¹ Cremin, Lawrence A., Traditions of American Education (New York, 1977), 4.Google Scholar

² Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970), 13, 22. Of utmost importance in the struggle for dominance was the number of households in the English colonies by 1689. For example, Massachusetts had approximately eight thousand households, and Virginia over seven thousand. See ibid., 238–41.Google Scholar

³ Certain characteristics of the period render extant source material somewhat confusing. Intense and interrelated personal, political, and religious rivalries in the Louisiana colony resulted in a mass of correspondence crossing the Atlantic detailing charges and countercharges of competing factions or individuals against each other. According to one twentieth-century scholar of French Louisiana, these letters and mémoires to the home government “were not only written by [colonial] officials, but by anybody who could hold a pen.” In the bitter struggle for power in the colony, “all arms were fair: detraction, defamation, calumny, nothing was thought too ugly to satisfy one's spite against a personal enemy, or if by so doing there was the slightest chance of securing one's own advancement.” Delanglez, Jean, The French Jesuits in Lower Louisiana, 1700–1763 (Washington, D.C., 1935), 213.Google Scholar

⁴ Harris, T. H., The Story of Public Education in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1924), 1; see Marshall, Joyce, trans. and ed., Word from New France: The Selected Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation (Toronto, 1967) for a general account of the Jesuits and a particular account of the Ursulines in Canada.Google Scholar

⁵ Register, Marriage, 1720–30, St. Louis Cathedral Archives, New Orleans, Louisiana. See also, Father Raphael de Luxembourg to Gilles Bernard, Abbé Raguet, 15 Sep. 1725, p. 409, vol. 8, ser. B, General Correspondence, Louisiana, Ministry of the Marine, French National Archives, Paris.Google Scholar

⁶ Raphael, to Raguet, , 18 May 1726, pp. 46, 178, vol. 10, sub-ser. 13a, ser. C, General Correspondence, Louisiana, Colonial Archives, French National Archives.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid. Google Scholar

⁸ Buetow, Harold A., Of Singular Benefit: The Story of Catholic Education in the United States (New York, 1970), 21.Google Scholar

⁹ Directors General of the Company of the Indes to Colonial Governor Etienne de Périer, 21 Nov. 1727, p. 80, vol. 11, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Moore, Diane M., Their Adventurous Will: Profiles of Memorable Louisiana Women Lafayette, La., 1984), 84. See also Marguerite Aron, The Ursulines , trans. Angela Griffin, M., O.S.U. New York, 1947 for a general history of the Order.Google Scholar

¹¹ Traité de la Compagnie des Indes avec Les Ursulines, 13 Sep. 1726, and “Louis XV Brevet en Faveur des Ursulines de la Louisanne,” 18 Sep. 1726, Archival Records, Ursuline Convent, New Orleans; Rev. Mother Marie Tranchepain, Journal of the Voyage of the First Ursulines to New Orleans, 1727, trans. Blanchard, Olivia (New Orleans, 1940). See also Hachard, Marie to her father, 27 Oct. 1727, Account of the Ursulines' Voyage from L'Orient to New Orleans , translation in Semple, Henry, The Ursulines in New Orleans and Our Lady of Prompt Succor: A Record of Two Centuries, 1727–1925 (New York, 1925), 201–19. For the names of the nuns embarking for Louisiana, see the letter of Mother Superior Tranchepain to the Directors of the Company, 24 Dec. 1726, p. 69, vol. 10, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine.Google Scholar

¹² Hachard, , Account of the Ursulines' Voyage. See also Tranchepain, , Journal of the Voyage .Google Scholar

¹³ Tranchepain, , Journal of the Voyage; Hachard, , Account of the Ursulines' Voyage .Google Scholar

¹⁴ Hachard, , Account of the Ursulines' Voyage. Not only had some entire families returned to France for the education of their daughters (an action not conducive to the permanence of the colony), but on occasion provisions were made for sending only the daughter back for formal education. See, for example, the Judicial Records of the French Superior Council, 8 May 1726, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, for arrangements to send the minor daughter of M. Des Fontaines to Brittany for that reason.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Letter of Father Nicholas de Beaubois, 17 Nov. 1727, pp. 314–16, vol. 10, sub-ser. 13a, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Hachard, Marie to her father, 1 Jan. 1728, translation in Semple, The Ursulines in New Orleans, 219–24.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Bournigalle, Charles, comp., “Annals, Ursuline Convent” (1891), Archival Records, Ursuline Convent, ch. 10, 155.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Beaubois, to Raguet, , 6 May 1728, p. 256, vol. 11, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Constitutions of the Ursulines Order (Paris, 1646), 1: “Rules for the Ursulines in Religion,” Second Part: Day School, Paris, 1705, Archival Records, Ursuline Convent; see also Bournigalle, , “Annals, Ursuline Convent,” ch. 10, 155; Marie Hachard to her father, 24 Apr. 1728, translation in Semple, The Ursulines in New Orleans, 224–38.Google Scholar

²⁰ “Rules for the Ursulines in Religion,” Second Part: Day School.Google Scholar

²¹ Memoir, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne De Bienville, 15 June 1742, p. 312, vol. 26, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

²² (Anonymous), “Memoir to Make Known the Necessity of Sending Settlers to the Colony of Louisiana,” 1714, p. 655, vol. 3, sub-ser. 13a, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

²³ Neill, Thomas P. and Schmandt, Raymond H., History of the Catholic Church (Milwaukee, Wis., 1957), 431–32.Google Scholar

²⁴ “Letters patent for the Establishment of a Company of Commerce, under the name of Company of the West,” Aug. 1717, quoted in O'Neill, Charles E., Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven, Conn., 1966), 11.Google Scholar

²⁵ Diamond, Sigmund, “An Experiment in Feudalism: French Canada in the Seventeenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 18 (Jan. 1961): 3–34; Biggar, Henry P., The Early Trading Companies of New France: A Contribution to the History of Commerce and Discovery in North America (New York, 1965), 119; Jean Louis Phèlypeaux de Pontchartrain to Dantin, 15 Oct. 1698, p. 253, vol. 136, Memoires and Documents, America, Archives of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, French National Archives; Brasseaux, Carl A., trans. and ed., A Comparative View of French Louisiana, 1699 and 1762: The journals of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Jacques-Blaise d'Abbadie (Lafayette, La., 1979).Google Scholar

²⁶ O'Neill, Charles E., ed., Charlevoix's Louisiana: Selections from the History and the Journal (Baton Rouge, La., 1977), 12–13; Pontchartrain to Ducasse, 1 July 1699, p. 372, vol. 21, ser. B, Colonial Archives, Orders of the King, French National Archives; Memoir, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, 30 Aug. 1699, p. 188, vol. 1, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives. Iberville's fears were to be realized when, with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the English took possession of Acadia in New France. Thus, the French had to develop new lines of defense against further English expansion.Google Scholar

²⁷ Farrell, David, “Reluctant Imperialism: Pontchartrain, Vauban, and the Expansion of New France, 1699–1702,” in Proceedings of the Twelfth Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, May 1986, ed. Boucher, Philip and Courville, Serge (Lanham, Md., 1988), 39.Google Scholar

²⁸ Eccles, William J., Frontenac: The Courtier Governor (Toronto, 1959), 54–55. Evangelization of the natives was an obligation every charter imposed on companies or individuals granted a colonial monopoly; see Allain, . Not Worth a Straw, 35.Google Scholar

²⁹ Memoir, Father Beaubois, 1725, p. 260, vol. 12, sub-ser. 13a, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

³⁰ Allain, , Not Worth a Straw, 11, 7.Google Scholar

³¹ Eccles, , Frontenac, 56. With respect to the work of the missionaries in Louisiana in converting both the Indians and blacks, see Baudier, Roger, The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1939), esp. 75–77.Google Scholar

³² Allain, , Not Worth a Straw, 70. Of course this scheme did not work out quite so neatly. Transposing European institutions wholesale to the colonies proved more difficult than the French ever thought possible, as evidenced in Louisiana.Google Scholar

³³ French males form the group noticeably missing here. The reasons for this are 1) that they were already Catholic, even if some practiced the faith badly; and 2) that the belief was that “civilization depends more upon the training and education of the feminine sex than the masculine.” To the extent that some practiced the faith poorly, French males were to be “helped” by the presence of morally strong, religiously faithful women-to-be-wives who, by their very influence, would set the men back on the “right” path. For evidence of this belief in the civilizing role of women, see Theresa, Mary Carroll, Austin, The Ursulines in Louisiana, 1727–1824 (New Orleans, 1886), 4; Baker, Vaughan, “Les Louisianaises: A Reconnaissance,” and Allain, Mathe, “Manon Lescaut et ses Consoeurs: Women in the Early French Period, 1700–1731,” Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, 1979, ed. Cooke, James (Lanham, Md., 1980), 6–15 and 18–26, respectively; and, Allain, , Not Worth a Straw, 83–87.Google Scholar

³⁴ Farrell, , “Reluctant Imperialism,” 37.Google Scholar

³⁵ Bienville, to Pontchartrain, , 28 July 1706, p. 537, vol. 1, and Martin d'Artaguiette to Pontchartrain, 8 Sep. 1712, p. 799, vol. 2, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C., Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

³⁶ Saintoyant, Jean François, La Colonisation française sous l'Ancien Régime (du XVe siècle à 1789) (Paris, 1929), quoted in Baker, , “Les Louisianaises,” 8.Google Scholar

³⁷ de Mandeville, Marigny, Memoir on Louisiana, 29 Apr. 1709, p. 475, vol. 2, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

³⁸ Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac to Pontchartrain, 26 Oct. 1713, pp. 50–51, and Memoir to Jean-Baptiste du Bois Duclos, 15 July 1713, pp. 138–40, vol. 3, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives; Bournigalle, , “Annals, Ursuline Convent,” ch. 11, 155.Google Scholar

³⁹ Raphael, to Raguet, , 15 May 1725, p. 402, vol. 8, and Périer to the Company of the hides, 2 Nov. 1727, p. 108, Heloise Cruzat, vol. 10, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives: “The Ursulines of Louisiana,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 2 (Jan. 1919): 5–24.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Mention should be made here of changing European attitudes toward women, and especially young girls, which had some effect on the educational situation in colonial Louisiana. Philippe Aries chronicles a changing conception of childhood such that in the first half of the seventeenth century, there was a growing concern for the education of young girls. Whereas before they had stayed at home with the women of the house or else in a convent receiving only religious instruction, girls now received a broader (relatively speaking) education from religious orders, such as the Ursulines. As already noted, the education of young girls was the purpose of the Ursuline Order, and the Ursulines had gone to New France in 1639 for that reason. Increasingly then, according to Aries, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the “great event” in this respect was the revival of an interest in education essentially for children. The traditional apprenticeship for children (especially males) was replaced by the school. And largely, this education was for sociability and civility. See Aries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Baldick, Robert (New York, 1962), esp. 298, 383–86, 403–13. I suggest that this changing conception of childhood was, of course, mitigated by the realities of the Louisiana frontier context and resulted in a necessary reemphasis on apprenticeship for boys, while formal education for girls remained. This would account for the noticeable lack of local support for the Capuchin school for boys and the noticeable local enthusiasm for the Ursuline school for girls. On the use of apprenticeship for boys, see Holtman, Robert B. and Conrad, Glenn R., eds., French Louisiana: A Commemoration of the French Revolution Bicentennial (Lafayette, La., 1989), 122.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Unser, Daniel, “From African Captivity to American Slavery: The Introduction of Black Laborers to Colonial Louisiana,” Louisiana History 20 (Winter 1979): 25–48. Regarding the constant requests for slaves for the Louisiana colony see as examples, Pierre Dugué de Boisbriant to Pontchartrain, 24 Oct. 1725, p. 236, vol. 8, French Superior Council to Pontchartrain, 17 Feb. 1725, p. 51, vol. 9, French Superior Council to Pontchartrain, 28 Aug. 1725, p. 239, vol. 9, French Superior Council to Pontchartrain, 6 Apr. 1726, p. 251, vol. 9, Périer to Raguet, 25 Apr. 1727, p. 211, vol. 10, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine.Google Scholar

⁴² See, for example, Périer, to Raguet, , 25 Apr. 1727, p. 211, vol. 10, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine.Google Scholar

⁴³ Black Code, art. 2, in Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society, vol. 4 (New Orleans, 1908), n.p. This requirement was a reflection of an added stipulation in the original charter for the Company of the West that all foreign immigrants must be of the Catholic religion.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Black Code, arts. 3–40; Allain, , Not Worth a Straw, 83.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Quoted in Carroll, , The Ursulines in Louisiana, 10.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Louis François Duplessis de Mornay to Raguet, 3 June 1727, pp. 31–34, vol. 10, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives. In November 1727, shortly after the arrival of the Ursulines, Governor Périer wrote to Raguet: “The arrival of the Ursulines here, has almost caused a division in the Church. Father de Beaubois claimed to be their Superior in the quality of vicar-general and wished to direct them which was contrary to the conditions of his agreement with the Company…. Father Raphael, on his side, although very good and prudent, would not tolerate that Father de Beaubois should perform the functions of the office of Superior without being stirred by it.” See Périer to Raguet, 2 Nov. 1727, p. 191, ibid.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Périer to Directors, Company of the Indes, 14 Aug. 1728, p. 9, and Tranchepain to Directors, Company of the Indes, 28 Apr. 1728, p. 277, vol. 11, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine. See also Périer to Raguet, [early 1728?], p. 6, vol. 12, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives. Tranchepain to Raguet, 5 Jan. 1728, p. 272, vol. 11, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Raguet, to Beaubois, , 27 Oct. 1728, p. 241, and Raguet, to Tranchepain, , 27 Oct. 1728, p. 244, vol. 11, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine. Regarding Gallicanism, it should be noted that this problem was handled directly by the Company and its agents as representatives of the French government, not by the Bishop of Quebec.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Tranchepain, to Raguet, , 9 Mar. 1729, p. 283, vol. 12, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine. The dispute over Beaubois and the Ursulines, and the pertinent correspondence, between 12 Aug. and 15 Nov. 1728, is chronicled in pp. 236–82, vol. 11, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine. Vols. 8–12, ser. B, Ministry of the Marine, covering 1725–29, contain additional letters which pertain to the longstanding jurisdictional dispute between the Jesuits and Capuchins.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Judicial Records of the French Superior Council, 15 Feb.–4 Sep. 1728; Périer and Edmé-Gatien Salmon to the King, 8 Dec. 1731, p. 571, vol. 14, sub-ser. 13A, ser. C, Colonial Archives.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Maduell, Charles R., The Census Tables for the French Colony of Louisiana from 1699 through 1732 (Baltimore, 1972), 17–27, 114–22. My minimum criteria for “family” are husband and wife, with or without children.Google Scholar