Sociètè de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson et Nouvelle Orléans, Part Two: Past Lives

Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson tomb, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. Photo by Emily Ford.

This blog post is Part Two of a two-part piece on the tomb of the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson, located in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.  To learn about the history of this French Society, check out Part One here.

Recently, Oak and Laurel Cemetery Preservation, LLC transcribed the burial records of the tomb of the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson, located in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2, thanks in part to a grant from genealogist Megan Smolenyak.  The Society was absorbed by the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Nouvelle Orléans in 1900.
 
About the Record Books
The records of the Sociètè are housed at LSU Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, in Baton Rouge.  (MSS 318, 1012)  The burial books appear to have been included with the larger collection of papers from the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Nouvelle Orléans (French Benevolent and Mutual Aid Society of New Orleans) which absorbed its Jefferson City counterpart in 1900.
 
The collection is comprised of two books, dating from the tomb’s construction in 1872 through 1900.  While later interments were certainly made in the Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 tomb, their record appears to have been incorporated into another, as-yet unstudied document.
 
Within these two books are the burial documents for 186 individuals.  Among these records, 142 people were buried in the society tomb in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2, 32 were provided formal burial aid by the society and were interred in family tombs throughout the city, and 12 were not specified as to burial location.[1]
 
Each burial record documents the date and place of the individual’s birth, date and place of death, as well as cause of death and information regarding membership.  These documents shed light on the lives of hundreds of people.  They allude to intricate familial and professional relationships, personal tragedies, and public calamities.  They offer a window into a rich community, the vestiges of which stand silent in this stately yet neglected tomb in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2.  Today we share the stories of those buried within.

New Orleans Levy, 1884. Print by William A. Walker (Library of Congress)

The Foreign French:  Founding Members and their Origins
The Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson was organized in 1868 by native-born French men – eight of whom are buried in the Lafayette No. 2 tomb.  Much like the New Orleans French society, these immigrants sought fraternity among their countrymen.  Incidentally (or perhaps not so much so), most of these men were born in the same French provinces (départments), and often in the same village.
 
The majority of adults buried in the Sociètè tomb originated from two primary areas in continental France:  the department now known as Midi-Pyrenees, including Gers, Haute-Pyrenees, Haute-Garonne, and Bass Pyrenees (now known as Pyrenees-Atlantiques), and the eastern departments of Alsace-Lorraine, specifically Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, and Moselle.  These two areas are nearly as geographically disparate as can be, with the former nestled along the Pyrenees mountains at the Spanish border, and the latter at the Rhine River beside present-day Germany.  

The political and cultural forces that caused these people to emigrate from France and arrive in New Orleans are as contrasting as their origins.  The vast majority of foreign-born Sociètè members immigrated from western France.  Their motivations for leaving may have been personal, economic, or political.  Regardless of their motivation, however, their relocation was characterized by a strong familial and cultural bond.  Adult siblings and parents immigrated together.  In fact, many of these members were from the same towns, notably the commune of Trie-sur-Baïse (noted in records as simply “Trie”) from whom many members of the Tujague family emigrated, as well as those who would become the patriarchs of the Fortassin and Lacaze families.  Others from the region left their homes in Toulouse, Mont-de-Marrast, and myriad other towns.[2]

Administrative divisions of France, with member departments of origin marked in green. (Map-of-France.com)

In Alsace-Lorraine, a different climate motivated the eventual members of the Sociètè to emigrate from their homes.  The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) forced many Alsatians from their homeland when the controls of the provinces shifted from France to newly-nationalized Germany.  For French-speaking Alsatians, both Jewish and gentile, German citizenship was a less than desirable option.  New Orleans was an attractive alternative due to its Francophone tradition.  

Battle in Weissenburg, near Altinstadt, Alsace, 1870 (Library of Congress)

Among these Alsatian emigrants were sisters Catherine and Marie Sonntag, both in their early twenties from Altinstadt, Alsace.  Nieces of Sociètè member O.M. Redon, they both died of yellow fever within weeks of each other in October 1872.  They were buried in vaults 20 and 22 of the Lafayette No. 2 society tomb.
 
While the people buried in this tomb overwhelmingly shared a linguistic and cultural bond, there is no shortage of strangers among the burials in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2.  Although the tomb was built for French society members, those members were not always French.
 
Strangers in a Strange Land: Non-French Buried in the French Tomb
A handful of foreign-born non-French people were laid to rest in the Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 society tomb.  Their stories contribute to the greater narrative of the society which at its heart was thoroughly New Orleanean in its cultural interactions.
 
From Germany, Catherine Deffenback and brothers John and Jacob Schwenck were buried in this tomb at their time of death.  The Schwenck brothers owned a saloon together on Magazine Street.[3]
 
Leon Vignes, from Mont-de-Marrast, France, mourned the death of his Irish-born wife, Margaret, in 1884.  She is buried in vault 35.  Leon died fifteen years later and was buried in vault 38.  He was not the only person to join the matrimonial melting pot:  The wife of J.M. Gelé was born in England and died in 1872, buried in vault 26.
 
Perhaps the most interesting foreign-born member of the society is not buried in the Lafayette No. 2 tomb but instead only blocks away in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, although no tablet remains to mark his name.

Louis Savini was born in 1830 in Mortara, Italy.  By the time he was eleven years old, he and his family had taken residence in New Orleans.  From the very scant documentation remaining, Savini appears to have led a colorful life.  He owned a saloon in what is now the Central Business District on Common Street, near the Mississippi River.[4] 

In 1859, the Savini family published this ad in the Daily Crescent in order to end confusion of their surname with that of a man who murdered butcher Daniel Adrian Claverie (Library of Congress)

For reasons unclear from available records, Savini joined the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson in 1874.  Only months after joining the group, however, Savini was struck down by a “cerebral fever,” which could indicate encephalitis, meningitis, or scarlet fever.  He died on June 1, 1874 in his home on Poydras Street.  The Sociètè not only furnished his burial in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, but also provided a procession befitting a French society member.
 
Savini was buried in the tomb of his brother, Paul Savini, in Quadrant 2 of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.  Today, the tomb is in a state of dangerous neglect and has lost the closure tablet bearing Louis Savini’s name.  

From l'Abeille de Nouvelle Orleans, June 2, 1874, announcing the death of Louis Savini and, below, calling all members of the Societe Francaise de Jefferson to attend his funeral services. (Jefferson Public Library)

Savini tomb, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, 2015. Photo by Emily Ford.

As the Sociètè aged, its members increasingly were New Orleans natives.  Over time, both the children of members and other Francophone Louisianans joined, advancing the process of assimilation in a new country.
 
The Family Tomb
At least one hundred and forty-two individuals are buried in the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson tomb in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2.  Some were recent immigrants with little or no family left behind.  For a striking number of society members, however, the tomb was the final resting place for multiple generations.
 
It has already been noted that Leon and Margaret Vignes rest near each other in this tomb.  They are also interred with their son, Joseph, who drowned at the age of 14 in 1891.  He is interred in the same vault as his mother. 
 
The Fortassin family likely also utilized the society tomb for the interment of multiple generations.  In 1870, twenty year-old Gabriel Fortassin, Jr., arrived in New Orleans from Trie, France.  His parents joined him as well.  In 1882, he married Alexandrine Claverotte.[5]  The two would briefly move to San Antonio, Texas before returning to New Orleans.  In his lifetime, Gabriel would bury his parents in the society tomb, as well as five of his infant children.  When he died in 1927, he was given a French Society burial in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2.[6]
 
One of Gabriel’s adult sons, Baptiste Fortassin was also buried in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2, in 1929.  Two years later, Baptiste’s widow Marie Maille joined him.  With no Fortassin tomb in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2, it is very likely they joined their relatives in this tomb, making it the last resting place of three generations of one family, with at least nine burials.[7]
 
Other families utilized the society tomb similarly.  Surnames such as Tujague[8], Abadie, Mouledous[9], Vignes, and Carrare appear multiple times through the burial books, representing multiple generations.  These records also show combinations of the above-mentioned names, linked by intermarriage.  Eleanor Vignes Tujague and Pauline Mouledous Tujague are both buried in the Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 society tomb.  Society members formed a strong, interdependent community.  They even stood at each other’s deathbeds to witness a last will and testament.[10]
 
Death and burial were only the final threads that tied these French-speaking New Orleaneans together.  In life, they lived and worked beside one another.  As the French Society of Jefferson, members lived predominately within the boundaries of the former Jefferson suburb (portions of present-day Garden District, Irish Channel, Central City, and Uptown neighborhoods).  Burial records note the residences of a multitude of members as near the St. Mary’s Market and along Tchoupitoulas Street.  Even more records note residence as simply “aux abbatoirs,” or “near the slaughterhouses.”  Which is no surprise:  the majorit of members were butchers.

Outdoor butcher's stall, 1879 (UK National Archives via Wikimedia Commons)

A Workingman’s Society
The Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson shared members and celebrated social events with the Sociètè de Bienfaisance des Bouchers, or the French Butchers Society.  Their enormous, eighty-vault society tomb remains also in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2.  Members of each society lived near the Mississippi River, where cattle were unloaded at river docks. 
 
Until the late 1860s, the City of New Orleans had little regulation regarding the slaughter of livestock.  Butchers were free to practice their trade where they pleased, usually near a market where they could sell their wares.  This changed with a municipal law that required butchers slaughter livestock exclusively in a city-owned slaughterhouse, the goal of which was to prevent public health hazards.[11]  Opposition to this law among butchers of both French societies led to civil unrest and years of legal battles.  The case finally reached the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling known as the Slaughterhouse Case.
 
Among the French and Butchers societies, the butcher’s trade was passed through generations and within a tight-knit community.  Members lived in close proximity to each other, with addresses at Louisiana, Camp, Chippewa, Annunciation, Constance, Josephine, St. Mary, Tchoupitoulas, St. Andrew, Washington, Magazine, and Rousseau Streets. 

French Market, New Orleans, 1883. From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (Wikimedia Commons user Infrogmation)

The propensity to take on the butcher’s trade among these society members is truly overwhelming.  One casual cross reference of members’ names with an 1878 directory revealed nine butcher/members alive and working at the time:  Gabriel Fortassin, Jr., Jean Abadie, Joseph Barrere, Pierre Lacaze, Bernard Lacoste, John William Lannes (Lannis), Pierre Sabatte, and Leon Vignes.  The other three members searched, Victor Brisbois, Ulysses Mailhes, and Jacob Schwenck, were all listed as saloon owners or bartenders.  
​
Causes of Death
If cursory research is to be trusted, the Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson was populated by close friends who slaughtered animals and served alcohol for a living.  When this living ended for each individual, however, the causes varied.
 
It should be noted that 65 of the 142 burials (45%) in the Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 tomb were for children under six years of age.  The Fortassin family, who buried five children in this tomb, were by no means unusual in their parental grief.  Joseph Bararre and his wife Amanda Mailhes buried four children as well, all of whom were interred in vault 8. 
 
The high concentration of child burials in this tomb has a dual explanation.  In addition to the well-understood status of childhood illness and mortality in the late nineteenth century, it was also much more likely for a family to bury a child in a society tomb than one built for a family.  Married couples without their own family tomb were unlikely to purchase a lot for the burial of a child or stillborn infant.  Instead, it was much more affordable to inter the child in a wall vault or society tomb, if available.  Furthermore, the spiritual and emotional benefits of society-supported burial of a child were likely comforting.
 
A significant percentage of the 65 infant/child burials were the stillborn or nonviable infants of society members.  The other children of the Sociètè died of many common childhood maladies, including lockjaw (tetanus), cholera, croup, seizures, and whooping cough.  Six children were listed as having died either of “bad teething” or a jaw ailment.  In the nineteenth century, a range of many ailments was attributed to the process of teething in toddlers, including intestinal disease, seizures, meningitis, or even crib death. 
 
About half of the burial records in the Sociètè burial book list a cause of death.  Among the adult members, most causes of death of typical of the time period:  apoplexy, Bright’s disease, consumption (tuberculosis), and yellow fever.  Surprisingly, only four burial certificates mark yellow fever as cause of death.  This statistical anomaly may be explained by society members being buried hastily during times of epidemic, either in other tombs or too quickly to fill the burial form completely.

View of Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 from above the French Society tomb, looking toward Sixth Street. St. Joseph Cemetery No. 2 is at the top right, Butcher's Society tomb at top left. Photo by Emily Ford.

“A Mort et Sans Espoir de Guerison”
A few members, however, appear to have died in a slightly more unusual manner.  Among them are:

• Joseph Sarniguet (1813 – 1873) a butcher from Haute Pyrenees, France, who died “de folie,” or “of madness.”  Sarniguet was sane enough to write a will before he died, however, declaring himself to be of sound mind and spirit.
• L.G. Lorenger (died 1874) of Canada, took a fatal dose of laudanum.
• P. Roncau (died 1892) a native of Manas, Gers, France, “mort d’une effort” or “died of stress.”
• Jean Tujague (1834 – 1875) a butcher from Trie, France, who died of gangrene of the leg.  Perhaps related to a butchering injury.
• Dominque Mouledous (died 1875), a butcher from Tournous-Darré, Haute Pyrenees, France, is listed simply as "a mort et sans espoir de guerison,” or “dead with no hope of recovery.”

 
All of the above-listed men were members of the Sociètè who were buried in the Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 tomb alongside lost children, fellow butchers, and more than a few bartenders, as well as many wives, nieces, and grandchildren.  

"Irish Channel Cotton Press, 1880s," from Times-Picayune Archives (via Wikimedia Commons user Infrogmation)

A Community Buried Together
Nearly all vestiges of Sociètè Française de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle de Jefferson have faded from popular memory.  The tomb itself does not have a single carved name on any of its forty marble vault tablets.  Yet within the decaying stucco vaults of this tomb in Lafayette Cemetery No. 2 are the relics of a great communal history that remains vitally significant to New Orleans cultural heritage. 

It is the hope that this research might connect the descendants of those buried in this tomb with their ancestors.  The full burial rolls of interments into this tomb from 1872 to 1900 (up to the society’s merger with Sociètè Française d’Assistance Mutuelle de Nouvelle Orléans) have been uploaded to FindaGrave, in hopes their descendants may find them.  The burial books are also available as an Excel Spreadsheet , ​MS Access Database, or PDF Document.  Click here for burials listed by vault number.

[1] Unless otherwise noted, all content is referenced directly from the original burial books as transcribed and documented by Oak and Laurel Cemetery Preservation, LLC.  Links to these materials can be found at the end of this blog post.
​[2] Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, editors.  Creole New Orleans:  Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge:  LSU Press, 1992), 112.​
​[3] Edwards’ Annual Directory…in the City of New Orleans, for 1872 (New Orleans:  Southern Publishing Company 1872), 366.
[4] New Orleans City Directory 1870, 531.  
[5] State of Louisiana, Secretary of State, Division of Archives, Records Management, and History. Vital Records Indices. Baton Rouge, LA, USA.
[6] Times-Picayune, August 28, 1927, 2.
[7] Times-Picayune, January 18, 1929, 2;
[8] To our knowledge, if this family is related to Guillaume Tujague, restauranteur, it is only distantly.  
[9] Alternately spelled Moledous, Mouledoux, etc.
[10] Pierre Lacaze, also from Trie, witnessed Sylvain Tujague’s final will in 1882.  Louisiana Will Book, Vol. 21 (1880-1883).
​[11] “City Litigation,” Morning Star and Catholic Messenger, May 30, 1869, 5.  In this article regarding the Butchers’ filed injunction against the City, the author notes their injunction as “a string of reasons as clear and cutting as the keenest cleaver could demonstrate.”