This is another story about a lost african-american community called Fazendeville near the Chalmette Battlefield.
While much deserved attention this week has gone to the 200th anniversary of the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans, this year also marks the 50th anniversary of two less-remembered losses near the Chalmette battlefield. They were vestiges of opposite ends of antebellum Creole society, one a tiny hamlet of poor black families, the other an opulent plantation mansion.
Both survived a century after the Civil War, and both were obliterated in 1965.
The hamlet developed out of a rice field owned by Pierre Fazende, a free man of color who appears to have inherited a portion of the Chalmette plantation on which the Battle of New Orleans was fought. In 1856, his son subdivided the elongated parcel, positioned roughly parallel to the former American firing line, and sold the 33 lots of “Fazendeville” to other free people of color, and after the Civil War, emancipated slaves.
For the full story on nola.com click here.