Bradshaw
Papal roots show complex Louisiana connections
The genealogy of Pope Leo XIV leads directly to the old St. Landry Parish steamboat port of Washington, showing not only his own complex ancestry but that of hundreds of families with mixed heritages, many of whom prospered in south Louisiana.
As a treatise by LSU’s Michael Taylor points out, gens de couleur libre, free black people, “enjoyed a relatively high level of acceptance and prosperity” in Louisiana before the Civil War. Most of them lived in or near New Orleans but “significant numbers” were also found in St. Landry Parish, “where some were plantation owners and slaveholders” Over the generations, they became a sizable and often wealthy part of the parish population. Documents filed at the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 show that Marie Simien, a free woman of color, owned most of the land that is now the town of Washington. Fifteen years later, in 1818, she owned more than 7,500 acres of land, including 1,400 acres of prime St. Landry farmland.
Bradshaw
As testament to their numbers and wealth, the first school for Black students in St. Landry Parish, possibly in south Louisiana, was established in 1830 in Washington to educate their children. The Grimble Bell School taught reading, writing, history, bookkeeping, arithmetic, English, French, and Latin. Tuition was $15 a school year, the equivalent of about $600 today, and at its peak the school had more than 125 students.
The election of Pope Leo brought the story of those and other free people of color to worldwide attention through his links to the family that operated Lemelle’s Landing in the early steamboat years on Bayou Courtableau.
The pope was born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955. His father was Louis Marius Prevost. His mother was Mildred Agnes Martinez. His connection to south Louisiana is through his mother’s line.
Mildred’s father was Joseph Norval Martinez, who was born in 1864 probably in Louisiana, and who died July 31, 1926, in Chicago. There is some confusion about the place of his birth, various sources indicating New Orleans, Haiti, or Santo Domingo. Wherever he was born, Joseph was in New Orleans as a young man. He married Louise Bacque on September 17, 1887, at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church in the city’s Seventh Ward, a predominantly Black neighborhood.
The family moved from New Orleans to Chicago about 1911. The 1920 census lists Joseph, Louise, and six daughters living in Chicago. Joseph and Louise are described as of mixed race in census documents when they lived in Louisiana, but censuses list them as white after they moved to Chicago.
Louise was the daughter of Ferdinand David Bacque and Eugenie Grambois, both of whom were born in New Orleans. Ferdinand was the son of Joseph Aristide Bacque, who was born in Guadeloupe and Celeste Lemelle, who was born in 1814 in St. Landry Parish.
Celeste was the daughter of Louis Lemelle and Celeste Olimpie Grandpre. They were married in Opelousas on October 17, 1798, and were listed as having onefourth African ancestry. A note in a semi-official listing of papal ancestors says that “Louis Lemelle was born as a slave. He was listed as a ‘free quadroon’ at the time of his marriage contract in 1798.”
Louis was the son of Francois Donato Lemelle, who was born January 4, 1738, in New Orleans, He married Charlotte Labbe there about 1760 and they moved to St. Landry Parish before 1777, when the census of the Poste des Opelousas lists Francois and Charlotte as Household No. 2 and shows them to be a prosperous family.
He is listed as a lieutenant of the Opelousas militia in 1787 and as one of the Patriots of the Opelousas Militia who fought during the American Revolution under Spanish leader Bernardo de Galvez. He and his siblings owned and operated Lemelle’s Landing on Bayou Courtableau and he is buried in the old Church Landing Cemetery in Washington.
Francois did not remarry after his wife’s death but lived with a former slave, Marie Jeanne Davion, with whom he’d had a relationship for many years. Records in New Orleans show she was emancipated by Franciso Lemelle on December 5, 1772, when she was 22 years old. Louis, who was born about 1775, was one of their several children.
One of Louis Lemelle and Celeste Labbe’s eight children, Etienne, who was born in 1812, may have had something to do with the Courtableau steamboat trade other than through the family’s landing. One genealogy lists his occupation as “riverboat pilot.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at [email protected] or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
