Strange True Stories of my Louisiana Ancestors Part V: Was Sieur Charles the Father?
Seeking family origins in New Orleans's colonial era
Read first:
Part I of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our April 2023 issue.
Part II of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our May 2023 issue.
Part III of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our September 2023 issue.
Pary IV of Flournoy's "Strange True Stories" series from our October 2023 issue.
Randy Newman’s song “Louisiana 1927” gets me every time: “What has happened down here is the wind have changed. Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain. Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline … Louisiana. Louisiana. They're tryin' to wash us away. They're tryin' to wash us away…”
Lately, Newman’s words and Doppler Radar maps have catapulted me back to my ancestral home in South Louisiana to wade through historic archives before they wash away. Irrational, maybe. Although archivists have diligently digitized acres of historic papers, I’m often haunted by the documents and relics that exist only on shelves or in boxes in Louisiana libraries and museums, vulnerable to hurricanes, floods, and fires. Poof. Gone.
Some families chronicle their roots and pass them on. Not mine. We’ve scuttled on for generations with no interest in lugging the weight of what came before, leaving it up to curious descendants to pry long after reliable sources are gone. That’s me—the prier.
I’ve pried deeply into the history of my Charpantier relatives in Louisiana who apparently dodged the guillotine and covertly immigrated to Patterson, Louisiana, from the Palace of Versailles. Their mysterious French Revolution story in George W. Cable’s Strange True Stories of Louisiana originally set me on this research journey (see Parts 1-4, published in previous issues of Country Roads and available at countryroadsmag.com). However, research roadblocks shifted my focus to lower hanging fruit—my paternal Planchard line in New Orleans, our ancestral home base. There, I hoped to find more stable genealogical ground.
Stable? No. In a city built on mud and pilings, situated below sea level so that the dead must be buried above ground, where Gulf Coast hurricanes churn soggy terrain like swizzle sticks in a Sazerac and solid land dissolves into marsh by the hour, the notion of stable ground, even in terms of historical records, seems ludicrous.
What I Found
After sifting through documents at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Tulane University, Louisiana State University, New Orleans Public Libraries, the Louisiana State Archives, the Edith Garland Dupré Library at the University of Lafayette, and more, I learned that several of my ancestors came to New Orleans directly from France, decades before the Charpantiers immigrated to the Bayou Teche area.
I took the advice of New Orleans genealogist Jari C. Honora, with the Historic New Orleans Collection, who urged me to start with recent family members and work backwards. So, beginning with my grandfather, Louis Martin Planchard, Sr., the oldest Planchard I ever knew, I traced our New Orleans line back to the early colonial years. The paper trail stopped with my fourth great-grandfather—Antoine François de Planchard, born in 1730 in Nolay, a medieval commune in Burgundy, part of the Côte-d'Or department of France.
In a city built on mud and pilings, situated below sea level so that the dead must be buried above ground, where Gulf Coast hurricanes churn soggy terrain like swizzle sticks in a Sazerac and solid land dissolves into marsh by the hour, the notion of stable ground, even in terms of historical records, seems ludicrous.
His walled hometown sat about 150 miles from Paris, in a region now called Burgundy-Franche-Comté. The area was shaped over the centuries by a series of powerful Burgundian Dukes whose wine presses earned them the reputation as "Lords of the best wines in Christendom." It appears that I come by my love for wine naturally.
I was unable to find a ship’s manifest showing when Antoine left Burgundy or arrived in Louisiana. However, I discovered that another Planchard preceded Antoine in colonial Louisiana—Sieur Charles Dupuy de Planchard. (Sieur is a title of respect assigned to Frenchmen of high social status.) Although I was unable to scrounge up documentation confirming that Dupuy was Antoine’s father and therefore my direct ancestor, I did find much that would indicate a connection. For one, the population in the vast region comprising Louisiana was miniscule at the time, and since Dupuy was the only Planchard on record before Antoine, he almost certainly had to be his father or uncle.
But without solid proof, I was operating strictly on an assumption that the two men were related—a strategy that Honora warned might amount to a wild goose chase.
I ran with it anyway.
Sieur Charles Dupuy de Planchard
Born in France around 1695, Sieur Dupuy served as an officer on the Role de la Reine (1732-33), a ship that often departed from Lorient, the main port of the French East India Company. This tidbit led me to other military records indicating that he journeyed to La Louisane, Nouvelle Orléans as early as 1718, when explorer Pierre LeMoyne d’Iberville and his younger brother Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne d’Bienville were seeking a site for the capital of the French colony. Records indicate Sieur Planchard traveled back and forth between New Orleans and France from 1718 to the late-1730s.
Settling this vast territory had drained the French economy; in 1712 Louis XIV turned France's colonial interests over to a private company—the Company of the Indies (Compagnie des Indes). It held a tight monopoly on Louisiana culture and trade, with control over the slave trade, immigration, negotiations with native tribes, and the purchase and exportation of Louisiana-grown goods.
After Louis XIV died in 1715, leaving the throne to five-year-old Louis XV, Duke Phillipe d’Orleans was appointed to serve as regent until the child was older. (Louis XV officially became king in 1723.) Duc d’Orleans was intent on continuing the colonial efforts in Louisiana and put Scottish financier John Law in charge of the Company. To promote the failing territory, Law launched a propaganda campaign promising French settlers riches and free land there. To support Law’s efforts in the Louisiana settlement, d’Orleans commissioned more military officers to the region.
Among them was Sieur Dupuy de Planchard. Planchard, and other military overseeing Louisiana, faced grueling transatlantic travel, disease, coastal swamps, smugglers, pirates, snakes, malaria, and scurvy. Many military voyagers either died, deserted, or returned to France.
But Dupuy stayed. After Bienville dubbed the French capital of the colony at that crook in the river in 1718 (though it didn’t become the permanent capital until 1722) and named it for Duc d’Orleans—he claimed the best land for himself. He granted generous land concessions to relatives, wealthy Frenchmen, and high-ranking military officers, including Dupuy Planchard.
Dupuy received a parcel of riverfront land that today comprises Audubon Park, and was among the first to own property in the French Quarter. He was listed in one census around 1732, living on Rue Royal with a wife and son. Could it be Antoine?
I discovered a significant connection in a deed for a Royal Street property owned by Antoine’s son Louis de Planchard, my third great-grandfather, located where the Cornstalk Hotel now stands. It was passed to Louis from his father. Was this originally Dupuy’s property, passed down to Antoine before that?
As a soldier, Dupuy would have been tasked with helping construct New Orleans’s first crude levee. They devised ways to raise and strengthen the levee until its final completion in 1727—rising with an eighteen-foot crown and sixty-foot base, running more than a mile long. If they could only see today’s nearly $15 billion network of levees and floodwalls built to protect greater New Orleans.
Flooding issues aside, conditions were far from ideal in early New Orleans—attempts at economic revitalization through farming, trapping, and trade fell short. So, the King ordered Bienville to return to France in 1725. Many other early settlers followed. But again, Sieur Dupuy Planchard stayed, putting down roots in New Orleans. Why did he choose to stay under such poor conditions?
Did he foresee the potential of this city in the swamp? What was in it for him?
Historian Shannon Dawdy observed that the first military privateers who settled Louisiana depended on “the violation of imperial law” for their livelihoods. She said that Louisiana officers and traders often “skimmed profits from the Indian trade; used the king’s ships to conduct their own business; ‘redistributed’ goods from the Company [of the Indies] and military stores at exorbitant prices,” among other acts of “rogue colonialism.”
Et tu, Sieur Planchard?
Who can say if Planchard devoted allegiance to the crown in support of the ancien regime, or if he morphed from a loyal officer to a crooked agent of self-interest?
He does appear in A History of French Louisiana: The Company of the Indies, 1723–1731, in a reference to the low pay of officers in French colonial Louisiana, who had to be resourceful in supplementing their income. Many did so by cultivating crops on their properties by the river—though few could afford to purchase the enslaved labor necessary to do so effectively.
Planchard was one of those few. One document confirms enslaved individuals at his residence, and another shows his request for enslaved Africans to work and maintain his property during long absences.
A letter from Governor Bienville in 1733 specifically requests that Dupuy Planchard be granted passage back to France as he “is an older officer who has served for a long time.”
In The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715–1747: A Sojourner in the French Atlantic, published in 1747, the author commended “Sieur Dupuy Planchard, a high-ranking Adjutant Major in the French military,” for taking pity on a discredited soldier who had been kicked out of the company. Although that’s his only mention of Planchard, Dumont reconstructs experiences of fellow officers—dealing with corrupt leaders, senseless battles, random disasters, rough transatlantic voyages, scarce rations, and poor living conditions.
Documents in the Louisiana Historical Archives reference Planchard’s appointment as ensign, rising in the ranks to Adjutant Major, overseeing troops in the Company of the Indies in 1727. One ship manifest lists Officer Planchard embarking at the port in Pondichery, India (also a French colony), sailing through the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico in 1732. Planchard’s name is sprinkled through volumes of Dispatches to Louisiana from 1721-1731: Accounts of La Compagnie des Indes. He appears in civil suits and petitions regarding gambling debts, land disputes, and other minor quibbles in French colonial Louisiana, such as a fine for “speaking to Marie, a negress.” But these records fail to definitively link Dupuy with Antoine.
In Nancy Miller Surrey’s Calendar of Manuscripts in the Paris Archives, I found military documents for Dupuy Planchard issued from Île-de-France or Paris from 1725 to 1749. Most dealt with orders or appointments, and the last one requested a retirement pension and the Cross of the Order of St. Louis for his service to the King. However, I didn’t find his name on lists of medal recipients. Sorry, Dupuy.
One notice from the Balize military post in Louisiana, dated 1731, was signed by Bernard de Verges, Dupuy Planchard, and Jacques Santiago Esnoul de Livaudais. Not only is de Verges related to me through my Charpantier ancestors, but Livaudais is my fifth great-grandfather. Another connection?
Forgive the giant leap, Mr. Honora, but since Dupuy served with Livaudais, I believe it to be plausible that their families intermingled, leading Dupuy’s grandson Louis de Planchard (my third great-grandfather) to marry Livaudais’s granddaughter, Charlotte Hortense Charbonnet (my third great-grandmother). This still doesn’t prove Dupuy is Antoine’s father, but I’d bet my car they’re related.
Antoine François de Planchard
By all indications, Antoine himself came from an elite French lineage. Records indicate that French-born Antoine served as Captain in the French Liège infantry before he married Perinne Angelique La Loire (1731-1782), the daughter of Claude Jousset De La Loire and Marie Anne la Croix Leblanc—two of the oldest, most prominent families in Louisiana. Marianne Leblanc, my fifth great-grandmother, who immigrated to Louisiana from St. Laurent, Diocese St. Malo, Brittany, France, was the daughter of Marquis Henry Le Blanc and Servanne Le Marie, both of noble French lineage.
Also, Perinne’s father, Claude La Loire (my fifth great grandfather) had the distinction of being the first “official” French male child born in the Colony of Louisiana—the first ever Louisiana Creole. That alone should earn me a spot on a Mardi Gras float.
As a military officer, Antoine would have participated in many of the battles throughout that period in Louisiana, while his wife Perinne reared their two children, Marie Anne Claude De Planchard (1771-1852) and Louis De Planchard (1773-1853), for whom my grandfather, father, and brother were named. (Since I had no sons, I passed the name to one of my daughters, Louise Planchard Flournoy. Close enough. Though she was born and raised in Dallas, and most of her friends flocked to UT, she insisted on LSU. It’s in the blood.)
Like most French Louisianans, Antoine resisted the Spanish takeover of Louisiana in 1763. Outraged at the prospect of being ruled by Spaniards, Louisiana leaders implored the king not to give up the territory. When King Louis held onto his conviction and transferred the territory to his Bourbon cousin Charles III, French Louisiana led a rebellion against Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa.
The Revolt of 1768, led by the Creole elite of New Orleans and German Coast settlers hell-bent on reversing the transfer of French Louisiana to Spain, failed. The insurrection fell apart when Spanish Governor Alejandro O’Reilly replaced Ulloa, bringing in 2,000 troops to put down the rebellion. Many of the pot-stirrers were Planchard-line relatives—all rounded up, tried, and sentenced to the gallows or prison. Those receiving the death sentence included five of my French Creole relatives—Villeré, de Lery, Lafreniere, D'Arensbourg and Noyan. Of those, one died, two got off, and two were executed in front of a firing squad at the Esplanade fort. Spain ruled Louisiana for the next forty years. Forced to accept Spanish authority, Antoine adapted his name to Antonio Francisco de Planchard, and joined the army as Captain in the Spanish Vierset Regiment. The regiment’s distinctive uniforms featured a white coat, jacket, blue cuffs, multiple gold buttons on the lapel, sleeves, and pockets; snug tights, and triangle hat lined with gold. He must have cut an impressive figure at the altar of Saint Louis Cathedral behind his daughter Marie in 1794, when she married Francois Augustin Montault de Monberaut, “Chevalier of the Royal Order of St. Louis.”
At that same altar three years later, Antoine’s son Louis de Planchard married Hortense Charlotte Charbonnet. They raised their six children in New Orleans, including Jean Jacques (J.J.) Planchard (1808-1853), my second great-grandfather, whose son Noel Henry Planchard, my great grandfather (1845-1918), had my grandfather Louis Martin Planchard (1889-1974).
Other names from my Planchard line found in colonial New Orleans records include Livaudais, Charbonnet, La Loire, Marigny, Montault, Mandeville, De La Source, Trepagnier, Perret, LeBlanc, Dubreuil de Villars, and DeLery. These family names litter the rosters of soldiers in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, which culminated in the Battle of New Orleans.
The battle wasn’t technically in New Orleans. It took place in nearby Chalmette on plantations owned by my Planchard-line relatives, but that's another story.
Several genealogies list Antoine’s death year as 1803, though I have found no official records. Assuming they’re correct, Antoine died just months before Thomas Jefferson struck a bargain with Napoleon that would double the size of the United States—the Louisiana Purchase. Antoine’s passing at age seventy-three represented a milestone for my family. Possibly the son of the first Planchard to come to Louisiana, he was undoubtedly the first Planchard to put down permanent roots in New Orleans. I’m guessing Dupuy returned to France per his 1749 request, as I found no death records for him in Louisiana.
At this writing, I still don’t know if Dupuy is Antoine’s father. However, even if that’s not the case, records show Antoine Planchard is related to a trove of key players in New Orleans history, including Bienville, the city’s founder, and possibly the Duc d'Orleans. I can’t take any of this to the bank yet, but if my suspicions pan out, I’ve buried the lead. Plenty more prying to do.