganda war. This is the documented record.
Marguerite Scypion: The Louisiana Decree That Outlasted Three Sovereigns
Marguerite Scypion’s freedom argument rested on a 1769 decree by the Spanish Governor of the Province of Louisiana against Indian slavery. Her family fought thirty-one years to make the courts read it as the freedom of every descendant of an Indian woman.
The Traditional Birthday of New Orleans: May 7, 1718
May 7 is the traditional anniversary of the founding of New Orleans, but the actual day is not in the documentary record. The land carries an older name still. This is what the record shows.
Marguerite and the Margarita Case: A Legal History of One Woman’s Fight for Her Children in Colonial Louisiana, 1764–1808
Marguerite was born in Africa, transported to colonial Louisiana, given a fraudulent emancipation, and re-enslaved. In 1782 she filed her own lawsuit. She won the freedom of four children. This is her documented record.
