*It is important to note that there are many conflicting reports about the details surrounding Marie Laveau’s life and legacy. Collected here are the most commonly repeated “facts” as they are presented from various sources.
Born Marie Catherine Laveau, a free woman of color, on September 10th 1801*, in New Orleans, to Marguerite D’Arcantel and Charles Laveaux. Her maternal family ties were historically rich in African spirituality. Her grandmother Catherine was taken from Africa when she was only seven years old, eventually buying her freedom and her own home, going on to have five children of her own, including Marguerite. It is said, while Marguerite was in an arranged marriage by the age of 18 to a wealthy plantation owner, her unexpected pregnancy with Marie came during an affair with Charles Laveaux. The child was given to Catherine to be raised while Marguerite returned to her husband. Details on how the affair ended are not listed.
Baptized in the St. Louis Cathedral (where she would also later be married), Marie grew up in a nuanced historical moment of Louisiana history, with cultures and viewpoints blending among the white and black communities.
*The exact date of her birth is unknown, but it is believed to be September 10th, as her baptism records share a date close to this and these were typically done within 10 days of the birth of a child.
On August 5th, 1819, she married Jacques Santiago Paris, a refugee from the Haitian Revolution in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in St. Louis Cathedral, and the couple go on to have two children together: Félicité in 1817 and Angèle in 1820. (Their marriage certificate is still preserved to this day on site.) Paris was a cabinet maker and carpenter. In 1820, Rumors say that Jacques went missing and was later found dead just a year after their marriage, and records of the children also disappear after this year. While mysterious, it was not uncommon for death certificates to be lost at this time. It’s likely all three of Marie’s family members passed under mundane circumstances.
In 1825, she would meet and enter into a domestic partnership (as interracial marriages were illegal) with Jean Louis Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, a white French nobleman, until his own death in 1855. The relationship challenged the views of blended marriages at the time, but the couple went on to have 15 children.* Only two would live to adulthood Marie Eucharist Eloise Laveau (1827 - 1862), and Marie Philomène Glapion (1836-1897). It is believed the many deaths were tied to the outbreaks of Yellow Fever, a common plague in New Orleans at the time that Marie is known to have aided the public for with her medicinal knowledge.
* This number is disputed as either a mix of children and grandchildren, or possibly adopted children, which would not be hard to believe given Marie’s hospitality and charity work.
Within her life, Marie would be known and admired by both the black and white communities for a great number of acts and services, including public charity work, nursing, teaching (especially women), visiting of prisoners to serve their last meals and pray (and sometimes even acquiring appeals to their sentencing), but most of all her name is synonymous with “Voodoo Queen”. A prominent religious leader of Vodou, healer, herbalist, and community activist, Marie was a beloved “mother” figure within the city to many people for several decades. People sought her advice for all manner of personal, medical, financial, religious, and even judicial affairs.
Vodou or “Voodoo” is a religion based on spiritual practices originating in Dahomey, a west African Kingdom (now Benin). Brought to America during the transatlantic slave trade, by the free and enslaved African people, Vodou in its most basic explanation (as it’s layered with history and pietistic significance) is a religious practice of honoring and worshipping spirits and ancestors, believed to live in the land of Ginen, with methods of veneration and healing including root work, gris-gris or ju-ju by spiritualists, conjurers, or Priest/Priestesses. Though it shares a name, it should be noted the American version of Voodoo differs from its original in African and the religious system in Haiti.
Coming under the tutelage of Dr. John Bayou, a well known and respected black Senegalese conjurer or root worker, who introduced her to the Vodoun community, she became the third female leader of Vodou in New Orleans after Sanité Dédé and her usurper Marie Saloppé, who would go on to teach Laveau the intricacies of the religion.
Laveau would perform her religious services in three known locations.
In her home located on 1020 St. Ann St, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130, she would consult clients and is also said to have held ceremonies in her backyard where she conjured the spirit of the Great Zombi (the deity Damballah Wedo), as it manifested through a snake.
In Congo Square, a space that was set aside by city officials as a gathering space for both enslaved and free African people, Sundays were a place of dance, worship, and spiritual rejuvenation.
Bayou St. John’s, on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain was likely the least often but most significant space to be used, where Laveau and other practitioners would congregate for large mass ritual and worship. It is said that activities such as Singing, dancing, drumming and spirit possession were prominent events, though history would often sensationalize these details, similar practices are still popular today.
Though there are no records of it ever listed as her occupation, it is believed that Marie also owned a salon, an entrepreneurial endeavor to help financially secure her large family and her philanthropic endeavors. She served the wealthy nobles and their servants with the added benefit of overhearing gossip. It’s said she would use these slyly earned details to bolster her reputation as a clairvoyant, and aid in consultations over domestic disputes.
Laveau would reign as “Vodou Queen” unchallenged until 1850, when a Creole woman named Rosalie attempted to challenge her. In an attempt to scare and threaten Laveau, Rosalie placed a life-sized wooden doll in her yard, covered in intricate carvings and beads. The effect worked for some time, deterring Laveau’s supporters until Marie removed it. It is said that Rosalie took Laveau to court over it, but Laveau had many allies and even clients within the judicial system, and used her influence to have it permanently removed.
In her later years, Marie practiced Vodou less and less and turned back heavily on her Catholic upbringing, attending mass daily. On June 17th, 1881 The Daily Picayune announced Laveau’s death on June 15th, just two days before. She died Marie Catherine Laveau Paris Glapion, of natural causes at the supposed age of 79. She is buried in plot 347, the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, in New Orleans.
"A Woman with a Wonderful History, Almost a Century Old, Carried to the Tomb Yesterday Evening"
“Those who have passed by the quaint old house on St. Ann, between Rampart and Burgundy streets with the high, frail looking fence in front over which a tree or two is visible, have noticed through the open gateway a decrepit old lady with snow white hair, and a smile of peace and contentment lighting up her golden features. For a few years past, she has been missed from her accustomed place. The feeble old lady, lays upon her bed with her daughter and grandchildren around her ministering to her wants.”
Today, visits to her tomb can only be reached by tour after years of vandalization. Though tourists continue to draw X’s on the walls of her crypt in a decades-old tradition. It’s said if you draw three X’s, turn around three times, and shout out your wish, her spirit would grant it. Though this had to be followed up by returning, circling your original set of X’s and leaving an acceptable offering for her generosity.