Marie Thereze Coincoin

Louis Juchereau de St. Denis had become one of the most influential
individuals in New France. His diplomatic and business relations were
unequaled on the frontier, but it would be a slave born into his household
who would over shadow the dashing cavalier.


Her name was Marie Thereze Coincoin.
Many of her descendants still reside along the Cane River,
continuing the legacy of an aristocratic family born of slavery.
Coincoin was only two years old when St. Denis died in 1744.


She was destined to grow up in the house of Madame de St. Denis,
who was a most influential person in her own right.
The visits to the home by businessmen of the area gave the young slave
a glimpse of the basic principles and practices of trade.

This was the education, however unintended it may have been,
which would provide invaluable to her and the
future generations of her children.


Mme. de St. Denis died in 1758 and Coincoin was inherited by a daughter,
Marie de St. Denis de Soto. She was serving in this household when a very
special Frenchman arrived at the settlement.


His name was Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer, and he came to New France
seeking his fortune. It would have been most appropriate for a new arrival to
the area to visit the daughter of the settlement's most famous founder,
and it was probably on one of these visits that Metoyer met Coincoin.
A record of this meeting does not exist, but documents show that the slave
was leased to the Frenchman and, in January 1768,
a set of twins was borne by Coincoin in Metoyer's household.

In 1771, a law was established which stated that slave owners
could not hire out, or lease, their slaves.
Normally, this would have ended the relationship
between this unorthodox couple, but Natchitoches was a small town
on the frontier, and legality was in the eye of the beholder.


The one dissident to the romance of these two was a local priest,
Father Quintanilla. Ordered by law to baptize all salves, he became
increasingly verbal as to the illegal and immoral relationship of
Coincoin and Metoyer.

This could have been aggravated by the fact that
he was called upon to baptize the children
of this relationship on a regular basis.


Letters were written and threats were made,
but Coincoin was owned by a most influential family.
After all, she carried the name of St. Denis's mother,
Marie Therese, and her service to the Louis Juchereau's
widow made her an honored member of the household.


She bore Metoyer ten children, of which three died early in life.
The priest finally convinced authorities to force Coincoin
from Metoyer's home, creating another problem.
To that time, Metoyer had purchased four of his slave
children from their official owner, Mme. de St. Denis de Soto.
With Coincoin banished from his home,
the family was split apart.

Even though Metoyer had been ordered
not to buy the slave Coincoin, he did so in 1778.
Shortly thereafter, with two witnesses, he gave Coincoin
and her newborn, Joseph, their freedom.


By 1786, it seems the relationship had deteriorated
to the point of separation which the priest had wanted.
Metoyer bequeathed to Coincoin a parcel
of land and an annual income of 120 piasters a year.
Two years later he married a woman of his own race
and social status.


Coincoin was forty-six years old,
free,
a landowner,
and the mother of slaves.


She began to cultivate tobacco on her property.
Even though the liaison between her and Metoyer
was over personally, professionally they had endeavors together.


Records show that her first crop was shipped to sale in New Orleans
aboard one of Metoyer's barges. Her meticulous care for her crops
always produced the highest grade tobacco and brought the largest profits.

As her fortune grew, so did her holdings.
She managed to buy all of her children out of slavery
and set each one up with a land grant.

The area south of Natchitoches, know as Isle Brevelle,
became the plantations of the Free People of Color.

At the time of her death, in 1816,
she and her children owned nearly 12,000 acres of land,
almost one hundred slaves
and were aristocrats in a society that had forgotten
the slave roots of this family.

Grandpere Augustin, the male twin of Coincoin and Metoyer's
first children, became the patriarch of the community.
Donations of land and building materials for the church and
other community services strengthened his reputation as the
leader of the community.

White landowners often visited this part of the river
and even borrowed money from the family of freed men.

The Civil War was probably the first experience any
of these descendants had with being regarded as second class.

They were not allowed to join the Confederacy, although
their politics were the same as any other Southern planter.
Instead they formed militia units which patrolled the area, policing
against sabotage and scalawags, a term concerning army deserters
who robbed outlaying farms.

When the Union Army arrived in 1864, the soldiers could not believe
black people owned these magnificent plantations
and several of the mansions were destroyed.

The plantations that did survive the cruelty of war did not survive
the following years of peace. It seems that the Reconstruction efforts
to help the black man made no distinction between the ones who
had been slaves and the ones who had been free.

And so, by the turn of the 19th century, the proud family
who had achieved freedom without the benefit of a Civil War,
lost the land that they had worked for generations to acquire.

Source: The Forgotten People, Mills