Mandeville’s Enigmatic Founder

by Ann Gilbert

In death, as in life, planter and politician Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville, developer of the local lakeshore town, stands out among others. He was an enigmatic man, eloquent when addressing the Louisiana Senate, yet purportedly squandering great sums of money when a gambling habit took hold of him.

He was a statesman, serving many years on the city council and in the state legislature. Yet he supposedly participated in 15 duels—if so, he was an amazing survivor!

“He was a legend in his own time,” says archivist and historian Sally Reeves. “He had great impact on his society. But so much of what is written about him is superficial and repeated falsehoods, based on secondary research and even oral history, and not primary research.”

Legend contends that when Bernard’s father died, he left the child of 15 an estate of $7 million. Reeves says, “Bernard was never fabulously wealthy, nor was he in abject poverty at the end of his life. They are both untrue extremes. He was not a profligate, gambling away a fortune. He never was a millionaire. But he did find new ways to make money.” (Reeves is doing a reappraisal of Bernard’s character and will speak on the founding of Mandeville at the Sept. 15 meeting of the St. Tammany Historical Society. See box.)

After reviewing old documents held by St. Tammany Clerk of Court Malise Prieto, Robin Leckbee, deputy clerk and archivist at the office, is puzzled by Bernard’s reported $7-million inheritance. “I do not know how this was calculated,” she says. “In 1804, prior to his first marriage, he listed his assets at about $100,000, including a plantation, 15 slaves and $5,000 cash.” This was a short four years after the death of his father, who was called the richest man in the United States and who owned one-third of the village of New Orleans, including the Marigny Plantation downriver from the French Quarter.

Bernard, the historic personage who developed Faubourg Marigny—the first suburb of the village of New Orleans—and was instrumental in providing pirates for Andrew Jackson to wage the Battle of New Orleans, continues to fascinate adults and school children alike.

William de Marigny Hyland, St. Bernard parish historian, is a descendant of Bernard through his daughter Rosa. Hyland says his ancestor was “controversial in his own time and misrepresented in his own time. He had great presence, and had no problem defending his honor and his name.

“In many respects he was visionary. He opposed opening the batture (land by the riverside) to development. He loved politics, especially preserving the position of the ancient regime, the old French population. He succeeded in making it possible for the legislature to debate in both French and English, and for the proceedings to be recorded in both languages. The clerks in the House and Senate had to be bilingual.”

“He was a man of real dichotomy,” says Joan Doolittle, long-time St. Tammany Historical Society board member. “He was a statesman, yet an incessant gambler. He supposedly fought all those duels, yet fought in the state legislature to stop the practice when his son was killed in a duel. I hate how he is usually portrayed. I don’t believe most of those stories,” she says, echoing Reeves’ comments. “What is the truth? I don’t want to propagate myths.”

Yet Doolittle, a five-generation Mandevillian, recalls family picnics at Fontainebleau State Park, when her grandmother would tell the story of how Bernard would raise the drawbridge at his St. Tammany plantation, Fontainebleau, when his wife would attempt to visit. Harnett Kane would repeat this folklore in a 1949 article in the old Dixie Roto Magazine.

The Marigny Dynasty

Visitors to St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square in New Orleans’ French Quarter walk over the white marble flagstone bearing the long names of Bernard’s patriarchal ancestors. His great-grandfather François, grandfather Philippe and father, Pierre, are honored with burial beneath the plaque in the floor at the end of the left aisle in front of the golden statue of Mary.

Bernard’s history in Louisiana dates back to 1699, when François accompanied the brothers Iberville and Bienville as they first explored the area’s rivers, lakes and bayous. François may have been with the explorers as they traced the Lake Pontchartrain coastline. They recalled in their journals spending one uncomfortable night at Goose Point, south of Lacombe, with hordes of mosquitoes. In 1724, François would take command of the troops in the brand-new settlement of New Orleans. It was the beginning of 150 years of Marigny dominance in the Crescent City.

The family fortune grew as Bernard’s grandfather Philippe garnered concessions during the French control. His father, Pierre, would do the same under Spanish rule in the second half of the 18th century.

Bernard possibly inherited his reported liberal spending tendency from his father. At his Marigny Plantation, Pierre entertained Louis Philippe, the duc d’Orleans and future king of France. The story goes that after entertaining the duke and his two brothers, Pierre tossed the service into the river “because no mere mortal shall ever eat off these plates.” He also gave the three princes a handsome loan, which Bernard wrote that he failed to collect during a six-month visit he and his son Mandeville made to the French court. Bernard received, instead, a silver service with the royal crest, which was reportedly sold to the U.S. Mint in New Orleans for its weight.

When Pierre died in 1800, Bernard’s uncle Chalmette was placed in charge of the estate and named as his guardian. Chalmette evidently had trouble controlling the teenager, so sent him first to Pensacola and then shipped him off to England.
In England, Bernard frequented the coffeehouses, where the game of Hazards was played with dice. Bernard introduced the game to his friends upon his return home just prior to the Louisiana Purchase. One squats to play dice. The story goes that the haughty Americans teased the dice-playing Creoles, saying that they looked like frogs. Frog is “crapaud” in French. The game became known as “craps,” and Bernard’s love of it was said to lead to financial difficulties.

Leckbee gives reasons, other than gambling, for Bernard’s economic woes. In her research, she discovered that it was Bernard—and not his father, as some have thought—who bought the thriving Bonnabel Plantation on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. He named the plantation “Fontainebleau,” after the vast royal park, palace and forest near Paris. The word means “beautiful fountain water” in French (fontaine-belle-eau).
“He had large and diverse holdings that may not have been simple to manage. As Bernard himself wrote, the losses were caused by things ‘beyond my control’.” These include, according to Leckbee, an economic downturn in 1837 and plunging market prices for bricks and sugar, his two main products. “He took out mortgage after mortgage to keep his properties producing.”

In later life, Bernard published a series of pamphlets. These included his reflections on the Battle of New Orleans, and what appears to be an explanation, defense or even an apology, for his lifestyle. In old age, Bernard heard the gossip about his poverty. Reeves raises her voice as she contends, “He was Register of Conveyances and that was a lucrative position.” Bernard blamed the crop failures on crevasses (breaks in the levees), leading researchers to conjecture that he didn’t plant sugar at Fontainebleau, but at his two plantations in Plaquemines Parish. However, others point out that the large number of slaves at Fontainebleau was probably used to cut cane. And the brick ruins from the plantation in the state park have long been called the “sugar mill” ruins.

In 1805, Bernard began to subdivide his father’s Marigny Plantation, where he lived, to form Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans’ first subdivision. Ever the colorful character, he named the streets Rue d’Amour and Rue des Bons Enfants (good children). The story goes that after one huge gambling loss, he told his agent to sell off another street and name it Rue du Craps. The name stuck for some 50 years, until the three churches on Rue du Craps moved for a change. There was also Desire Street, with its streetcar made famous by the Tennessee Williams play, Champs Elysées (Elysian Fields) after the magnificent Parisian boulevard, and of course, Marigny and Mandeville.

Involvement in Civic Affairs

Although Bernard was a “bon vivant extraordinaire,” in the words of retired Southeastern history professor C. Howard Nicholls, he did inherit a keen civic responsibility from his family.

At the tender age of 19, he became aide-de-camp to Laussat, Napoleon’s emissary to the colony, and he would witness the historic transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France, and then from France to the United States. It all occurred over a 30-day period in late 1803. Bernard’s sister, Marie Céleste, served as hostess for the elaborate ball he gave in celebration of what is now known as the Louisiana Purchase.

Laussat, who was a guest in Marigny’s home at that time, wrote that from the plantation, one could see the crescent in the river with hundreds of ships—“a forest afloat.” He continued in his journal, “The mosquitoes and gnats at sundown take full possession of the air. We go to bed at 9 or 10 o’clock to take refuge from them…Being remote from the [city] gate, we have few visitors. Sun or rain, dust or mud are obstacles for our visitors.”

Bernard would be a key player in most of the events of state in the first decades of the 19th century. He twice voted against incorporating the Florida Parishes into the state of Louisiana, possibly because he still had great dislike for the British who had settled that region.

Jackson and the War of 1812

With the War of 1812 and rumblings of the British interest in the Mississippi River, Bernard was named chairman of the legislative defense committee with the responsibility of “making all the state’s resources available to Andrew Jackson.”
One of his most astute moves was to get Jackson to accept Lafitte’s pirates as fellow soldiers. The general had called them “hellish bandittis.” Bernard saw to it that the Baratarians were decriminalized by the legislature and the court, says Leckbee. Robert Remini writes in his book on the Battle of New Orleans that Lafitte offered “crews for ships, and powder, shot, flints and cannon and the men to fire them.”

The Battle of New Orleans was fought on several plantations south of the city, including that of Chalmette, Bernard’s uncle and former guardian. In downplaying the rumors that women of New Orleans were weeping and terrified of rape and pillage by the British, Bernard wrote in his memoir, “In a city threatened by all the horrors of conquest by a large army, no lady fled from the city. That thought never came to the mind of the Louisiana ladies.” He continued, “More than one young lady would have assumed an Amazon costume and taken the lance.” Remini says, “He compares them to Joan of Arc.” (The new state museum in Baton Rouge uses the lance quote in bold letters in its exhibit on the Battle of New Orleans.)

Bernard had received a letter that Jackson wanted to stay with him as he arrived to defend the city, but the Creole writes that Jackson was a no-show at his home, because Bernard had been outmaneuvered by the mayor. Describing the day, Bernard writes, “The rain was pouring down and all present were wet and muddy and uncomfortable.” Bernard did preside at a banquet when Jackson returned to New Orleans in 1827 while he was campaigning for president.

Dueling

This statesman who hobnobbed with presidents and generals clung to one particular custom from “the old country,” and that was dueling. European men used the sword or rapier to settle insults and differences. At the first draw of blood, they shook hands and had a glass of wine. When the Americans took over the colony, they brought pistols. According to the legends, Bernard fought 15 duels. Two fascinating accounts have come down in the Marigny folklore, exhibiting what a confident man he was.

On the death of his first wife, he was encouraged to attend a ball in Pensacola. There he met a beautiful young woman, whose attention he held the whole evening. He was warned by friends that others were interested. The next morning over breakfast, Bernard received seven challenges. “I will meet them one by one until I have finished,” he announced. He took out the first with dispatch, and the other six apologized and bowed out. When Bernard challenged a man over six feet tall, the latter chose six feet of water as the place, and sledgehammers as the weapon. Five-foot-ten Bernard would be the one to make his apologies and bow out of this meeting.

The Founding of Mandeville

In 1829, Bernard turned his interests to land acquisition in St. Tammany with the purchase of several tracts along the Mandeville lakeshore for about $12,000. By 1834, he began subdividing this land west of his plantation, giving the streets less-colorful names than he used in Faubourg Marigny—names of presidents, war heroes and statesmen such as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lafitte, Galvez, Carondelet and Claiborne. In the span of three days, at an auction in New Orleans, Bernard sold 388 lots for $80,000, a handsome profit.
When Victorin DeJan discussed the amenities of Bernard’s sale in his 1918 booklet, “Mandeville,” he wrote, “I will give you this in French, since most of the residents of Mandeville speak French.” (It was fascinating to learn from DeJan that in 1918 most of the people in Mandeville spoke French.)

Bernard was a forward-thinking developer and stipulated in the sale:

• that the area between the lake and Lake Street was to remain free and common ground
• that all streets leading to the lake were to remain open
• that a steamer (the Black Hawk) would be provided for transportation to and from New Orleans, and the fare would not be more than one dollar

Bernard’s Legacy

Bernard had two children, Prosper and Gustave, by his first wife, Mary Ann Jones, whom he married in 1804. He would be teased about marrying a “half-American,” because her father was from Philadelphia and not New Orleans. She died in 1808. In 1809, he married Anna Morales—the woman who inspired the duel at the ball in Pensacola—and they had five children: two sons, Armand and Antoine, known as Mandeville; and three daughters, Rosa, Mathilde and Marie Angela. Mandeville married the daughter of Charles Claiborne, the first governor of Louisiana.

Gustave died in a duel, and Prosper named one of his sons after him. Bernard left to this grandson all the family papers and portraits and his letters, especially the correspondence with the duc d’Orleans. Gustave’s daughter Alice, born in 1859, was still living in Mandeville in the 1920s. Dejan described the great-granddaugher of the town’s founder as “amiable and well-educated.” Some of Alice’s descendants live in the Greater New Orleans area today.

In his last days, Bernard lived in a two-room apartment on the corner of Royal and Frenchman streets. According to his obituary, at 83 years of age, he was on his customary daily stroll down Royal Street when he stumbled, hit his head and died. He is buried in St. Louis Cemetery #1.

Long after his death, Bernard continues to startle and amaze. In 2005, he made the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The bank that he founded, a distant predecessor to J.P. Morgan Chase, ended up owning slaves when Bernard defaulted on loans, for which he had used slaves as part of the collateral. Morgan Chase established a $5-million scholarship fund for descendants of slaves in Louisiana. It was merely following a law in many states, which demands that businesses must reveal any history with slavery. Morgan Chase made this concession only after hiring historians, who would spend hours researching old documents in St. Tammany Parish records. Leckbee says, “I never did see a case of Bernard brought to court because of cruelty to his slaves. But using slaves as collateral was common. Slaves were considered assets and worth money.”

In his memoir, Bernard described his life as one given to public service, which cost him much as he never sought a lucrative office. He said that the use he made of his money “has always been honorable… I have been able to give to the needy, to the poor mother of the indigent family, and to the unfortunate stranger. Have they not always found me willing to tender a helping hand?”

Grace King, in her 1921 book, “Creole Families of New Orleans,” wrote that among all the old Creole families, the name of Marigny de Mandeville stands first. “In truth, the family antedates the city itself.”