History Lesson: Slavery in Louisiana

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They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana. . . . 

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Marie Metoyer owned 287 slaves

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The widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards had 152 slaves working their sugar plantation.

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Sometime in the early 1970s I was asked to clear up the title to a tract of land on the west bank of the Mississippi River, across from the present site of Southern University.

The land is the first bend in the river above the “Huey P. Long” (U S 190 ) bridge in Baton Rouge Louisiana.

Today that curve in the river is called “Mulatto Bend”, but in the nineteenth century it was named “ Free N-word Point”

The owner of the property in the early nineteenth century was Maryanne Ricard a Free Woman of Color. In the archives of the East Baton Rouge Clerk I found records where Maryanne FWC bought negro slaves. Her succession can be found in the records of West Baton Rouge Parish.

That land was once owned by Julian Poydras, but whether he gave it to or sold it to Maryanne or a Ricard de Rentard sold it to or gave it to Maryanne FWC I can’t recall from whom, Maryanne got title.

Her heirs were Cyprian, Hortense and St. Luke Ricard. I don’t recall if the heirs owned slaves but Maryanne FWC did. Southern University overlooks “Free N-word Point”

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Verret Polen owned 69.

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There were more than a quarter-million free blacks in the South and nearly 4,000 of them were slavemasters who owned more than 20,000 black slaves.

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