plantations of their own, where they lived in close contact with Marie Claudette’s family. A few descendants of these men stayed on that land up until 1890, and many other descendants moved to New Orleans. They made up the ever increasing number of “cousins” who were a constant factor in Mayfair life for the next one hundred years.
There are numerous published drawings of Marie Claudette’s plantation house and even several photographs in old books, now out of print. It was large even for the period and, predating the ostentatious Greek Revival style, it was a simple colonial structure with plain rounded columns, a pitched roof, and galleries, much like the house in Saint-Domingue. It was two rooms thick, with hallways bisecting it from north to south and east to west, and had a full lower floor, as well as a very high and spacious attic floor.
The plantation included two enormous garçonnières where the male members of the family lived, including Lestan in his later widowhood, and his four sons, all of whom went by the name of Mayfair.” (Maurice always lived in the main house.)
Marie Claudette was every bit as successful in Louisiana as she and her ancestors had been in Saint-Domingue. Once again, she cultivated sugar, but gave up the cultivation of coffee and tobacco. She bought smaller plantations for each of Lestan’s sons, and gave lavish gifts to their children and their children’s children.
From the first weeks of their arrival, the family was regarded with awe and suspicion. Marie Claudette frightened people, and entered into a number of disputes in setting up business in Louisiana, and was not above threatening anyone who stood in her path. She bought up enormous numbers of slaves for her fields, and in the tradition of her ancestors, treated these slaves very well. But she did not treat merchants very well, and drove more than one merchant off her property with a whip, insisting that he had tried to cheat her.
She was described by the local witnesses as “formidable” and “unpleasant,” though still a handsome woman. And her personal slaves and free mixed-blood servants were greatly feared by the slaves she purchased in Louisiana.
Within a short time, she was heralded as a sorceress by the slaves on her land; it was said that she could not be deceived, and that she could give “the evil eye,” and that she had a demon whom she could send after anyone who crossed her. Her brother Lestan was more generally liked, and apparently fell in at once with the drinking and gambling planter class of the area.
Henri Marie Landry, her husband, seems to have been a likable but passive individual who left absolutely everything to his wife. He read botanical journals from Europe and collected rare flowers from all over the South and designed and cultivated an enormous garden at Riverbend.
He died in bed, in 1824, after receiving the sacraments.
In 1799 Marie Claudette gave birth to the last of her children, Marguerite, who later became the designee of the legacy, and who lived in Marie Claudette’s shadow until Marie Claudette’s death in 1831.
There was much gossip about Marie Claudette’s family life. It was said that her oldest daughter, Claire Marie, was feebleminded, and there are numerous stories about this young woman wandering about in her nightgown, and saying strange though often delightful things to people. She saw ghosts and talked to them all the time, sometimes right in the middle of supper before amazed guests.
She also “knew” things about people and would blurt out these secrets at odd moments. She was kept at home, and though more than one man fell in love with her, Marie Claudette never allowed Claire Marie to marry. In her old age, after the death of her husband, Henri Marie Landry, Marie Claudette slept with Claire Marie, to watch her and keep her from roaming about and getting lost.
She was often seen on the galleries in her nightgown.
Marie Claudette’s only son, Pierre, was never allowed to marry either. He “fell in love” twice, but both times gave in to his mother when she refused to grant permission for the wedding. His second “secret fiancée” tried to take her own life when she was rejected by Pierre. After that he seldom went out, but was often seen in the company of his mother.
Pierre was a doctor of sorts to the slaves, curing them with various potions and remedies. He even studied medicine for a while with an old drunken doctor in New