Elodie's Gift: A Family Photographic Mystery

This article is a draft at present:

Here is a photo that my great aunt, the late Elodie Bernard (married name Fontenot), gave me when I visited her around 1980.

The mystery photo.
(Author's collection)

I remember Aunt Elodie as an elderly, white-haired woman, thin and gaunt.  She seemed a stranger to me because, for whatever reason, Elodie never came to family get-togethers, whether for Christmas or Easter or what have you.  Only rarely had I heard her name mentioned, and while I have no reason to believe there was any schism that kept her apart from us, it seemed odd to me that the extended family on my father's Cajun side of my family was hardly as close as the extended family on my mother's Anglo-Saxon side of the family.  I am by no means making a sweeping implication about Cajuns: on the contrary, Cajuns, if anything, are known for the closeness of their extended families.  It just seemed odd that Elodie never showed up at our family gatherings and that I really knew nothing about her, so much so that as a child I barely knew her name, much less what she looked like.

When Aunt Elodie gave me this photo, she explained that it depicted some of our ancestors.  She explained to me that it showed my paternal great-great grandparents.  It certainly did not show my paternal great-grandparents, for my grandfather's father was the splitting image of his son and I would have recognized him instantly.  I recognized no one, however, in this image.

I remain uncertain who is shown in the image and if they are even really my relatives.  So I thought I might analyze the photograph and try to determine who these people are.

Often mistakenly called a daguerreotype (including by me), the image is actually a tintype, which the Library of Congress describes as a "Direct-image photograph . . . in which the collodion [a viscous or syrupy solution] negative supported by a dark-lacquered thin iron sheet appears as a positive image."  This process, notes the Library, was "Popular [from the] mid-1850s through 1860s" but still "in use through 1930s." (Source: Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/tgm010835/, accessed 18 April 2012)

The tintype overall is in fair condition, with some chipping of the layer of collodion around the edges and some scratching and aging apparent on the image itself.  The section of the image showing the subjects, however, is in fair to good condition, with none of their faces obscured or badly damaged, though some bear scratches.

The image shows two men and two women, dressed formally, and their physical pose, with one of the women touching both men, suggests a comfortable familiarity.

The writing in ink in upper left corner of the image, which presumably identifies the subjects, has faded, but by "tweaking" it in PhotoShop I've been able (tentatively) to discern these words:

Aunt Marie
Uncle Richard
Grandma
Uncle Homer

Bringing out the faded words using PhotoShop. (Click to enlarge)

Of these words, only "Uncle Homer" rings a bell with me, since my great-great grandfather was named Homer Bernard — Homer being pronounced "O-MARE" in the Cajun French manner.  I know nothing about him offhand, except that his father, Joseph Desparet Bernard, fought as a Confederate in the Civil War.  I have Homer's vital statistics somewhere in my files, however, in genealogical material I collected in high school (an interest that played a major role in directing me toward a career as a historian). I believe Homer would have been from St. Landry Parish, possibly from the town of Opelousas itself, because that is where my Bernard family has lived for many generations.

Incidentally, I find it interesting that all the common nouns written on the photo ("Aunt," "Uncle," "Grandma") are English words, not French.  Because my family spoke French as its primary if not only language in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the words must have been added later, after my family adopted English as its primary language — perhaps in the 1920s or '30s.  (My grandfather, L. V. Bernard of Opelousas, told me that he did not really learn French until he married my grandmother, Irene Bordelon of Port Barre — indicating that despite his small-town Cajun heritage he was raised speaking English, not French.  L.V. would be the grandson of the persons in the photo, if they are in fact Bernard ancestors as Elodie stated.)

I will check if Homer Bernard had a brother named Richard or a sister named Marie, or in-laws with these names.  Or could "Aunt Marie" be the wife of "Uncle Homer," and not the wife of "Uncle Richard"?  I will report back with my findings.

In the meantime, if anyone knows who these people are (all Cajuns pretty much being related to each other one way or another), please let me know. . . .


Addendum of 18 April 2012


According to my genealogical research — which, admittedly, I am unsure I entirely trust, since I conducted it as a teenager in the 1980s — my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Homer Bernard, was born 6 March 1864 in Opelousas.  He had two sisters named Marie — Marie Lelia, born 20 July 1861, and Marie Lydia, born 25 October 1868 — either one of whom could be the "Aunt Marie" in the photograph.  Homer did not have a brother named Richard, so perhaps the "Uncle Richard" in the photograph was the husband of one of these two Maries.

Homer himself was married to Louise Alma La Morandiere, who cannot be the other woman in the photo, else the person who wrote on the image would have identified her as "Aunt" (to his "Uncle") and not "Grandma."  This other woman in the photo is possibly another of Homer's sisters, either the second Marie or his sister Josephine, born 2 March 1866.

But now I am speculating too much.

Still, if I can prove that one of Homer's three sisters had a husband named Richard, it would go far toward suggesting that the persons in the tintype might indeed be my ancestors.

(My source for this genealogical data is Reverend Donald J. Hebert, Southwest Louisiana Records [Eunice, La.: Hebert Publications, 1978], multiple volumes.)

The Nike-Cajun Rocket: How It Got Its Name

I promised some time ago that I would discuss the origin of the Nike-Cajun rocket, used as a sounding rocket by the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and other organizations during the Cold War.

A Nike-Cajun rocket.
(Source: National Archives and Records Administration.)

As I write in my book, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People:

Cajuns have further demonstrated their ability to adapt to the modern world by pursuing high-tech careers.  A few Cajuns, for example, became veritable rocket scientists, among them J. G. Thibodaux [sic].  

Born  in a lumber camp in the Atchafalaya swamp, he helped to develop the Nike-Cajun rocket in the 1950s, whose second stage, a sounding missile used for testing the upper atmosphere, was named in honor of his ancestry.  He went on to serve as chief of the Propulsion and Power Division at Johnson Space Center, assisting NASA with the Apollo moon missions and later with the space shuttle (p. 147).

Interviewed in 1999 for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, Thibodaux (full name Joseph Guy Thibodaux, Jr.) described his own origins as follows:

I was born in the Louisiana swamps. . . . I was born at the F.B. Williams Lumber Camp in the Atchafalaya swamp on the west side of Lake Verret.  It is certainly a swamp. It was a big cypress logging organization. My father worked there. 

My birthplace was registered as Napoleonville, Louisiana[,] which is twelve miles north of Thibodaux, Louisiana[,] on Louisiana Highway 1 which parallels Bayou Lafourche. . . . [W]e left there and moved to New Orleans when I was about five and I went to high school in New Orleans and later on I went to Louisiana State University.(1)

Elsewhere, Thibodaux noted, “I consider myself a Cajun[,] both on my mother’s and father’s side.”  He added, “My grandmother was an Hebert.”(2)

Logo of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,
forerunner of NASA.

Thibodaux graduated from LSU in Chemical Engineering in 1942 and served as a U.S. Army officer from 1943 to 1946, including wartime service in Burma.  On separation from the military he went to work for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for whom he ultimately worked.  Stationed at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory/Langley Research Center at Langley Field, Virginia, Thibodaux aided NACA first as a propulsion engineer in its Pilotless Aircraft Research Division before moving on to a number of other posts under both NACA and, beginning in 1958, newly created NASA.(3)

Logo of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

It was while working for NACA that Thibodaux helped to create the Cajun rocket.  Mated to a Nike first-stage rocket, the resulting two-stage rocket was known as the "Nike-Cajun" rocket.  As I have observed elsewhere in this blog, "The name evoked a strange combination of ancient Greek mythology and rural south Louisiana folklife."(3)

According to a NASA report, Origins of NASA Names, the Nike was "a solid-propellant first stage . . . an adaptation of the Nike antiaircraft missile. . . . The name ‘Nike’ was taken from ancient Greek mythology: Nike was the winged goddess of victory. In NASA's sounding rocket program, Nike was used with Apache, Cajun, Tomahawk, Hawk, or Malemute upper stages. . . ."

A Nike-Cajun rocket preparing for liftoff, ca. 1960;
the man in the truck bed is handling the Cajun stage.
Note the NACA symbol at upper left.  (Click to enlarge)
(Source: National Archives and Records Administration)

As for the Cajun rocket itself, Origins of NASA Names notes:

The Cajun solid-propellant rocket stage was designed and developed under the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' Langley Laboratory (later NASA's Langley Research Center). The project's manager, Joseph G. Thibodaux, Jr., formerly of Louisiana, suggested the new motor be named "Cajun" because of the term's Louisiana associations.

The report continues, "Allen E. Williams, Director of Engineering in Thiokol Chemical Corporation's Elkton (Md.) Division, agreed to the name, and later the Elkton Division decided to continue giving its rocket motors Indian-related names."(4)

Liftoff of a Nike-Cajun rocket,
1957 (bottom) & 1958 (top).  (Click to enlarge)
(Source: National Archives and Records Administration.)

In a 1969 letter to noted science writer William R. Corliss, NASA’s Assistant Director for Flight Projects Eugene C. Draley likewise observed:

With regard to the naming of the Nike-Cajun rocket, the story [I will relate] involves [the naming of] the Cajun only.  Mr. J. G. Thibodaux, for many years Head of the Rocket Group at Langley and now Chief of the Propulsion Division at Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas, was responsible for the name Cajun. 

When Langley contracted with the Thiokol Chemical Corporation in 1955 for a higher performance version of the Deacon rocket, Mr. Thibodaux, a native of the Cajun country near New Orleans, suggested the name Cajun for the new motor and Thiokol so named it.(5)

Thibodaux himself, however, remembered a slightly different version of events, "[Thiokol’s] Chief Engineer was Bryce Wilhite, also from Louisiana.  He was familiar with my Cajun background and it was his original suggestion that we name the rocket ‘Cajun.’  I agreed."(2)

Yet in a 1996 interview, however, Thibodaux gave himself partial credit for naming the rocket, observing, "We use[d] to name all the rockets that I had developed, give them a special name. One of them I named after my Cajun heritage—we—Bryce Wilhite, Thiokol’s Chief Engineer at Elkton [Maryland], also from Louisiana, and I—called it Cajun."(6)

In any event, the rocket was named for Thibodaux’s ancestry.

Envelope cover commemorating a Nike-Cajun launch, 1963.
(Author's collection)

Thibodaux was not the only Cajun to work for NASA, either directly or, through a subcontractor, indirectly.  For example, Doug Ardoin of Eunice, Louisiana, graduated in physics from the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and went to work for NASA in summer 1967 on the Apollo moon missions.  Later he worked on the space shuttle program.

And my own uncle, Oscar Bernard of Opelousas, Louisiana, also graduated from USL in physics and went to work for NASA through its Boeing subcontractor.  Like Ardoin, Bernard worked on the Apollo moon missions, assisting with (among other things) the design and construction of the first stage of the mammoth Saturn V rocket.  (Interestingly, Ardoin and Bernard both performed in the 1950s as swamp pop musicians — Ardoin as lead singer and guitarist of the original Boogie Kings band and Bernard as guitarist for The Twisters, backing group for his brother, singer Rod Bernard.)

At least one other Cajun (I’m sure there must be more) worked on the U.S. space program, namely, Chief Master Sergeant Patty Dupuis of Cecilia, Louisiana, who, according to a May 2000 news report, “played a major role in the development of . . . [a defense satellite perched atop a Titan IV] rocket, which has been dubbed the Rajin’ Cajun [sic], in honor of Dupuis.”(7)  As an article by SPACE.com's Jim Banke noted at the time:

"The Ragin' Cajun roared off the pad, marking the return of Titan operations here," Air Force Titan launch director Lt. Col. Tony Goins said Monday, making reference to the booster's nickname. "It's a great boost for us here at the Cape to successfully place an operational satellite on orbit to support the warfighter." 

Goins and his colleagues named this Titan 4 the "Ragin' Cajun" in honor of Chief Master Sergeant Patty Dupuis, a Titan manager from Louisiana who supervised maintenance work at Launch Complex 40 and is moving on to a new assignment.(8)

Notes:

1. J. G. Thibodaux, interview by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Kenneth J. Cox, 9 September 1996, Clear Lake, Texas, Space Stories: Oral Histories from the Pioneers of America's Space Program, http://www.nal-jsc.org/Tibby-ED.pdf, accessed 6 April 2012.

2. J. G. Thibodaux, [Clear Lake, Texas?], to Shane K. Bernard, [New Iberia, La.], 6 May 2000, e-mail correspondence, computer printout in the possession of the author.

3. J. G. Thibodaux biographical data sheet, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, 7 April 1999, www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/ThibodauxJG/JGT_BIO.pdf, accessed 6 April 2012.

4. Helen T. Wells, Susan H. Whiteley, and Carrie E. Karegeannes, Origins of NASA Names, The NASA History Series, Scientific and Technical Information Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, D.C., 1976, http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4402/SP-4402.htm, see Section V: Sounding Rockets, http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4402/ch5.htm, accessed 6 April 2012.

5. Eugene C. Draley, [Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.?], to William R. Corliss, Glenarm, Md., 14 February 1969, TLS [copy], Records of NASA Langley Research Center, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

6. J. G. Thibodaux, interview by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Kenneth J. Cox, 10 September 1996, Clear Lake, Texas, www.davis-floyd.com/joint-oral-history-interview/, accessed 6 April 2012.

7. “Cajun Rocket Liftoff,” news program teletype script, 8 May 2000, photocopy in the possession of the author.

8. Jim Banke, "2000 Ragin' Cajun (Titan 4) Delivers Its Payload," SPACE.com, 8 May 2000, reprinted on http://www.raginpagin.com/louisiana/showthread.php?1157-2000-Ragin-Cajun-(Titan-4)-Delivers-Its-Payload&p=2692, accessed 7 April 2012.

Middle Name or Clerical Error?: Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil and "Gaurhept"

I've noticed that many Acadian- and Cajun-related websites refer to Acadian frontiersman, guerrilla leader, and exile Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil as bearing the middle name "Gaurhept."  Even the self-policing online reference Wikipedia.org refers to Broussard as "Joseph Gaurhept Broussard" [accessed 3 April 2012].

No one knows what Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil looked like,
but I often imagine him looking somewhat like militant
abolitionist John Brown in this famous painting.
(Source: Wikimedia.org)

In my opinion, however, it's doubtful that Broussard actually used this name; in fact, as far as I know the name was used only once in reference to him and apparently in error.

The sole contemporary historical manuscript that refers to Broussard as "Gaurhept" is an official Louisiana colonial document dated April 8, 1765. In that document, acting provincial commandant Charles Philippe Aubry appointed Broussard "Capitaine de Milice et Commandant des Acadiens." (That is, captain of the militia and commandant of the some two-hundred Acadian exiles who settled with Broussard along the Teche.)

It is in this document that Broussard is referred to (and more than once) as "Gaurhept Broussard dit Beau Soleil."

Or maybe he looked like this?
(Source: Frederic Remington, 1880 [public domain])

But, rather than "Gaurhept" being an alternate or middle name for Joseph, the word appears to be a clerical error — a common enough occurrence in historical documents.

Evidence for this assertion is the absence of any other contemporary historical documents referring to Broussard as "Gaurhept."

Furthermore, the document in question does not even refer to Broussard as "Joseph." It calls him only "Gaurhept." The omission of Broussard's actual first name in itself suggests an error, and it is only through historical context that we know the document concerns Joseph at all and not, say, his brother Alexandre or some other, previously unknown Broussard.

I am not the only historian who regards "Gaurhept" as a mistake.

In his book Acadian Redemption: From Beausoleil Broussard to the Queen's Royal Proclamation (2004), Warren A. Perrin observes that "Beausoleil's first name was incorrectly listed [in the document] as 'Gaurhept.'" Elsewhere in the same book Perrin repeats, "In this document, Beausoleil's first name, Joseph, was improperly listed as 'Gaurhept'" (pp. 41, 147 n. 58).

Cover of Warren A. Perrin's Acadian Redemption,
showing Cajun artist Lucius Fontenot's
depiction of Broussard.

Likewise, historian Carl A. Brasseaux, author of The Founding of New Acadia, Acadian to Cajun, and "Scattered to the Wind" (among many other books), has referred to "Gaurhept" as "A clerical error — evidently an error in transcription." [Source: Carl A. Brasseaux, e-mail to the author, 2 April 2012.]

Pending any contemporary primary-source discoveries to the contrary, genealogists and others might do well to disassociate "Gaurhept" from the memory of Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil.

Addendum of 4 April 2012

Carl A. Brasseaux and genealogist Winston De Ville have both recently suggested to me that perhaps an error in transcription did not occur in 1765 (when Aubry appointed Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil a captain and commandant), but more recently.

This now seems a more likely explanation.

The original 1765 document is missing, so the next earliest known reference we have to this document is in the 1891 book Southwest Louisiana Biographical and Historical by historian William Henry Perrin (no relation to present-day historian Warren A. Perrin). In that book Perrin states that "The Broussard family traces its origin to Gaurhept Broussard dit Beausoleil." He explains the origin of the Broussard nickname "Beausoleil" ("This name was given [to] him . . . because of [his] cheerfulness. . . ."), but he does not discuss "Gaurhept" (despite the fact that it is an unusual name for an Acadian, or anyone else for that matter). Nor does Perrin associate the name "Joseph" with this "Gaurhept Broussard dit Beausoleil."

An excerpt from William Henry Perrin's
Southwest Louisiana Biographical and Historical,
with highlighted references to Gaurhept Broussard dit Beausoleil.
(Click to enlarge)

Nevertheless, Gaurhept Broussard dit Beausoleil clearly is Joseph dit Broussard dit Beausoleil, given Perrin's description of the former as a military officer, commandant, landowner, livestock breeder, and "the great ancestor from whom the whole Broussard family in Louisiana is descended."

Perrin himself, however, did not personally transcribe the source material on which he based his research and writing. Rather, it was J. O. Broussard, a Lafayette-area descendant of the original Broussard, who copied the document for Perrin, as Perrin himself notes.

Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil
as imagined by artist
Herb Roe (www.chromesun.com).
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

If a transcription error occurred, resulting in "Joseph" becoming "Gaurhept" (a real possibility given the sometimes bizarre calligraphy of the French and Spanish colonial era), it therefore was J. O. Broussard who likely made the error. And if it was an error, it nonetheless inspired him to name his own son "Gaurhept" — an amazing irony if such a name never previously existed.

Indeed, another piece of evidence in this matter is the fact that "Gaurhept" does not appear to have existed as a name for anyone until J. O. Broussard gave it to his son in the late nineteenth century.

I say this because if one enters the word "Gaurhept" into Google.com and searches the entire Internet, one receives about 2,250 positive responses. But if one again enters "Gaurhept" and this time instructs Google to omit all websites that also refer to the words "Broussard," "Beausoleil," "Beau Soleil," and the misspellings "Beausoliel" and "Beau Soliel," one is left with only four positive responses — and all four of these websites contain nothing but alphanumerical gobbledygook. (A similar result happens if one uses the more discriminating Bing.com search engine: it returns zero positive responses.)

Another excerpt from William Henry Perrin's
Southwest Louisiana Biographical and Historical,
with highlighted references to Gaurhept Broussard dit Beausoleil.
(Click to enlarge)

In other words, in all of cyberspace (including, by the way, the massive scanned digital library known as Google Books) the word "Gaurhept" exists in a meaningful sense only in reference to the Broussard family.  Or to put it more succinctly, outside the Broussard family "Gaurhept" is not a real name; and it only became a real name inside the Broussard family when J. O. Broussard gave it to his son, based on his apparent misreading of "Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil."

Unfortunately, this theory (and that is what it is) cannot be tested at present because, as noted, the original 1765 document is missing. Unless that document — or a facsimile of it in French or Spanish colonial records — is found we may never know for certain if J. O. Broussard correctly transcribed it or mistook "Joseph" for "Gaurhept." Yet I believe we can say it's likely that the word in question was not "Gaurhept," but "Joseph," and that someone — either an eighteenth-century scribe or J. O. Broussard — made an error in writing or transcribing it.

More on That Word "Coonass": A Labor Dispute Trial Documents Its Use in 1940

New research has confirmed the use of the word "coonass" as early as 1940. In addition, the word was clearly used at the time as an ethnic slur (unlike in the "Cajun Coonass" airplane images from 1943, when the word was apparently used as a badge of ethnic pride).

"Coonass" continues to be a
controversial word in Cajun country.
Its origin remains a mystery.

My source for this documented 1940 use of the word "coonass" is "In the Matter of Shell Oil Company, Incorporated[,] and Oil Workers International Union, Local 367," Case No. C-1858, Decided 23 August 1941," in Decisions of the National Labor Relations Board, Volume 34 (1942), pages 866-[892].

This labor dispute centered around a verbal altercation between one W. O. Ventura, a union member, and one Alec Vincent, a former union member, both employed at a Shell Oil facility located in Texas, evidently in or very near Houston. (Local 367 was active in the Houston area; in addition, the National Labor Board report on this dispute refers more than once to Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located; and, finally, the report gives Shell Oil's location as Houston, next to which the company did operate at least one petroleum plant in 1940, namely, at Deer Park.) [Note of 28 March 2012: I have now confirmed that the incident in question occurred at the Deer Park refinery near Houston.]

Angered that Vincent had dropped out of the union, Ventura approached Vincent during their lunch break on January 10, 1940, and berated him for refusing to pay his union dues. When Vincent asked to be left alone, Ventura — according to Vincent's written statement to Shell Oil of five days later — barked:

"I'm through with you, you coon-ass son-of-a-bitch, I'll meet you at the gate at 4:30. I want to whip your God-damned ass."

An excerpt of Vincent's statement from the original document. 

Ventura himself recalled the phraseology this way:

"Why don't you just admit that you are just a damn coon-ass and too tight to pay the two dollars . . . Vincent, it is 12:30 now. Either now or at 4:30 you can come out to the gate and you can either whip my God-damn ass or I'll whip yours or we can go out and talk it over or settle it any way you want to . . . [sic]"

An excerpt of Ventura's statement from the original document.

Eight days after this incident, Shell Oil asked an eyewitness, employee and union member Leo L. Fullerton, to record his recollection of the incident. Fullerton stated:

"Bill [Ventura] said, 'Well, if that is the way you feel about it, Coon ass [sic], just wait until 4:00 and we will argue about it on the outside of the gate."

Fired for his verbal assault on Vincent, Ventura appealed to the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that Shell Oil had terminated him not because of his disparaging language, but because he was an active union member. In his defense, Ventura demonstrated that Shell Oil had not fired other, non-union coworkers for similar offenses.

The Trial Examiner of the National Review Board ruled that although Ventura had called Vincent a "coon ass son-of-a-bitch," Shell Oil had terminated him unjustly. In fact, the National Review Board observed, "We also find . . . that the language used by Ventura on this occasion was used frequently among the respondent's employees. [Shell Oil coworkers] Benson, Nelson, Ventura, Vincent, and Robison, all testified that employees at the plant often cursed and called each other 'coon ass' and 'son-of-a-bitch' when arguing over various matters." The Trial Examiner then ordered Shell Oil to reinstate Ventura as an employee and to pay his lost wages.

What is important about this incident to Cajun history, however, is not the labor dispute itself, but its documentation of the word "coonass" — now the earliest known use of this word by a little over three years.

Moreover, the word was used in this 1940 incident as a derogatory term for "Cajun," because it's reasonably clear that Vincent was indeed a Cajun.

I say this for several reasons.

First, the incident appears to have taken place in or near Houston, a city to which many Cajuns have emigrated since the first half of the twentieth century, primarily to work in its petroleum facilities. Second, "Vincent" is a Cajun surname, sometimes pronounced in the Anglo-American way (VIN-SENT), but even today said by some in the Cajun French manner (VAH[N]-SOH[N]).  Third, and most importantly, one of Vincent's coworkers, M. L. Roller, noted in his statement about the incident that Vincent's nickname was — "Frenchy."

A "coonass" sticker on a hard hat.
(Photo by the author.)

Addendum of 28 March 2012:  

I returned to the history of the word "coonass" a couple of weeks ago or so because state media outlets have been covering south Louisiana attorney Warren Perrin's outcry over local radio stations playing "RCA (Registered Coonass)," a song by Cajun musician Jamie Bergeron.  See, for example, "KBON Radio Could Face FCC Complaint over 'Coonass' Lyrics" and "'Coonass' in Lyrics Draws Ire of Perrin".

Oddly enough, "coonass" is now in the national media and political spotlight (if only tangentially) because it has been invoked in reference to the Trayvon Martin shooting — most notably on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews."  See, for instance, "Zimmerman Friend Defends Racial Slur: ‘Coon Asses’ Used Proudly In Parts Of This Country" and "Zimmerman Friend Joe Oliver Claims 'Coon A**' Isn't a Racial Slur".  (Note the interesting comments about "coonass" that readers have left under these articles on their respective websites.)

"To Err Is Human": Errata and Updates from My Books

One of my favorite quotes is "No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar."*

In the spirit of this quote, I post the below errata (including typographical errors) from my books and other publications. Some of the below, however, are not corrections of errors, but rather updates based on more recent findings.

From Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues (1996):

~ Page 10, photo caption, "Van Broussard performing at Dutch Town High School, Dutch Town (Ascension Parrish), La., 1957."

Correction: "Parish" is misspelled.

~ Page 65, "During the late 1960s Fender teamed up with Joe Barry and went on in the mid-'70s to record such enduring swamp pop classics as ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls’ and ‘Wasted Days and Wasted Nights’ (the latter covered by Johnnie Allan in alternating English and Cajun French lyrics).”

Correction: "Latter" should be "former".

~ Page 115, "Cookie — renowned vocalist on swamp pop classics like 'Mathilda,' 'Belinda,' 'I'm Twisted,' 'Got You on My Mind,' and 'Betty and Dupree.' . . ."

Correction: Cookie did not sing vocals on "Betty and Dupree"; rather, his bandmate Shelton Dunaway handled the vocals.

~ Page 254, the index entry for "Creole" says "See also Black Creole; Creole of Color; French Creole" — but there is no index entry for "French Creole."

From "Floyd Soileau and J. D. Miller: A Comparison of Two Small-town Recordmen of Acadiana," Louisiana Folklife 15 (December 1991):

~ N.p., regarding the passage:

"He [J. D. Miller] played his first dance with Joseph Falcon and his Silver Bell Band which was playing at the Cow Island nightclub that lacked an electrified sound system. Although the group was billed as 'string' band, Miller recalls that it featured the Breaux Brothers, traditional Cajun musicians."

Update: I cannot locate the source of my statement that Miller played with Joseph Falcon and his Silver Bell Band. As such, I believe the passage in question should read:

"He played his first dance at a Cow Island nightclub that lacked an electrified sound system. Although the group was billed as 'string' band, Miller recalls that it featured the Breaux Brothers, traditional Cajun musicians."

From The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (2003):

~ Page xi, "Regardless, when I visited my Cajun grandparents on Crochet Street in Opelousas, I heard Cajun French."

Correction: "Crochet" should be "Crouchet."

~ Page xvii, I state that Cajuns were known to be reviled by local blacks as "Acadian n*****s". On closer examination, however, I see that the original 19th-century quote states, "the n******, when they want to express contempt for one of their own race, call him [a fellow black person] an Acadian n*****." In other words, blacks used this pejorative as a black-on-black insult, not as an anti-Cajun insult or expression of perceived Cajun non-whiteness. See A.R.W. [Alfred Rudolph Waud], "Acadians of Louisiana," Harper's Weekly, 20 October 1866, p. 670.

~ Page 18, "in 1916 the state’s Board of Education banned French from classrooms, a move sanctioned by lawmakers in the state constitution of 1921."

Correction: According to my own research conducted in 2024, the Louisiana state Board of Education did not ban French in public-school classrooms in 1916. Rather, that year the state legislature (not the Board of Education) approved an anti-truancy law that no doubt led to many French-speaking students, among many other students, attending school for the first time. 

Historians, journalists, and other researchers later misinterpreted this anti-truancy law as an English-only decree, when in fact the act in question made no mention of language — only compulsory education for the state's children. For more on this topic, see my blog article "Banned in the Classroom: Notes on the Outlawing of French in Louisiana's Public Schools."

~ Page 121, "And in the 1956 film Bayou . . . Peter Graves battles a villainous south Louisiana rival for a Cajun belle played by scantily clad Italian starlet Lita Milan."

Correction: Despite her ethnic-sounding name (a pseudonym, it turns out), Lita Milan was not "Italian" but rather a Brooklyn-born American actress of Hungarian-Polish descent — real name Iris Menshell.

~ Passim, update: Because of changing views about race and racism I have as of spring 2021 asked my publisher, University Press of Mississippi, to obscure all instances of "the N word" in this book by using asterisks, dashes, or blank spaces. The word in question appears in pre-spring 2021 editions solely when the book quoted or cited racially offensive historical and archival material. Although printed in an academic context — that is, in a book based closely on my Ph.D. dissertation in History and published by a peer-reviewed academic press — future editions of the book will obscure the offensive word.

From Tabasco: An Illustrated History (2007):

The below revisions will appear in the 2nd edition of this book, tentatively to be published in 2019:

~ Page 34, "The plan called for lopping off the brick tower's third-floor lookout (an alteration that was never carried out)."

Update: The discovery of a previously unknown 1885 photograph of the structure in question — the original Tabasco Sauce factory — reveals that it began as a small one-story building and only later (probably after E. McIlhenny's death in 1890) became a much larger building with a tower. As such, the "plan" in question was apparently not to lop off the third floor of the brick tower, but to build a brick tower in the first place — a tower that in execution grew from two stories to three.

~ Page 37, "Edmund originally called his condiment 'Petite Anse Sauce,' but he changed the trademark after Judge Avery objected to this use of his plantation’s name. As a result, Edmund rechristened his product with the trademark 'Tabasco.'" . . .

Update: The discovery of a previously unknown letter abstract book belonging to E. McIlhenny not only confirmed that McIlhenny at one time called Tabasco Sauce by the name "Petite Anse Sauce," but clarified the chronology surrounding the early name change. In short, the book, in which McIlhenny wrote synopses of his outgoing mail, revealed that McIlhenny first used the brand name Tabasco Sauce, then changed it to Petite Anse Sauce, then returned to calling it Tabasco Sauce — the name that has been used ever since. All this occurred over a short period in 1868, the sauce's inaugural year as a commercial product.

~ Page 37, "From there steamboats carried it down Bayou Teche, across several coastal bays, against the current up Bayou Plaquemines, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans."

Update: New research indicates this is not the route that these steamboats would have followed. Rather, they would have taken a solely inland river route: down Bayou Teche and the Lower Atchafalaya River; up the Atchafalaya River proper; over the massive Atchafalaya Swamp through Old River; and finally down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

~ Pages 70 and 72: "John in his Rough Riders uniform playing cards with family friends and fellow veterans Bert Fish and (in Civil War Zouave uniform) Latham Fish, Greenport, Connecticut, circa 1898. . . . John in a formal studio pose with family friends and fellow veterans Ed Fish, Latham Fish, unknown, and Bert Fish, circa 1898."

Correction: It is more correct to refer to the Fishes as "northern relatives" of the Averys and McIlhennys, rather than "family friends."

~ Page 79, "or take tea with Mr. and Mrs. Winston Churchill."

Update: It is now known this not a reference to Winston Churchill the future British prime minister, but to the American novelist of the same name.

~ Page 98, image identified as that of Edward Avery McIlhenny "around age 5, circa 1877."

Update: I later found the child in this image to be Edward's younger brother, Rufus Avery McIlhenny. (An original print of the image bears the true identification; the annotation is by Mary Eliza Avery McIlhenny, Edward and Rufus' mother.)

~ Page 136, "the 1901 silent short [film] Aunt Jane's Experience with Tabasco Sauce. . . ."

Correction: This film was actually released a year earlier, in 1900.

~ Page 219, "He developed his 250-acre personal estate, Jungle Gardens, into a wholesale plant nursery. . . ."

Correction: Jungle Gardens is actually 170 acres in area.

From Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader's History (2008):

~ Page 29, "The next year, a group of about three hundred exiles arrived in Louisiana under the guidance of a daring Acadian leader named Joseph Broussard did Beausoleil."

Correction: "About three hundred" should be "about two hundred". (The correct number does appear in the book's French edition.)

From Teche: A History of Louisiana's Most Famous Bayou (2016):

~ Unnumbered page at beginning of book, on map of middle Teche region ("from Parks downstream to Franklin"), "Île Piquant".

Correction: The placename "Île Piquant" should be spelled "Île Piquante" (with an -e on the end of the second word) because "Île" is feminine in French and thus its adjective should correspond in gender. The placename does, however, sometimes appear in historical records as "Île Piquant."

~ Page 7, "songsmith Alfred Dieudonne. . . ."

Correction: "Alfred" should be "Albert". The same goes for his index entry (page 245). Also, to convey proper pronunciation Dieudonne should be rendered "Dieudonné" (with an accent over the final letter).

~ Page 18, "About a mile south of the Levant-St. John refinery lies St. Martinville."

Correction: "Levant-St. John" should be "Levert-St. John".

~ Page 28, "apparently unaware of Masse's death around 1785. . . ."

Update: Masse's succession is mentioned in Spanish judicial records of January 1785, thus explaining my assertion that Masse died "around 1785." I observed in my end notes, however, that "Donald J. Arceneaux has determined that Masse died after February 1772 but before January 1773" (see page 210, note 15). While I chose to defer to the judicial records, Donald has since pointed out that genealogist Winston De Ville found reference to Masse's succession in a document from 2 December 1772 — indicating that Masse died sometime before that date. So the phrase in question should read "apparently unaware of Masse's death around 1772. . . ." Source: Winston De Ville, Mississippi Valley Mélange, Volume 2 (Ville Platte, La.: Winston De Ville, 1996), page 39.

~ Page 53, "Drawing on his navigational skills, Gonsoulin stood in Nueva Iberia’s 'place d’armes' on the expedition’s first day, June 18, 1799, and confirmed the village’s latitude."

Correction: "1799" should be "1779".

~ Page 55, "The fifth major salt dome in the region, Jefferson Island, lay farther island. . . ."

Correction: The word "island" should be "inland".

~ Page 86, "Union map of the site of the Battle of Ft. Bisland, 1863, fought on both sites of the Teche near present-day Calumet."

Correction: "both sites" should be "both sides".

~ Page 116, "[But a]s the curtail fell, a happy bedlam broke loose in the audience."

Correction: "curtail" should be "curtain".

~ Page 223, regarding the source of "The Passing of Harry Mahoney, Negro Politician of Radical Days":

Update: In Endnote 18 of Chapter 4 I note that one of my sources, “The Passing of Harry Mahoney, Negro Politician of Radical Days,” is from a "typewritten transcript . . . of [an] article from [an] unidentified New Orleans newspaper." Researcher Judy Riffel has found, however, that the article originally appeared in the (New Orleans, La.) Times-Democrat, 28 September 1913, page 20. Despite the article's title, it is not an obituary, but a reference to Mahoney's ousting from office. (Mahoney died three years later, in 1916.)

*Source: Donald Foster, Professor of English, Vassar College, as quoted in William S. Niederkorn, "A Scholar Recants on His 'Shakespeare' Discovery," New York Times, 20 June 2002.

An Old Bull Durham Tobacco Ad in New Iberia, or Palimpsests on the Teche

In June 2011 fire destroyed a three-story Masonic lodge in downtown New Iberia, leaving a vacant lot along Main Street.  Although I drove past this site for years, it wasn’t until the lodge’s destruction that I noticed an old advertisement painted on the neighboring brick building — an advertisement whose existence had been hidden by the former lodge building.

The faded advertisement read: Bull Durham.

The remains of a Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco ad
on a New Iberia building, 2012.  Parts of the words "Genuine"
and "Smoking" are still visible above and below the brand name.
(Photo by the author)

No, not the 1988 movie featuring Kevin Costner, but a tobacco company and brand based in Durham, North Carolina.  The National Park Service, which has recognized the Bull Durham tobacco factory (also called the W. T. Blackwell and Company tobacco factory) for its historical importance, has referred to Bull Durham tobacco as “the first truly national tobacco brand” and “a part of American industrial history and folklore.” 

In a larger context, the barely visible advertisement is an example of what historians, architects, and others refer to as a palimpsest.

A Bull Durham advertising poster, 1910
(Source: Duke University per UNC-Chapel Hill)

The word palimpsest descends from the Latin palimpsestus, which in turn comes from the Greek palimpsēstos, meaning “scraped again.”  This refers to the ancient practice of scraping the writing off a piece of parchment or vellum so that it might be reused.

Likewise, the remains of old painted advertisements are referred to as palimpsests because of their resemblance to old, scraped manuscripts that here and there, beneath their surfaces, reveal traces of earlier words.

Palimpsests for N. J. Breaux's furniture
and appliance store, New Iberia, La., 2012.
(Photo by the author)

A look around New Iberia revealed other palimpsests, such as that for N. J. Breaux’s furniture and appliance store.  Despite its timeworn appearance, the Breaux advertisement cannot be that old because it refers to “Television,” which only became a common appliance after World War II and particularly after 1950.  Indeed, as I point out in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People, in 1950 less than 1 percent of households in rural and small-town south Louisiana had television; but by 1960 the percentage had jumped to about 80 percent — an amazing increase in only a decade.

More palimpsests in New Iberia, 2012.
(Photo by author)

Addendum of 22 February 2012:

The below images are unrelated to the subject of palimpsests, but I post them here because they nonetheless relate to the history of downtown New Iberia.

These are two sets of "Then and Now" photographs, showing the New Iberia railroad station (taken ca. 1905) and the early twentieth-century site of Taylor's Drug Store (also taken ca. 1905).

The New Iberia railroad station, ca. 1905 and 2012.
(B&W photo courtesy of the Avery Island, Inc., Archives;
color photo by the author.)

Taylor's drug store in New Iberia, ca. 1905 and 2012.
(B&W photo courtesy of the Avery Island, Inc., Archives;
color photo by the author.)

The original railroad station image was taken on July 4th (thus the large crowd with an American flag).

Note the upstairs windows in the original drugstore image; the words painted on them read "Dr. Fulton" and "X-Ray."

Addendum of 20 July 2012:

Here's a neat palimpsest from farther up the Teche at St. Martinville:

Old Coca-Cola advertisement
on brick wall in St. Martinville, La.
(Photo by the author)