The 1850s and 1860s were a particularly turbulent time for the approximately half-million free Blacks in the United States. They always occupied a precarious place in society, but the regressive legal actions and episodes of violence in the years leading up to the Civil War made their futures particularly tenable. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 had the effect of tempting ordinary citizens to become bounty hunters for those suspected of being runaway slaves. On 6 March 1857, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court pronounced the opinion that people of color had neither the rights nor protections of U. S. citizenship. That same day, in New Orleans, the Louisiana legislature outlawed the manumission of enslaved people entirely. A legislative act adopted on 17 March 1859, encouraged free colored people to select masters and voluntarily enslave themselves.

“Free Black Emigration,” The Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 23 June 1859, p. 5.

Throughout the 1840s, 50s, and 60s, free people of color in Louisiana were made to appear before their Parish Judge or the Mayor’s Office in New Orleans to register as such; providing details such as height, complexion, age, occupation, and some proof of their free status, such as a baptismal certificate, an act of manumission, or the testimony of some reputable white persons. On 10 May 1861, the family of tailor Jacques Antonio Martinez (1822-1891), including his mother, presented themselves to the Mayor’s Office in Gallier Hall to pay the fifty cents each to register as free people of color entitled to be in the state. One can only imagine the insult this was to Jacques and his wife, Marie-Rosa Ramos (1826-1904), who both had roots dating back to the 1720s in New Orleans – more than a century before the man who was then mayor even arrived in the city. The Martinezes offered the testimony of Francis Mooney and Clement Ramos, an alderman and Marie-Rosa’s white half-uncle, as proofs of their free status.

Register of Free Colored Persons – 10 May 1861, Mayor’s Office, New Orleans.

Faced with these and other insults, many free people of color resolved to try their chances in more hospitable destinations such as France, Mexico, and Haiti, where many of them had roots. In his 1911 memoir of the colored Creole community, Rodolphe-Lucien Desdunes recounted that successful cigarmaker Lucien “Lolo” Mansion donated funds to help many of his fellow New Orleanians resettle: “In 1855, the persecution inaugurated against the Creoles was particularly rigorous. We have it on good authority that Mr. Mansion generously donated part of his fortune to facilitate the removal of his compatriots. Many of them took advantage of this movement to escape the rigors of prejudice. Mexico and Haiti had opened the doors of hospitality to them, and thanks to Mr. Mansion’s generosity, the unfortunate exiles were thus able to enjoy the advantages of freedom and security in friendly countries.” There is evidence of free families of color traveling to France, Mexico, and Haiti as far back as the 1820s and earlier, but these migrations became more frequent in the 1840s and 50s. In the 1850s, a number of people from St. Landry Parish settled near Tlacotalpan in the state of Veracruz, led by members of the Donato family. Louis Fouché of New Orleans organized a similar Eureka Colony near Tampico in 1857.

The Daily Exchange. (Baltimore), 29 January 1859, p. 1, col. 4.

Faustin-Élie Soulouque, the last slave-born ruler of Haiti, who served as President and later Emperor from 1849 to 1859, encouraged the emigration of free Blacks from Louisiana to Haiti. Soulouque sought successful agriculturists and skilled tradesmen to help stimulate economic development in his country. In 1858, Émile Desdunes visited New Orleans as an agent of Soulouque’s government to enlist families for resettlement. Though the Emperor Soulouque was overthrown in January 1859, the new President of Haiti, Fabre Geffrard, continued the policy of seeking recruits from Louisiana.

Commenting upon the surge in emigration to Haiti, The Daily Picayune of 23 June 1859 was almost poetic yet equally as indifferent when describing the maddening middle ground free people of color occupied: “Their position among us was one attended by unpleasant associations … Suffering that proscription which raised a barrier before them whenever they would have mixed with us in places of public resort or amusement; debarred from using any political rights, their life was one of equivocal happiness. [In Haiti] they will enjoy consideration and equality of rights, those soothing balms to the wounded vanity of man, the enjoyment of which makes him better, because it does away with the feelings of envy, the secret cause of the greater part of human misery.”

For Jacques Martinez and his wife, Rosa Ramos, the decision to migrate out of Louisiana perhaps came easier because of the example of her maternal uncle, Robert “Roberto” Legriel, who settled at Tampico in the 1860s. Jacques’ maternal family had roots at Montrouis near Saint-Marc in Haiti, so that was the country which drew him and his young family and his maternal cousin, Pierre-Germain Délivré and his wife, at some point between 1861 and 1864. On 8 January 1864, the youngest of Jacques and Rosa’s four children, Joseph-Nerval Martinez was born in Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. It is hard to say with certainty what sort of life the Martinezes led during their sojourn of between two to five years in Haiti.

Birth Record for Joseph-Nerval Martinez (8 January 1864-31 July 1926)

On 21 February 1866, the British schooner Billy Butts arrived at New Orleans from Saint- Marc, Haiti, with thirty passengers, including the Martinez family. A month after their return to New Orleans, a disastrous fire on March 19th left more than half of the city of Port-au-Prince in ruins and more than 9,000 of its residents without homes. On 6 May 1866, Jacques Martinez and at least two others, Milford Piron and Joseph Lavigne, who had returned from Haiti in February 1866, all members of the Société des Frères-Unis, sponsored a theatrical performance as a fundraiser for the survivors of the conflagration.

Passenger list for the schooner Billy Butts, 21 February 1866.

The Société de Bienfaisance et d’Assistance Mutuelle des Frères-Unis was founded on 9 February 1860 for charitable purposes, particularly the encouragement of movement of the population between Louisiana and Haiti. On 16 May 1860, a “sister” society, also called the Société des Frères-Unis was founded at Port-au-Prince under the leadership of prominent jurist Joseph-Asdrubal Courtois and several others, some natives of Haiti and some expatriates from Louisiana. The Haitian society was incorporated on 6 June 1860 and existed for over twenty years. The American Civil War and the political uncertainty in Haiti halted emigration to the country, thus resulting in a shift on the part of both sister societies to general charity and mutual aid work.

Jacques Antonio Martinez and his family settled in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward, where he continued his work as a tailor and his sons engaged in the cigarmaking trade. Of Jacques’ four children, his son Michel Martinez (1856-1885), a young husband and father, was the only one who preceded him in death. Some of Michel’s descendants continue to live in New Orleans to this day. Jacques Martinez himself died at the age of 68 on 23 February 1891. His widow, Rosa, died thirteen years later on 13 May 1904. In approximately 1910-1911, Jacques and Rosa’s three other children all migrated to Chicago, where many of their descendants continue to reside. On 8 May 2025, one of Jacques and Rosa’s great-grandsons, Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV.

At center, Martinez family vault in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, Square 3, Bienville St. alley.

Jari C. Honora

Sources:

Mary Gehman, “The Mexico-Louisiana Creole Connection,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas 11, no. 4 (Winter 2000-2001): 68-75; Sidney J. Lemelle, “The ‘Circum-Caribbean’ and the Continuity of Cultures: The Donato Colony in Mexico, 1830-1860,” The Journal of Pan-African Studies 6, no. 1 (July 2013): 57-75; Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cossé Bell, “The Americanization of Black New Orleans, 1850–1900” in Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization, ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992) 201–215; Judith Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), pp. 1, 148-150; Henry E. Sterkx, The Free Negro in Antebellum Louisiana (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1972), pp. 296-304; Le Moniteur (Port-au-Prince, Haiti), 23 June 1860, p. 1; 28 May 1870, p. 3; 7 May 1881, p. 3; La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans, Louisiana) “Théâtre d’Orléans,” 29 April 1866, p. 1; “Les Frères Unis,” 17 February 1867, p. 1 [issue located by Mark C. Roudané]; Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Birth Records, volume 40, page 230 (1864), Joseph-Narvale Martinez, Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge; “New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963,” database with images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com), path: M259 – New Orleans, 1820-1902 > 50 > image 601 of 635, entry for L [J] Martinez, arrived New Orleans, 21 February 1866 aboard the Billy Butts; citing NAI no. 2824927.

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