Lawyers of Louisiana

Strange True Stories of Louisiana

Description

Illustrated. Formatted for the Kindle. Linked Contents.

CONTENTS.
HOW I GOT THEM
THE YOUNG AUNT WITH WHITE HAIR
THE ADVENTURES OF FRANÇOISE AND SUZANNE.
ALIX DE MORAINVILLE
SALOME MÜLLER, THE WHITE SLAVE.
THE "HAUNTED HOUSE" IN ROYAL STREET.
WAR DIARY OF A UNION WOMAN IN THE SOUTH

SOME OF THE MANUSCRIPTS: Court papers in Miller vs. Belmonti. Letter from Suzanne. The "Alix MS." Louisa Cheval's letter. Francois's Pages. The War Diary (underneath).

HOW I GOT THEM.
1882-89.

True stories are not often good art. The relations and experiences of real men and women rarely fall in such symmetrical order as to make an artistic whole. Until they have had such treatment as we give stone in the quarry or gems in the rough they seldom group themselves with that harmony of values and brilliant unity of interest that result when art comes in — not so much to transcend nature as to make nature transcend herself.

Yet I have learned to believe that good stories happen oftener than once I thought they did. Within the last few years there have dropped into my hands by one accident or another a number of these natural crystals, whose charms, never the same in any two, are in each and all enough at least to warn off all tampering of the fictionist. Happily, moreover, without being necessary one to another, they yet have a coherent sequence, and follow one another like the days of a week. They are mine only by right of discovery. From various necessities of the case I am sometimes the story-teller, and sometimes, in the reader's interest, have to abridge; but I add no fact and trim naught of value away. Here are no unconfessed "restorations," not one. In time, place, circumstance, in every essential feature, I give them as I got them — strange stories that truly happened, all partly, some wholly, in Louisiana.

In the spring of 1883, being one night the guest of my friend Dr. Francis Bacon, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the conversation turning, at the close of the evening, upon wonderful and romantic true happenings, he said:

"You are from New Orleans; did you never hear of Salome Müller?"

"No."

Thereupon he told the story, and a few weeks later sent me by mail, to my home in New Orleans, whither I had returned, a transcription, which he had most generously made, of a brief summary of the case — it would be right to say tragedy instead of case — as printed in "The Law Reporter" some forty years ago. That transcription lies before me now, beginning, "The Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana has lately been called upon to investigate and decide one of the most interesting cases which has ever come under the cognizance of a judicial tribunal." This episode, which had been the cause of public excitement within the memory of men still living on the scene, I, a native resident of New Orleans and student of its history, stumbled upon for the first time nearly two thousand miles from home.

I mentioned it to a number of lawyers of New Orleans, one after another. None remembered ever having heard of it. I appealed to a former chief-justice of the State, who had a lively personal remembrance of every member of the bench and the bar concerned in the case; but of the case he had no recollection. One of the medical experts called in by the court for evidence upon which the whole merits of the case seemed to hang was still living — the distinguished Creole physician, Dr. Armand Mercier. He could not recall the matter until I recounted the story, and then only in the vaguest way. Yet when my friend the former chief-justice kindly took down from his shelves and beat free of dust the right volume of supreme court decisions, there was the terse, cold record, No. 5623. ...

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-26
Summary: "INTERESTING, FASCINATING"

I have enjoyed reading the stories!

We need to remember though, that CONSERVATIVE meant the democratic party of that time, yes, democrats of old and 50 years ago were 'conservative' and they RULED the south from top to bottom! The reason I add this is that I find it fascinating how politics played in these stories back then.

Liberal meant the up and coming 'Lincoln republican' and conservative meant 'democrat'. Liberal in European countries still means FREEDOM and small government; We are the one's to have flipped the meaning, as here liberals mean a big, heavy handed, controlling government.

I will be visiting New Orleans soon when my husband returns for R&R from Kuwait. I also will be attending Loyola University; the online MSN program, and want to visit some historical sites! This book gives me some great ideas! Love it! Highly recommended!

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-27
Summary: "Louisiana stories"

As a fourth-generation Louisianian, I consider many of its true stories to be strange. It's a strange state, but one learns to love, or at least tolerate, some of its quirks. I found myself wishing that George W. Cable had written a much larger book because these stories are fascinating. The stories from the diaries of women who lived in early and Civil War Louisiana were the most intriguing. (In my opinion, Southern women's diaries have given history a much more feasible, human touch.) I now understand the Siege of Vicksburg because it was presented to us from the viewpoint of a civilian woman who lived through it. Cable is a trustworthy source of Louisiana-ana.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-07-07
Summary: "Great"

I enjoy stories like this. It came on time. I'm sure I will enjoy it.Thank you

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2003-02-24
Summary: "Strange true stories from Creole Louisianna"

As we traveled along Interstate 10 between New Orleans and "Red Baton," I mused about the girders which held the highway up out of the bayous. What must travel or life in general have been like in that part of Louisianna a century or so ago.

George Washington Cable first collected these seven stories about Louisianna and published them in 1888. He calls them true stories. They are stories from times before his own from 1782 to after the Civil War. At the same time these stories are strange to Cable because life had changed so much in Louisianna between the time that the stories occurred and his own time.

The stories start with the story of Louise who came to Louisianna and almost became the dinner of a local chief. This tragic tale is quickly followed by the "bright and happy" story of Francoise and Suzanne who travel through the "wilds" of Atchafalaya. Alix's story is next. She was once introduced to Marie Antoinette. Then the French Revolution came and Alix lost her first husband. She will be a character that I long admire but I ask you to read the story to see why. Salome Muller was a German who lost most of her family enroute to Louisianna. (Some 1200 of the 1800 who attempted to make that trip never arrived.) Salome became a slave. Yet some 20 years or so later her family took her case to the State Supreme Court to free her. The
"haunted house" is the house of Madame Lalaurie who chose to save her possessions rather than her slaves when a fire burned her house. The story of Attalie Brouillard reminds me of the con men of the movie "The Sting" with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The last story is a diary of a Union woman who lived in the South during the Civil War. To these I would like to add the story of George W Cable who begins his book by telling his readers how he got these other seven stories.

These are true stories from people who lived in Creole Louisianna, a time strange to us now.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2000-08-31
Summary: "Strange True Stories of Louisiana"

Seven unusual, true stories set in Louisiana comprise the reissue of George Washington Cable's STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. First published in 1888, these stories are a gold mine of cultural lore and historical facts. As interesting as the stories themselves are the accounts of how Cable acquired them.

"The Young Aunt with White Hair" is set in Spanish occupied Louisiana in 1782 and describes the horrors experienced by a young woman on the long journey to New Orleans from Germany: robbed by sailors on the ship; an Indian attack near the mouth of the Mississippi River, during which her husband and baby are brutally murdered; being held captive by Indians and told she was to be the chief's dinner. Her ordeal was so great that her hair turned snow white in a matter of hours, and she never recovered from the experience.

Humor and suspense make "The Two Sisters" just plain fun to read. Two teenage girls- one a tomboy and one a demure, sweet lady- undertake a dangerous trek across the Atchafalaya swamp to North Louisiana in 1795. It's not only a good story, but the details of clothing, places and people are priceless. "Plaquemine was composed of a church, two stores, as many drinking-shops, and about fifty cabins, one of which was the courthouse. Here lived a multitude of Catalans, Acadians, Negros and Indians. ..It was at Plaquemine that we bade adieu to the old Mississippi.."

The story if "Alix de Morainville" reads like a fairy tale: the birth-deformed baby farmed out to a peasant family; the arranged marriage that turns out to be a love match; the convent stay; the marriage of dear friend Madelaine to Count Louis de la Houssaye and the couple's departure for the Louisiana colony; presentation to Queen Marie Antoinette; Aleix's grand wedding at Notre Dame Cathedral; the onset of the French Revolution; widowhood; rescue; and flight first to England and then to Louisiana.

The other stories are "Salome Muller, The White Slave," "The Haunted House in Royal Street," "Attalie Brouillard," and "War Diary of a Union Woman in the South."