Orphans, Epidemics, and Expanding Education for Free Children of Color in Pre–Civil War New Orleans

• In Event: (Re)membering Trans-Atlantic Creole Pedagogies: Black Fugitive Teachers From the New Orleans Archives

Abstract

On November 12, 1832, an illiterate free woman of color named Marie Justine Sirnir Couvent recorded her will with a notary in New Orleans. Born in the Bight of Benin region of West Africa and enslaved as a child in Saint-Domingue, Couvent resettled in New Orleans in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. After three decades in the city, she had accumulated a sizable amount of property. Couvent left various holdings to family and friends, but her greatest bequest extended to her community when she declared that “my land at the corner of Grands Hommes and Union streets will be forever dedicated and employed for the establishment of a free school for the orphans of color of the Faubourg Marigny[.]” Founded by a group of prominent free men of color, L'Institution Catholique des Orphelins Indigents opened on Couvent’s property in 1848. The school served as an important crucible of leadership for the Creole of color community during a period that spanned the turbulent 1850s, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the dawn of the Jim Crow era (Mitchell, 2008). In fact, a school for African American children remained on the site for over 150 years.
While previous scholarship on the school mentions Couvent and her unique donation, it seldom considers why she made this specific bequest (Mitchell, 2008; Bell, 2017). As this paper will show, details from Couvent’s own life resonate in her vision for a school, but her bequest was also a response to the 1832 cholera epidemic. Using notary and sacramental records, apprenticeship contracts, censuses, and city directories, the author will examine Couvent’s decision through her past experiences, the immediate context in which she made her will, and the broader history of education for free children of color in New Orleans. This paper demonstrates that Couvent’s bequest sought to expand existing outlets for orphan care and education for free Black children at a time when these types of institutions began to be racialized.
Much like the white orphan asylums founded across the nation in response to the cholera epidemic, Couvent’s bequest provided education, support, and protection to an increased population of orphans of color (Clement, 1986; Hasci, 1997). Following a national trend of combining orphan care and education (Hasci, 1997), Couvent’s idea for a school for free Black orphans addressed an institutional need for free children of color in New Orleans who were barred from the city’s orphan asylums. By specifying “a free school,” Couvent wanted to broaden educational opportunities for poor free Black boys and girls as access to state-sponsored, free education was increasing for white children (Hyde, 2016; Conway, 1985). Her legacy expanded access to education in antebellum New Orleans as color lines began to be drawn in the city. Marie Couvent’s vision of free education, once realized, impacted generations of children of African descent. The L'Institution Catholique des Orphelins Indigents would become the cornerstone of Afro-Creole’s political work in which they developed a radical agenda aimed at attaining civil and political rights for people of color in the Americas.

Author

• Elizabeth Neidenbach, The Historic New Orleans Collection