Marie Thérèse Coincoin
Born
Coincoin

August 1742
Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, U.S.
Died1816 (aged 73–74)
Other namesCoin-coin, Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin, Marie-Therese Metoyer, Marie Thérèse Metoyer, Marie Thérèse Métoyer
PartnerClaude Thomas Pierre Métoyer

Marie Thérèse Coincoin,[lower-alpha 1] born as Coincoin (with no surname),[1] also known as Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin,[2] and Marie Thérèse Métoyer,[3][4] (August 1742 – 1816) was a planter, slave owner,[1] and businesswoman at the colonial Louisiana outpost of Natchitoches (later known as Natchitoches Parish).

A Louisiana Creole of color, Coincoin was born into slavery. Her freedom was purchased in 1778 by Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer, with whom she had a long liaison and ten children.[1] She and her descendants established the historical community of Isle Brevelle of Créoles of color along the Cane River, including what is said to be the first church founded by free people of color for their own use, St. Augustine Parish (Isle Brevelle) Church, Natchez, Louisiana. The church is included as a notable site on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

Early life and family

The family was enslaved by the Louisiana French Natchitoches post's founder and commandant, Chevalier Louis Juchereau de St. Denis.[5] She was born as Coincoin in 1742 in Natchitoches (later known as Narchitoches Parish).[5] Her parents were François and Marie Françoise,[6] she was the fourth of eleven children.

As children, Coincoin and her sister Marie Louise ditte[7][8] were trained in pharmacology and nursing. By these skills the women earned a livelihood after gaining freedom through manumission as adults. Their other nine siblings would remain enslaved at various colonial posts from Natchitoches to Pensacola.

Slavery and freedom

When still young, Coincoin had five children. Some records show that Coincoin's first five children were of full African blood and others suggest they were partially Native American, fathered by Chatta. About 1765 her mistress granted Coincoin to live with the young French merchant, Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer, Coincoin had gained the interest of Métoyer during his many visits to the St. Denis household.

The efforts of a parish priest to break up their union in 1778, by filing charges that threatened her being sold away to New Orleans, prompted Métoyer to buy and manumit her. Together they moved from the post, to outlying lands, where their liaison continued until 1788. As his mixed-race children matured and married, Métoyer manumitted the eldest five of the ten children whom he had held in slavery after he purchased Coincoin and their children.

Business activity

As a free woman, Coincoin exploited a variety of economic enterprises. She manufactured medicine, planted tobacco, and trapped wild bears and turkeys,[6] which were sent to the local market and shipping peltry and oil along with indigo that she sourced from the bear skins to New Orleans along with her cured tobacco. She became a landowner and a taxpayer. As a pious Catholic, she volunteered labor for the upkeep of the parish church. Like many other freed slaves in colonial Louisiana, she eventually acquired slaves in order to protect them from others in the parish purchasing them. Most were related to Coincoin or close friends, she labored alongside of them until her own health began to fail.

Some accounts state that she held one small farmstead of 67 acres.[9] Other accounts show her as the owner of a plantation empire of 12,000 acres and a hundred slaves.[10]

Surviving records document her ownership of somewhat over one thousand acres.[11]

The liberal land-grant policies of the Spanish Crown provided a stake for her first farmstead on the Grand Coast of Red River (now Cane River), about ten miles below the town. That small tract of 80 arpents (67 acres), alluvial river-bottom land adjacent to Metoyer's plantation, was conceded by the local commandant in January 1787 and patented by the Crown in May 1794. It is identified on modern land maps as sections 18 and 89 of Township 8 North, Range 6 West.

On the heels of that patent, Coincoin applied for a significantly larger concession — 800 arpents of piney woods on Old River to the west of her farm — a tract identified today as section 55, Township 8 North, Range 7 West, where she established a vacherie (cattle range) and hired a Spaniard to operate it for her. In 1807, she bought a third tract of already developed farm land (the northern portion of sections 34 and 98, T8 North, Range 6 West).

That third holding, adjacent to her homestead, provided a stake for a younger son who had come of age after the Louisiana Purchase, too late to benefit from the more-liberal land policies of the Spanish regime. Coincoin has been credited with the founding of Cane River's fabled Melrose Plantation. However, this land has been documented as a grant to her son, Louis Métoyer, who built most of the surviving plantation buildings prior to his death.[12][13]

Coincoin lived frugally and served others, investing all her income into the purchase of freedom for the children from the slave marriage of her youth. By the time of her death, she had manumitted three of those children and three grandchildren.[14] Another daughter and many grandchildren remained enslaved, as their owners refused to manumit or sell them.

Legacy

Coincoin died in 1816 and her grave is no longer marked.

The Coincoin–Prudhomme House, located on dirt road off of Highway 494, about 1 mile Northwest of Bermuda

Her eldest son Augustin Metoyer donated land for a church at Isle Brevelle, Natchez, Louisiana. In 1829 he commissioned his brother Louis to build the structure, St. Augustine Parish Church. It is believed to be America's first church built by free people of color for their own use.[15]

The Coincoin–Prudhomme House, or Maison De Marie Therese, a small Creole-style cottage constructed of bousillage and half-timber still stands on her original c.1780s–1816 farmstead, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places since December 6, 1979.[16] The house is now known as the, Maison de Marie Thérèse Coincoin Museum, and is located one mile northwest of Bermuda, the museum is privately owned and open for tours via appointment.[5]

African origin

Tradition holds that Coincoin's African-born parents retained much of their culture, and some evidence supports that. No known document identifies the African birthplace of either parent.[6] Coincoin and four of her siblings carried African names as dits.^ [17][12] One Africanist historian proposed in the 1970s that the African Coincoin (spelled variously in transliterations by French and Spanish scribes) was the name used for "second-born daughters" among those Ewe of coastal Togo who speak the Glidzi dialect.[18]

Historians Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills found evidence that Coincoin was the second-born daughter in her birth family. Other possible origins of the name Coincoin, together with the names of her siblings as discovered by Elizabeth Shown Mills, are being studied by Africanist Kevin C. MacDonald at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, University College London.[19]

  • German, Norman. No Other World (novel based on Coincoin), Thibodaux, LA: Blue Heron Press, 1992; reprint, 2000, 2011; ISBN 9780962172427.
  • Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Isle of Canes, ISBN 9781593313067, is an historical novel that follows Coincoin and the Metoyers across four generations.

Notes

  1. ↑ The identification of Marie Thérèse Coincoin as Marie Thérèse Metoyer is a misnomer. At no point in her life did she use this name. All documents that she created identify her by the surname Coincoin (or a variant spelling of that name). Only one document during her lifetime assigned her the name Metoyer and that document was created by a Washington, D.C. land office official who had no personal knowledge of her. In 1806, her son Pierre Metoyer, traveled to the U.S. land office at Opelousas, Louisiana, to file a claim on her behalf, calling her "his mother, Marie Thérèse, free negresse" (no surname). When the paperwork was submitted to Washington, a case label was created for the file, whereon the son's surname was assigned to her. See Claim B2146, Marie Thérèse, free Negresse, 1806 document filed under OPEL: May 1794 (the date of the Spanish patent), Opelousas Notarial Records, Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge; and Serial Patent 437,269, Marie Thérèse Metoyer, RG 49, National Archives; Mills, "Marie Thérèse Coincoin (1742–1816): Slave, Slave Owner, and Paradox," discusses these records in greater detail.

Sources

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hewitt, D. G. (May 17, 2018). "10 Black Slaveowners That Will Tear Apart Historical Perception". historycollection.com.
  2. ↑ Mills, Elizabeth Shown (2012). "Demythicizing History: Marie Thérèse Coincoin, Tourism, and the National Historical Landmarks Program". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 53 (4): 402–437. ISSN 0024-6816. JSTOR 24396547.
  3. ↑ Forests and People, Vol. 8-11. Louisiana Forestry Association. 1958. p. 27.
  4. ↑ Boussard, Léon (1963). Maison blanche, problème noir (in French). Plon.
  5. 1 2 3 "Maison de Marie Therese--Cane River National Heritage Area: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary". Cane River National Heritage Area. National Park Service. Retrieved 2021-06-24.
  6. 1 2 3 Mills, Elizabeth Shown (December 2008). "Documenting a Slave's Birth, Parentage, and Origins (Marie Thérèse Coincoin, 1742–1816): A Test of "Oral History"" (PDF). National Genealogical Society Quarterly. 96: 245–266.
  7. ↑ In this context, ditte can be translated as "called". In this society, it meant a nickname used in place of a surname.
  8. ↑ Mills, "Which Marie Louise Is Mariotte?", provides a four-generation genealogy of the slave and freeborn offspring of Coincoin's sister Mariotte and additional information on Coincoin's parents.
  9. ↑ Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), in cooperation with Cane River National Heritage Area et al., “Coincoin-Prudhomme House (Maison de Marie Therese)”, HABS No. LA1295, National Park Service, p. 1; the report is undated but its content suggests it was created after 2004.
  10. ↑ Klier, Betje Black. Pavie in the Borderlands (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), p. 15.
  11. ↑ For a detailed delineation of Coincoin's three separate land acquisitions, see Elizabeth Shown Mills, “Demythicizing History: Marie Thérèse Coincoin, Tourism, and the National Historical Landmarks Program.” Louisiana History 53 (Fall 2012): 402–37; archived online at Historic Pathways.
  12. 1 2 Allured, Janet; Gentry, Judith F. (2009). "Marie Thérèse Coincoin (1742–1816): Slave, Slave Owner, and Paradox". Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times. Southern Women: Their Lives and Times Series. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820329468.
  13. ↑ Louis Metoyer Private Land Claim Certificate B1953 (sections 17 and 94, Township 7 North, Range 6 West), Record Group 49, General Land Office, National Archives; Louis Mettoyer claim for 883.60 acres (3.5758 km2), OPEL: May 1796, File B1953, Louis Metoyer, Opelousas Notarial Records, Louisiana State Land Office, Baton Rouge; Boissier et al. v. Metayer, 5 Mart. (O.S.), 678 (1818).
  14. ↑ For the previously unpublished life of one of these, Nicolas "Chiquito" dit Coincoin, see E. S. Mills, "QuickLesson 16: Speculation, Hypothesis, Interpretation, and Proof", Evidence Explained.
  15. ↑ Note: Independent black churches were founded by free blacks in Philadelphia before this date, but the congregations used existing structures. Some writers assert the church was built in 1803 by Augustin Metoyer, son of Coincoin, but the historical evidence dates the construction of the building and its dedication as a chapel in July 1829. In 1856 the diocese designated St. Augustine Chapel as a parish church with a resident priest in its own right. See Mills, Forgotten People, pp. 145–50, for an analysis of that evidence. For the first recorded service at the chapel, see Elizabeth Shown Mills, Natchitoches Church Marriages, 1818-1850: Translated Abstracts from the Registers of St. François des Natchitoches, Louisiana, vol. 4, Cane River Creole Series (Tuscaloosa, AL: 1985), p. 38, entry 152.
  16. ↑ "Maison De Marie Therese". NPGallery Asset Detail. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Retrieved 2021-06-24.
  17. ↑ Mills, Elizabeth Shown; Mills, Gary B. (March 1982). "Slaves and Masters: The Louisiana Metoyers" (PDF). National Genealogical Society Quarterly. 70: 163–189.
  18. ↑ Jan Vansina of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, as reported in Mills, Forgotten People, pg. 3.
  19. ↑ MacDonald to E. S. Mills, February 19, 2008.
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