Document of the Month Pages
Begun in April of 2012, Document of the Month highlights interesting documents, photographs, and other images from the holdings of the Louisiana State Archives. This page features documents for the current year. Below are links to the current year and previous archives.
2025 Documents
Emanuel Blessig
(5/1/25) The earliest New Orleans death certificates are a mixed bag of genealogical information. Some provide the bare minimum required by law, while others are a veritable treasure trove of family details. This month's document is an example one of those gold mines. The declarant, or person giving the information, registered the death of Emanuel Blessig some 18 years after Blessig's death. Bernard Stehl, a grocer in the city of Lafayette, then part of Jefferson Parish, had been appointed undertutor for Blessig's minor children and may have been attempting to document their relationship for inheritance purposes. In May of 1843, Stehl declared that Blessig died in 1825, was a native of Strassbourg in France, and was married in 1820 by the Reverend Sylvestre Larned, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, to Maria Dirmeyer, a native of Ihringen, Amt Breisach, Grand Duchy of Baden. Furthermore, the couple had three children, Maria Amalia, Salomea Caroline, and Emanuel. Blessig's death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1825, vol. 9, p. 455).
Click to view larger image.
The Battle of Pleasant Hill, April 9, 1864
(4/1/25) The Battle of Pleasant Hill, fought on April 9, 1864, was part of the Union Army's Red River Campaign in North Louisiana to capture Shreveport. The day before the battle, Union forces had retreated from Mansfield, where they suffered a defeat, and had taken up a position at Pleasant Hill, located about three miles southeast to the southeast in Sabine Parish. Losses from the battle were heavy for both the Union and the Confederacy, but historians generally agree that it was a tactical victory for the Union. Brigadier General Joseph H. Mower commanded two divisions of the Union Army during the Red River Campaign. He was later promoted to major general. A native of Vermont, Mower died of pneumonia at the age of 43 in New Orleans on the 6th of January 1870. His death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1870, vol. 46, p. 671).
Click to view larger image.
Mildred Childe Lee
(3/1/25) Mildred Childe Lee was the youngest child of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Mary Parke Custis. She was born at Arlington House in Virginia in 1846 and attended a boarding school in Virginia. During the Civil War, she joined her mother in Richmond and knitted clothing for Confederate soldiers. After Richmond fell to the Union Army, the Lee women remained at home while the city burned. She nursed her father during his final illness in 1870, and after her mother's death in 1873, she traveled and did volunteer work. She and her sister Mary were on hand for the unveiling of the statue of their father in New Orleans in 1884. While on another visit to New Orleans, Mary Childe Lee suffered a stroke and died on the 27th of March 1905. According to her death certificate, she had been in the city for 24 days. Her remains were shipped to Lexington, Virginia, where she was interred in the crypt with her parents and sister. Her death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Orleans Deaths, 1905, vol. 134, p. 1102).
Click to view larger image.
Oscar James Dunn
(2/1/25)
Born into slavery in 1826 and freed by his stepfather, Oscar James Dunn rose to become the first African American elected to an executive office in Louisiana. After the Civil War, he worked in various capacities to aid the newly freed laboring class of African Americans. Soon afterwards, he entered into politics and in 1868, he became a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, running on the ticket with gubernatorial candidate, Henry C. Warmoth. Warmoth and Dunn won the election based on the newly enfranchised Black voting bloc and the exclusion of former Confederates from the polls. When Warmoth became unable to discharge his duties as Governor, Dunn stepped in and performed admirably. Dunn's success put him on track to become Governor of Louisiana in the 1872 election. In November of 1871, however, Dunn became violently ill and died a few days later. Doctors who examined him determined his cause of death was "congestion of the brain." Some researchers claim he was poisoned. His death certificate, on file at the Louisiana State Archives, indicates he died at No. 332 Canal Street in New Orleans at the age 46 on 22 November 1871 (Orleans Deaths, 1871, vol. 53, p. 32). He was buried at St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Dunn was married in 1866 to Ellen Marchand Boyd. The couple had no children, but Dunn adopted her three children from a previous marriage.
Click to view larger image.
May Thomas Leake Robinson
(1/1/25) May Edna Thomas Leake Robinson was one of only a few newspaper women in Louisiana in the 19th century. In 1892, she founded and edited the True Democrat in St. Francisville with her husband, W.W. Leake, Jr. A nearby newspaper described it as one of the state's "most ably edited and most influential newspapers as well as…one of the cleanest–mechanically and otherwise." After Leake's death in 1901, his widow served as the newspaper's sole editor until 1906 when she hired Elrie Robinson, a Texas printer, as associate editor and publisher. Robinson and Leake married two years later and ran the newspaper together until her death in 1925. At her death, the St. Francisville newspaper wrote, "Mr. Robinson had few if any superiors among Southern women writers in the field in which she labored. Her knowledge was deep and she handled many subjects." Although her death certificate indicates she was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E.D. Thomas, her parents were William Thomas, a carpenter from Tennessee, and Lydia (or Mary Caroline) Odom from Catahoula Parish. She died 3 June 1925 of post operative anemia following an operation, with a contributory cause of breast cancer. She was buried in Grace Episcopal Church in St. Francisville. Her death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Statewide Deaths, 1925, vol. 20, #8698).
Click to view larger image.
|
