Natchitoches Baptisms & Marriages, 1825-1831. Register 7, Church of St. Francois des Natchitoches, Louisiana, with Annotations by the Translator

History is far more complicated than its labels imply — as this volume attests. Beyond the label a parish priest or clerk chose for this set of records, “Baptisms of Slaves and Free People of Color,” we find marriages of couples both enslaved and free. We find baptisms of children whose roots trace to Europe on all lines, included therein because stray pages were later misbound or new priests made wrong assumptions. We find Créoles of all shades, cheek and jowl with immigrants from the British Isles, migrants from “Anglo” states, and “American nègres” brought or sold into Louisiana.

Within these pages, we see libres presenting their own children for baptism alongside infants whose parents they held enslaved. We see white fathers bringing their babes to the baptismal font with the mothers they could not marry because their unions, though permanent, crossed color lines. We see couples presenting children for baptism on the same day they, themselves, wed — silent testimony to the dearth of ministers in a parish that then encompassed eleven thousand square miles.

Drawing upon decades of research in a region that represents the oldest settlement in all the Louisiana Purchase, this volume’s translator and editor Elizabeth Shown Mills offers a wealth of annotations to help your own studies. Supplemental notes identify parents that pastors dared not name, provide maiden identities for wives with no surname in this register, and separate the lives of numerous same-name individuals — always with documentation from primary sources.

Elizabeth Shown Mills

2026, 6" x 9", paper, index, 176 pp.

ISBN: 9780788456398

101-M5639