Our Queen Mother is now an Ancestor
A Mother’s Day tribute to my maternal heroines
I have started and stopped writing this post many times. After all, how do you properly pay tribute to a person who is your inspiration for, well, everything? I still don’t know if I have adequate words, but I’m giving it my best shot.
On November 23, 2020, I received a call from my cousin telling me that my family had lost its most precious treasure — my Big Mama, Betty June Fox. There are no adequate words to describe what my Big Mama meant to me. She was the brightest light in my universe and the strongest woman I know. She was there for every milestone in my life. And my desire to know more about her and where her family came from motivated me to start my genealogy research journey.
Although she lived a full and beautiful life of 89 years, my Big Mama was someone who I just felt would live forever. But as we all must someday, she has transitioned from elder to ancestor joining her mama and daddy, and brothers and sisters and all those who went before. And while I feel incredibly blessed to have had my grandmother for 38 years of my life, a feeling of deep sorrow continues to wash over me now and then. I long for more time with her. This is a bittersweet Mother’s Day. The first one without her. But even until her last breath, Big Mama was holding me up from afar and thinking of ways to make me smile. These cards, one that I received after she left us, were my last gifts from her, and they will always be precious to me.
Big Mama was my inspiration for this blog, and she was also my original partner in the journey to reclaiming our ancestors. When I decided to start researching, she excitedly and patiently sat talking to me for hours about what and who she remembered. Then she would send me follow up emails with more memories and leads to follow. Or she would call and leave me a message that always started with, “Hi Babe, this is your Big Mama…” (I know it’s you girl LOL), and would end with, “now you don’t have to call me back…” (who’s not gonna call their Big Mama back?!). She and I were on a great detective mission together to uncover the voices of our ancestors that had been silenced by time. It was something that only we two shared and special time that I cherished with her.
As a gift for her 80th birthday, I gave her a “book of life” scrapbook highlighting the results of our genealogy discoveries. It was modeled after the books that Dr. Henry Gates presents his guests with on his show Finding Your Roots. At the time, I thought it would be the culmination of my research. I’d made many discoveries, but hit a lot of brick walls as well, so I figured it was as far as I could go. But Big Mama encouraged me to keep going. Her excitement about my project gave me the boost I needed to turn that one-time project into a lifelong passion.
But it’s been nearly a decade since I presented her with that book and I always intended to update it with all the new information I’ve uncovered in the years since. And now one of my biggest regrets is feeling like my Big Mama’s journey here on earth ended before I got to complete the story.
The stories left to be told
She told me all about the Stewarts and Littles on her daddy’s side, and the Joneses on her mama’s side. Neither of us knew much about her maternal grandfather’s Dorsey family, so I was excited to tell her all about Edmond Dorsey, her 2x great grandfather who I discovered was a Civil War hero. But what I was still hoping to get around to was telling her all about another branch of the tree, the Lavallais family — particularly the women. Both of her maternal great grandmothers were Lavallais women who she knew nothing of at all. As I met them through my research, I realized they are the ancestors who I saw reflected most in my Big Mama.
Our Lavallais line is filled with strong Louisiana Creole women whose lives have fascinated me as I have painstakingly peeled back the layers to learn more about them over the years. They were women who somehow found independence living under the yolk of both slavery and antebellum freedom. They found ways to survive and, at times, thrive. The strength that I felt from these women as I read between the lines of old documents is same strength I felt from my Big Mama all my life.
However, records are scarce in some cases and nonexistent in others. Though I’ve learned much about the Lavallais family, my research on this line is still so incomplete. I always want to understand as much as I can about my ancestors before I attempt to tell their stories and this search has challenged me the most. Most of the records are in French or Spanish and require at least a cursory understanding of how French colonial society differed from American society. And I want to get these womens’ stories right. But I hate that I waited so long to share what I do know, because now I can’t sit at Big Mama’s feet and tell her about them. If she were here with me now, I’d tell her all about our matriarchs.
I’d tell her about Edvise Lavallais (abt. 1848-abt. 1925)…
Mary Edvise Lavallais, the eldest daughter of Berthelemy Lavallais and Marie Pierrot, was born enslaved around 1845. She was the mother of Florence Jones, Big Mama’s maternal grandmother. Big Mama always told me she remembered her great grandfather, Edvise’s husband Paul Jones, very well because he lived with her family for a time when she was a little girl. But she never knew her great grandmother, so Edvise is one of the Lavallais women that I’ve been striving hard to learn more about. I haven’t had much luck, but what I do know is that she carved out some level of independence, even as a married Black woman living in the 19th century deep South. In 1881 she won a judgement against her husband to separate her property from his. I initially thought this was a divorce proceeding, but since they are enumerated together in subsequent census records, that couldn’t be the case.
From researching the legal circumstances, I learned that Louisiana civil law was born out of a French tradition that was different than the laws in states that followed English tradition. Creole women were not automatically subjected to the laws of coverture, and as such could assert their right to their own separate property. Many white women in early Louisiana used these laws to control and profit from the labor of their enslaved people. In fact, another maternal ancestress of ours, Eulalie Jacob Lavallais, was the subject of a court battle in which a woman fought against her husband for the right to control Eulalie and her children on the grounds that the woman had inherited the enslaved people from her father’s estate.
But I was fascinated that this formerly enslaved Black woman also knew her rights under the law and used it to her own advantage. Likely also to benefit her children and protect them from whatever financial hardship her husband had gotten into. Since Edvise’s assets were separate from her husbands, they were protected from potential seizure to satisfy his debts.
…and Simonia Lavallais (1867-1900)
Simonia Lavallais was born in 1867, the youngest child of Simon Lavallais III and Eulalie Jacob. She was the mother of Landry Dorsey, Big Mama’s maternal grandfather, and Simonia and Edvise were second cousins. Tragically, she died young in the year 1900 giving birth to her youngest child. What I know of her is that she left a legacy to her children that her husband fought long and hard to preserve for them. The court battle for Simonia’s estate is shrouded in mystery, but oral history relayed to me from distant Dorsey cousins tells a sordid tale. It was said that when she died, the white men living adjacent to the Dorsey family wanted Simonia’s land and conspired with local officials to steal it from her husband and children.
Without additional concrete evidence it’s hard to know the exact truth, but court documents that survive do mention that the land was “annexed” by the adjacent farm. But it also showed that William Dorsey was fighting this battle for years after Simonia’s death, even after he moved his family to Boley, OK to escape the repressive environment of post-Reconstruction Louisiana. I know Big Mama would have loved to hear this story of the fight to preserve the inheritance her great grandmother left for her children.
…and Susanne (1787-1852) and Lucille Bouchard dit Lavallee (abt. 1785-1817)
Susanne and Lucille were my 4th great aunts and they have been so interesting to learn about. Their brothers — Simon II and Louis Lavallee — were my direct ancestors and the progenitors of all the Lavallais people of color. Simon was Simonia’s grandfather and evidence suggests that Louis was Edvise’s grandfather. Susanne and Lucille were both a mystery for a long time. Early in my research days, I happened to catch their names mentioned here and there, but didn’t quite understand who they were or how they were connected to my ancestors.
I first noticed Susanne listed on the 1850 census as a 60-year-old free woman of color. I figured she was connected to my Simonia and Edvise because of the surname, but other the records were scarce and hard to come by in my early research days. Then I happened upon her burial record which lists her father’s name as Simon Bouchard dit Lavallee — the first mention of this name I had ever seen.
Luckily, I met some new cousins along the way who became my research angels. Our cousin Susane Lavallais Boykins’ tireless efforts to comb the Avoyelles Parish archives surfaced so much information. She recently published a two-part blog post on Susanne’s life that I encourage everyone to read. It’s a story of an independent, property owning free Black woman who thrived even when odds may have been stacked against her.
I stumbled across Susanne’s sister Lucille when I found an 1817 succession (estate) record for “Lucie Buchar”. Nothing in this record mentioned that she was a woman of color, but I thought she must be somehow connected to Susanne because of the death record that listed Susanne’s father’s name as “Simon Bouchard dit Lavallee”. It showed that at the time of her death she had an estate worth $5131 — more than $100,000 in today’s money.
I’ve wondered so many times what life was like for these two free, rather wealthy Black women living in a white world surrounded by enslaved people, including some owned by them. Many of them were their cousins. And, as I recently discovered, one of the enslaved was their mother.
…and Jeanne Ferret (abt. 1755-abt. 1830)
The 1793 will of Simon Bouchard dit Lavallee, long believed by many researchers to be lost, was rediscovered a couple of years ago in a forgotten cache of colonial records. This single record connected all the dots and led me to my biggest unsolved mystery —Jeanne Ferret. There is so much to say about the search that led to Jeanne Ferret, and yet still so much I don’t know about her.
For years, the only clue to the origins of the Avoyelles Lavallais descendants was a single index record on Ancestry that mentioned a manumission letter for “the mulatress Lucile belonging to Sr. Simon Bouchard.” Many Lavallais researchers (including me) accepted as fact that this Lucile must be the mother of Simon’s children. We figured his daughter Lucille must have been named after her mother. But assumptions based on scant evidence have long led genealogy researchers to dead ends. And then the will was discovered with this vital passage (translated from French):
“I, Simon Lavallé, say in the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, giving to God my soul, and to my natural children which are named Lucy, Louis, Simon, and Susanne, and to Jeanne their mother what follows, so I leave the execution of the will to Mr. Joseph Jofrion who, after having satisfied my known debts, he will divide all my animals, two by two, to my named children, and to Jeanne their mother[1], the rest that I own…”
Reading this passage reminded me that I had seen Jeanne’s name before. In a 1796 confirmation record for “Lucile Labale”, Lucile is listed as the natural daughter of “Simon Labale and Jeanne Ferret.” I also repeatedly ran across the 1810 census for Avoyelles Parish that includes a woman of color listed as simply “Jeanne”.
These records suggest that she was a free woman of color, but others directly contradict that, mainly an 1820 emancipation record for Jeanne that show’s she was still the property of Simon Bouchard’s brother-in-law Joseph Joffrion at the time of the 1810 census.
I’ll go into more depth on Jeanne and her children in my next post, but we’ve got a quite story on our hands and so many more doors to open!
Our hearts will go on
As you can see, there was a lot I had filed away thinking that it wasn’t enough. While I will always regret not having more time to share stories with my Big Mama, another thing I’ve learned in my research is that the story never truly ends. There is still so much more to discover, so many stories of our Black history to share, and so many more memories yet to be created. I’m going to finish telling these women’s stories because they are worth telling and my Big Mama would have been proud to know them. And now I will weave her story into the beautiful tapestry of our family’s matrilineal heroines.
Just as she inspired me to begin this journey of discovery, I will take her with me in my heart as I continue on. The strength of the mothers who forged the path for us flowed through Betty June Stewart Fox, down through the daughters she raised, into all the mothers and aunts of my generation. I’m thankful that the beauty of her light continues to shine through Pam, Stefania, Georgia Ann, Becky and Marsha Lynn. My prayer is that we always remain worthy torchbearers of the legacy Big Mama and our foremothers bestowed upon us.
