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Kings & Pawns: Part Four

Kings & Pawns: The Bloodlines of Bourbon-Orléans

Kings & Pawns:

The Bloodlines of Bourbon-Orléans

BY LAURA KUHN

2015



PART FOUR:

Convent of the Holy Family


Kings & Pawns: The Bloodlines of Bourbon-Orléans

            Heritage, lineage, and tradition flood this city like rainwater along the banquettes. New Orleans is a neglected treasure, sullied, soiled, and soured by the savage of time. The city invariably oozes its historic past through an island-like atmosphere, affixed by aqueducts, lined with levees, and paved in the perilous struggle of sanctity and sin.

            Juxtaposition has always been a prominent feature of New Orleans. The contrast of swamp and city, the clash of religion and transgression, and the opposing forces of a river winding in two directions create a unified contradiction. It is this ambivalent relationship in which New Orleans possesses that has influenced some of the most significant foundations in its midst.

            From the days of a provincial town uncertain of where to place its multiracial inhabitants among society’s realm, the notorious Quadroon Balls ensued at the Orleans Ballroom beside what was once the Orleans Theatre. In unconventional terms, strange customs and unique practices became the product of numerous cultures populating New Orleans, such as the trade of mix-blooded women to wealthy Creole men who kept these “quadroons” as mistresses, providing quaint homes and child support in a left-handed marriage arrangement known as plaçage.

            The practice of plaçage was a social activity which lasted for three quarters of a century in New Orleans, its customs crossing the ocean from the Old World and brought to Louisiana by the French. Therefore it was rarely questioned or second-guessed as a way of life for women with part-African and part-Caucasian ancestry.

            Born into this segregated existence, Henriette DeLille was the daughter of a free woman of color and a wealthy Frenchman who, through this common-law marriage, could not publically acknowledge Henriette as his own blood. During the years between 1813 and 1827, Henriette grew up in a world of racial division and social boundaries. She was spared nothing in her upbringing, trained by her mother in French literature, music, dancing, and nursing. But as a young woman of color, Henriette was raised to become a Quadroon mistress, escorted by her mother to the Orleans Ballroom to attend balls in the hopes of finding an affluent suitor.

            But Henriette did not wish to be a placée. Her heart resisted the allure of trysting with gentlemen at the Quadroon Balls. Instead she was drawn to religion. Catholicism was a strong part of her upbringing, raised as Roman Catholic and influenced by Sister Marthe Fontier who opened a school in New Orleans for girls of color. Henriette DeLille believed in the teaching of the Catholic Church and defied her family to follow her faith in the Lord.

            Rebelling against her mother and resisting the very thing she was brought up to become, Henriette worked with slaves and the poor of New Orleans while teaching in the local Catholic school at the age of fourteen. She became an outspoken opponent of the system of plaçage, believing it represented a violation of the Catholic sacrament of marriage. While this caused conflict with her mother, over the next several years, Henriette’s devotion to the church grew by caring for and educating those less fortunate.

            By 1836, Henriette DeLille had formed a small unrecognized congregation of nuns with seven Creole women in New Orleans. Together they began the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That year, Henriette’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown, the court declaring her incompetent and granting all control of assets to Henriette. This enabled the purchase of a home on Bayou Road where the sisters could live in the community and further their ministry, changing the name of their order in 1842 to the Sisters of the Holy Family.

            This was a point in time when nuns shaped and created much of the social landscape of New Orleans. Nuns were not passive and complacent women hidden by the church. The Sisters of the Holy Family were outspoken and railed against many tribulations and obstacles in their religious pursuit, becoming the first people to push for women’s rights and establishing the first order for Creole nuns in America.

            As their perseverance never faltered, the sisters were united in their religious views of the Catholic faith, gathering to pray at St. Louis Cathedral on Sundays after a week of feeding the poor, teaching catechism to neglected children, and evangelizing the city’s slaves and free people of color. They followed the Rule of St. Augustine in which governs charity, poverty, obedience, and detachment from the world.

            In 1881, a new era dawned. The Orleans Ballroom was for sale, and the holy sisters immediately purchased the old ballroom in the hopes of wiping away its sordid past and renewing the building with an order of nuns. It was fitting, really – in a city of characteristic extremes – to transform a former place of vice into a sacred edifice of virtue.

            As the steadfastly beating heart of Orleans Avenue altered itself from the days of lavish dancing to the newly converted convent, the architectural rhythm behind St. Louis Cathedral steadied its pulse. The ballroom became the sisterhood’s motherhouse as well as the first Catholic secondary school for colored girls in New Orleans called St. Mary’s Academy.

            Two years later, Signor Faranta’s Iron Theatre opened on the corner of Bourbon Street and Orleans Avenue where the Orleans Theatre once stood. The sisters were disturbed by their neighbor as the juxtaposition of opposing forces stood shoulder to shoulder. The resigned silence of the convent beside the brazenly triumphant circus was an obstacle for the following six years as the noisy hippodrome boomed with clowns, horses, and tricksters of all theatrics.

            But Signor Faranta’s Iron Theatre was foredoomed, consumed one night in a blaze which miraculously spared the adjacent convent. From spangle to trapeze it became a smoldering ruin, and the nuns were quick to purchase the site as part of their establishment, forever extinguishing the memory of Signor Faranta’s departed glories.

            In its place became the courtyard of the convent filled with flowering tropical plants and used as a playground for the children of St. Mary’s Academy. The Convent of the Holy Family was at last a solid structure of Henriette DeLille’s visionary achievement. Where once quadroon girls and their white paramours rendezvoused in the Salle d’Orléans with mothers chaperoning in an unjust society, now stood the high ceilinged room used as an assembly hall for the nunnery. Its atmosphere was no longer that of waltzing Parisian gowns and coquettish young blades of old New Orleans, but instead a dedication of women to the cause of religion and charity among the townspeople.

            During the American Civil War, the city was captured by the Union in their fight for the abolition of slavery. The order of twelve nuns assisted the sick and injured soldiers, and amidst the misery of war, tuberculosis struck Sister DeLille and took her life in 1862. Henriette’s life of service, poverty, and charity was cut short, dousing a light that had shown so bright in New Orleans.

            Buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, Henriette DeLille was not forgotten by the city. A gilded commemorative plaque was cemented at the gated foot of St. Anthony’s Garden behind St. Louis Cathedral, a pinpointed spot between the house of God and the motherhouse of her life’s ambition. Laid in gold, the plaque quotes Henriette in French, “Je crois en Dieu. J’espère en Dieu. J’aime. Je veux vivre et mourir pour Dieu,” translated as “I believe in God. I hope in God. I love. I want to live and die for God.”

            As foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family, Henriette DeLille’s life was nothing remarkable in the eyes of the world but was full in the merit of God. Her noble enterprise did not cease after her death but instead grew from the original twelve nuns to an order of 150 members by the turn of the century. During those years, an orphanage was established as the nuns cared for children left homeless by the pestilence. While St. John Berchman’s Orphanage was dedicated to the orphans, St. Mary’s Academy became efficient in its teachings of industrial art, embroidery, music, and general education.

            The Convent of the Holy Family had become a staple in the stretching fabric of New Orleans. As the city grew and wound itself around the changing world, the sisters held fast to their surroundings for the next half century. The convent’s plastered-brick walls aged to gray and the three-thicknesses of cypress which once was considered the finest dance floor in the world was worn, but prayer and somber sobriety had replaced the fanciful and bizarre gatherings of yesteryear. The heavy batten shutters had sun-bleached to a pale green, and a plain white cross sat atop the roof, symbolizing the building’s present occupants.

            In the 1960s, the convent’s glory had outgrown the building on Orleans Avenue. The academy served over thirteen hundred students, and the order had four hundred nuns. Therefore, the superior mother signed papers in transferring the property to Sam Recile and Wilson Abraham of the Bourbon Kings Hotel Corporation, a company interested in rebuilding the grounds into a five million dollar apartment hotel.

            The nuns moved to a new convent on Chef Menteur Highway, and to this day they continue their ministries at St. Mary’s Academy and the House of the Holy Family. Their missions continue in seven states and British Honduras while operating thirty-seven schools, two orphanages, and a home for the aged.

            Inspiration is abound in New Orleans, whether it is through divine guidance, an act of kindness, or the aesthetics of the universe. Henriette DeLille found her inspiration through a juxtaposed existence and built the foundation of humble women who assist the sick and dying, feed the hungry, and spread the word of God to the world even to the present day.



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