The old story of New Orleans~Hermann-Grima House

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The Hermann Grima House and the Gallier House physically connect us to this time. These important landmarks actively tell the local story of the men and women from prominent families and the challenges they faced.The story is not just that of the wealthy, but of the free people of colour, or gens de couleur de litre, and the immigrants who were the craftsmen creating the amazing interiors, the enslaved workers who ran the day- to- day business of the house, and the women of all status who, with few exceptions, were dependent on men and strictly marginalised.

At the onset of the nineteenth century, new methods of granulating sugar and ginning cotton set up the region for undreamt of prosperity. The world’s sweet tooth and its desire for cheap, useful fabric elevated New Orleans to the world’s fourth- busiest port, after London, Liverpool, and New York.These industries also entrenched an institution that already had mounting national opposition – slavery.

Though slave importation was outlawed in 1808, the domestic slave trade grew.A young healthy slave was expensive, some costing in excess of a thousand dollars roughly $40,000 in today’s terms. The value returned in forced labor however, far exceeded the costs. In addition, having slaves as property meant that owners could use their value to procure loans, enhance stock valuations, and grow businesses.

The 1791 slave revolt in Saint Domingue, now Haiti, opened a floodgate of refugees.By 1810 the population of New Orleans was about evenly split between whites, free people of color, and black slaves. A wealthy person of color was an unusual sight in the rest of the country, but not in the Crescent City. Many free people of color owned property, and some even owned slaves.

The families who occupied the Hermann- Grima House and the Gallier House, like most other moneyed folks in the region, owned enslaved workers who served as cooks, laundresses, seamstresses, gardens, carpenters, and horsemen, and also performed most other manual labor. Urban slavery, though perhaps not as arduous as fieldwork, still entailed long hours and tedious tasks, all under the close scrutiny of the master. In addition, a worker who was not needed on a given day could be rented out to another family, providing more free income to the owner.

The arrival of the steamboat in 1812 added to the city’s fortunes. The smaller, slow moving keelboats made way for massive paddlers overflowing with cargo to and from the American heartland. Loads of cotton, sugar, grain and other foodstuffs, wood, bear grease, and much more required trans- shipment form boat to ship and created a need for processing facilities. Banks and market exchanges sprang up, with some business printing their own currency.

A final aspect of early growth of the city was the immigration of a cheap workforce.After the Saint Domingue influx, starving Irish from the potato famine in the 1840s, and then Germans fleeing the revolutions of 1848 poured in.Thousands of these poor and desperate immigrants arrived in the city willing to do hard, dangerous work for very low wages.

As the city’s wealth grew in the first half of the nineteenth century, French was still the preferred language, the Theatre d’Orleans premiered operas from the Continent, French style dinners featured upwards of thirty dishes, and elegant balls abounded.Grand mansions stood among colonial era cottages as early in 1795 in the Vieux Carre.

In the 1830s the Place d’Armes was still a muddy parade ground and the site of public executions, and twenty years away from being renovated and rechristened Jackson Square; the state legislature was meeting at the Orleans Ballroom and the elegant new Saint Charles Theatre; was building a wooden sidewalk so guests could avoid walking in the filth of muddy, animal filled streets to get there. By the time Hermann built his home, the Creoles of the old city had already established a cultural footprint of a nature not found for a thousand miles in any direction.