ANGELA GREGORY:

Portraits & Process

August 18, 2023 through August 11, 2024

Opening Reception

August 18, 2023

6 - 8PM

"MY FRENCH ANCESTORS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS REFLECT THE SOUTH LOUISIANA STORY—A BITTER-SWEET BLEND OF CAJUNS, EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS, AND ENSLAVED AFRICANS, CULMINATING IN A CREOLE BLOODLINE STEEPED IN STRUGGLE, GLORY, TRAGEDY, PRIDE, AND SHAME. WAR AND HARD TIMES SENT THEM SCATTERING, LETTING TIME ERASE ANY SIGN THAT THEY EVER LIVED ON THIS SPOT.

German Coast. In time, they became wealthy planters, building several significant sugarcane plantations, including two that are still standing: Evergreen and Haydel Plantation, better known today as Whitney Plantation.

Today, Whitney holds the title of Louisiana’s only former plantation site to exclusively center its activities around the history of enslavement that took place on its grounds, and at every plantation in this region. There is little doubt that Georges Haydel depended on enslaved labor to construct Idelwild (and certainly on the riches their labor created to fund it), which was once situated on an 800-acre dairy farm and sugarcane plantation. The 1850 slave census listed him as the “owner” of thirty-four enslaved people, all of whom worked at his sugar plantation in St. Mary Parish. He died before Idlewild was completed in 1854.

Though of German descent, Haydel designed the plantation house using English and French features, while incorporating Dutch details, reflecting Patterson’s stint as a Dutch settlement in the early 19th century. Idlewild’s hallless layout features French doors between rooms, front and rear galleries, five fluted Doric columns, a full entablature with denticular cornice, a continuous brick wall encircling the foundation, three dormers, a graceful roofline, and ornamental cast-iron balustrades. The enslaved people who lived at Idelwild stayed in quarters beneath the main house.

Captain peered into the French “guillotine” sash windows before knocking on the door. Through transomed side-light windows, I could see his mother, Pam Daniels, releasing the locks.

“Mom this is Nina Flournoy. The house was built by her great-great-great grandfather or something,” Captain began.

I apologized for the bad timing, with a pandemic sweeping the country. “I totally understand if you’d rather I stay outside. I could just walk around the grounds if that’s okay.”

Sizing me up for two seconds, she graciously pushed open the screen door. “After you’ve come all this way? Please, come on in,” she said.

Stepping onto the varnished hardwood floor, I felt instantly transported. Worn brass knobs, heavy paneled cypress doors, cypress aedicule motif mantels, and crochet table clothes all denoted a place lost in time. Daniels eased through each room, pointing out the tall gallery windows with jib doors, an upholstered “shaving chair,” chandeliers, and a vintage etagere displaying an exploded Civil War musket ball discovered on the property by Daniels’ late husband Dr. Walter H. Daniels.

A gable at each end of the 5,800 square foot “cottage” has a balustraded balcony resting upon slender columns. Captain led me through one rear room to a narrow, enclosed staircase. As we ascended the dimly lit stairs leading to the attic, he relayed the “blue shirt” story.

“One night I rounded this corner and saw a blue shirt going up the stairs. Just a blue shirt.” When he tried to flip on the light, it didn’t work, and hasn’t worked since that night, despite electricians’ many attempts to fix it. “The Union army wore blue shirts,” he noted. The Travel Channel medium concluded the apparition was most likely a nurse from the Yellow Fever epidemic named Nina Nordoff.

A group of Ursuline nursing nuns also occupied the house for a time, living on the upper floor when it served as a Civil War hospital. Daniels pointed to a rectangle cut-out on one wall, where nuns scrawled a message in French. The former owners added a translation underneath: “Study your profession with care and you will become wise, work hard and you will become rich, be frugal and temperate and you will preserve your wealth, be just and you will not fear eternity.”

Among the abandoned items Daniels’s family found in the attic were pieces of early 19th-century apparel: pantaloons, lace frocks, a silk bustle, and hats—which she carefully restored and displayed—alongside the elaborately beaded ball gown she wore as queen of a Mardi Gras krewe in New Orleans, where she grew up. She mentioned that, like I, her brother had long researched her Normand and Goudeau family lines in New Orleans.

She showed me a rare photo she’d found of Union officers and nurses posing on the front steps when the house served as a hospital. In the shot was Captain Seyburn, who bought the house after the war. Daniels called my attention to a nurse seated in the middle of the shot. “We’ve identified her as the woman we see walking through rooms from time to time,” she said .

“Are you ever afraid here?” I asked, and immediately wanted to kick myself, since her husband had passed just the year before and she now lived in the house alone.

“No,” she shook her head, theorizing, “Maybe time simply overlaps. I don’t think they know we’re here.” Daniels said many residents of old homes in the region report similar spirit sightings, and most consider it part of the terrain.

After admiring a mural she painted depicting the view of Bayou Teche from her kitchen window, we said our goodbyes. Outside, Captain pointed toward the bayou. “You can see the Hymel land right there.” I held my throat, struck by the sight of the banks where Alix and Joseph first set down their American roots.

Captain told me to take Main Street through Patterson, turning north onto Bridge Road, and crossing the short bridge over Bayou Teche. From there I followed Merry Hymel’s directions, heading east on Par Road 108 before turning up the dirt road. I smiled recalling her South Louisiana accent on the phone. “Dirt? You want dirt?”

I explained that after searching for years, I had finally pinpointed the location of the Charpantier land. “I’m going to put some dirt in a container to represent my family’s little piece of the original property.” She liked the idea and mentioned that her son and niece also have a house on the land.

Going up the long dirt finger toward her son’s house, Hymel’s daughter-in-law Ashley approached my car, wiping her hands on her jeans. “We’re boiling crabs out back,” she smiled. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Ashley walked me out to where they estimated the original home might have stood. I told her my relatives were among the first sugarcane planters in the area. Regional historian Shane Bernard told me that the Union Army badly damaged the Charpantiers’ main house during the war, but I don’t know what happened to their sugar operation.

We approached a shed where the Hymels had collected several corroded hand-forged pieces discovered over the years. “They made their own tools,” Ash- ley said, as her husband, Bill, approached. “Take whatever you want. If it means something to you, feel free to take any of it.”

I picked up a rusty metal nut. “I’ll just keep this small one. Anything more might be tough to explain to airport security.” I wrapped the crumbling metal piece in my eyeglasses cloth and stuffed it in my pocket like a chunk of gold.

Strolling the expansive landscape felt like walking inside a painting. Laced oak, pine, and cypress branches formed a natural boundary at the water’s edge, where smooth black cypress knees poked out of the bayou. The sunset’s gold-orange light rippled atop the inky water and streamed through trees, throwing shadows across the grass. Just beyond a thick growth of ferns, a lady glided toward us.

Hymel wasn’t at all what I expected from her voice on the phone. A lovely woman with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, she looked at home in her worn jeans and denim shirt. I pegged her as a beauty who brushed off lifelong compliments and, rather than paint her nails, chose to get her hands dirty. Literally. As I gushed over the picturesque property, Hymel divulged that she’d studied landscape design at LSU. This place was her masterpiece.

The two women pointed out indentions on ancient trees, deep ruts, wells, and other clues as to how the Charpantiers might have lived. Hymel suggested a particular spot where I should dig. Scooping dirt with the screw-top lid, I packed the jar to the brim. I imagined generations of Charpantiers—Marie Adelaide, Joseph, their son Michel, their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—milling among us, tickled that blood kin made the effort to acknowledge the land where they thrived. My French ancestors and their descendants reflect the south Louisiana story—a bitter-sweet blend of Cajuns, European immigrants, and enslaved Africans, culminating in a Creole bloodline steeped in struggle, glory, tragedy, pride, and shame. War and hard times sent them scattering, letting time erase any sign that they ever lived on this spot. Yet, here I was, one of their own, kneeling beside the Bayou Teche in the very dirt where they first began building their family after leaving France.

Maybe Daniels was right. Maybe time does simply overlap.

Driving away with dirt under my fingernails, I swore that if I did nothing else that week, I’d be gratified to have just done that. But, as it turned out, my trip had just begun to get interesting. •

Post script: Upon returning to Dallas, I discovered that I’m a distant relative of the Hymels through my St. Mary Parish relatives. This means that the Hymels are related to the Charpantiers—the original owners of the land on which they now live. And, not only am I related to the Feltermans, but the Normand branch of Pam and Captain’s line intersects with my paternal line—not through my St. Mary Parish relatives but linked to my New Orleans family. Small world. —NF