Benjamin Laurent Millaudon
{{short description|Louisiana merchant and sugar planter (1786–1868)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Benjamin Laurent Millaudon
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date = 1786
| birth_place = Avignon, France
| death_date = 1868
| death_place =
| nationality = French, then American
| occupation = Merchant, real estate investor, railroad developer, planter
| known_for =
| spouse =
| children =
}}
File:L. Millaudon River Sugar House on Norman's Chart of the lower Mississippi River (1858).png (1858)]]
Benjamin Laurent Millaudon (1786–1868) was an wealthy merchant, real-estate investor, and railroad developer of early 19th-century New Orleans.{{Cite book |last=Cuevas |first=John |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aTP8fxliBI4C&dq=%22Laurent+Millaudon%22&pg=PA143 |title=Cat Island: The History of a Mississippi Gulf Coast Barrier Island |date=2014|publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-8578-9 |pages=143–144 |language=en}} Described as a "self-made tycoon", he had emigrated to the United States from Avignon, France around 1802.{{Cite book |last=Campanella |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5RfdDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Laurent+Millaudon%22&pg=PA84 |title=The West Bank of Greater New Orleans: A Historical Geography |year=2020 |publisher=LSU Press |isbn=978-0-8071-7366-4 |page=84 |language=en}} In additional to his mercantile investments, he owned huge and lucrative sugar plantations worked by hundreds of slaves.{{Cite book |last1=Lobban |first1=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=minyDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Laurent+Millaudon%22&pg=PA109-IA2 |title=Networks and Connections in Legal History |last2=Williams |first2=Ian |year=2020 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-49088-7 |page=217 |language=en}}
Biography
The Historic New Orleans Collection holds documents from Millaudon's life and career, including the Benjamin–Millaudon Papers (90-21-L), which relate to business between Millaudon and future Confederate cabinet officer Judah P. Benjamin, and the Millaudon and Gardanne Family Papers (2015.0073), which relate to two of his children, Philippe Millaudon (1823–1855), and Jeanne Henriette Millaudon Gardanne (1821–1902), and to Millaudon's legal ownership of 490 people who were enslaved to sugar work at Millaudon Plantation, which was "located in the vicinity of present-day Marrero on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish and encompass[ed] roughly eight square miles."{{Cite journal |last=Eichhorn |first=M. L. |date=Summer 2015 |title=Millaudon and Gardanne Family Papers (2015.0073) |journal=The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly |page=24 | volume=XXXII |issue=3 |issn=0886-2109 |url=https://www.hnoc.org/sites/default/files/quarterly/HNOC_Q3_15.pdf}}
A coastwise slave-ship manifest from 1837, held at the New-York Historical Society, lists "Lawrence Millaudon" and George Lane as the consignees of a shipment of 73 enslaved people sailing from Alexandria, Virginia, to New Orleans on the brig Isaac Franklin.{{Cite web |title=[Manifest of the Brig Isaac Franklin] {{!}} New York Historical Society|url=https://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora:139296#page/1/mode/1up |access-date=2023-10-08 |website=digitalcollections.nyhistory.org}} His railroad interests included cofounding the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad. The 1856 steamship Laurent Millaudon was either named for him or built by him.
Just before the American Civil War, Millaudon sold his million-dollar (in 1859 currency) sugar plantation to his son. In 1862, there was a violent altercation involving whips, axes, and guns, between Henry Clement "H.C." Millaudon, the overseer (Millaudon's son, who had purchased the property from his father in 1859, along with 443 slavehands). The result was that H.C. Millaudon was killed, and several people were wounded before 150 slaves self-emancipated and left the plantation for good en masse.{{Cite book |last=Jung |first=Moon-Ho |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WLIL6BQoEAgC&dq=%22Laurent+Millaudon%22&pg=PA52 |title=Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation |date=2006 |publisher=JHU Press |isbn=978-0-8018-8281-4 |page=52 |language=en}} After the war, investors from Boston who had purchased the plantation relatively cheap hired Chinese immigrant laborers to take the slaves' place.
See also
- Dominique François Victor Burthe, son-in-law
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{Cite journal |last1=Millaudon |first1=Laurent |last2=Boswell |first2=William |last3=Greeves |first3=John G. |title=Sale of Land from Laurent Millaudon to John G. Greeves |url=https://jstor.org/stable/community.31031531 |language=en |journal=Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection, Xavier University of Louisiana, Archives and Special Collections |jstor=community.31031531}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Millaudon, Benjamin Laurent}}
Category:French emigrants to the United States
Category:19th-century American businesspeople
Category:American slave owners
Category:Businesspeople from New Orleans
Category:19th-century American planters
Category:Sugar plantation owners
Category:Place of death missing
Category:Sugar industry of Louisiana
Category:American sugar industry businesspeople
{{US-business-bio-stub}}