It did not take long for me to discover that Walter Parlange owned the Parlange Plantation in New Roads, and wells were being drilled on this property. For years, I researched the Parlange and the Ternant families, the original owners of the Parlange Plantation, looking for a connection to the Bayonne families. For years, I thought that Jules was a slave on the Parlange and that the property had been given to him by Walter Parlange. All of that changed when my mother decided to clean the room where my ailing father spent his last days.
Mom found a copy of a Bill of Sale indicating that Jules and Francois had purchased the property in 1870. We did the happy dance that day. A few years later, I hired a genealogist who discovered a birth register indicating that Jules was born a free child of color—another happy dance.
The photo was given to me by a cousin, Vera Colar Keen. When I began my research, I sent her a letter with questions about Jules and his wife, Victorine. She visited me soon afterward and said that her sister, Anita, had a picture of Jules and she would make a copy when she visited her in New Orleans. I could barely contain myself when I received the only photo of my great-grandfather, Jules Bayonne. I made copies for my siblings and anyone who wanted one. I put that picture on a chair for months where I could see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Now, it hangs on the wall in my vanity, and it is still the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night. I hired Henry Watson, a wood carver, to carve a portrait of Jules; he did a fine job. Henry said that was the first and last portrait he would carve. I guess it was challenging. We do not have a picture of my great-grandmother, Victorine Randall Bayonne.
I have made great strides in my search for Jules and his family, but one aspect of his life is still missing. Besides Jules' birth record, I have found no information about his early childhood. He knew how to read and write, but how he learned is a mystery. Jules signed the Bill of Sales slip, crossing out the "x" the notary had written on his signature line before writing his name. The woman who sold the property and Francois could not write. They wrote a "x" on their signature lines.
The Bayonne descendants have had two family reunions to honor Jules and Victorine Bayonne. The first one was held in New Orleans in 2003, the same year Louisiana celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. We, too, were celebrating a land purchase, the land that Jules and Francois purchased 133 years prior. The second reunion was held in 2008 in Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge was about 30 miles from Livonia, where the Bayonne property is located. The family picnic was in New Roads, the parish seat of Pointe Coupee Parish, which was a few miles from Livonia. The highlight for my siblings and me was a tour of the Parlange Plantation, where Jules was a domestic servant in 1870.
We also visited St. Mary Catholic Church Cemetery, where Jules is buried in an unmarked grave. He died in 1903 of causes unknown. One day, the family will have to get a gravestone for Jules. I do not know where Victorine is buried. Locating Victorine's burial place will be my next project.
Four years ago, the descendants filed a lawsuit to get rid of a lawyer who managed to keep the succession open since 1980 and collected 20% of the royalties generated by the gas and oil wells. I hope these things will be resolved in 2013.
6 - 8 February 2013
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