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Rosette Rochen,
free woman of color, was born a
decade before the American Revolution in about 1767 in Mobile,
Alabama. She died in New Orleans during the Civil War at a very
advanced age in 1863.
Demoiselle Rochen grew to be a successful
entrepreneur, a landowner, a grocer, and a financier.
As one of the earliest investors in the Marigny suburb, she
made a contribution of unquestioned importance to the neighborhood,
the city, and Creole culture. Her story, along with that of
other New Orleanians of African descent of the time, represents
a vital yet little-known part of the history of women, Black
people, the South, and the nation.
Rochon, a wealthy free woman of color
who was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1760, the daughter of Pierre
Rochon, an early shipbuilder and painter, and his slave Marianne.
Freed by her father, she then became the placee (an extra-legal
life partner) of a Monsieur Hardy, with whom she relocated to
Saint-Domingue. Following the Haitian slave rebellion, she escaped
to New Orleans about 1797, where she becamethe placee of oseph
Forstall.
Rochen became one of the earliest investors in the Faubourg
Marigny, acquiring her first lot from Bernard de Marigny in
1806.
Bernard de Marigny refused to sell the
lots he was subdividing from his family plantation to anyone
who spoke English. He felt comfortable with the French-speaking
Catholic free people of color, and consequently much of Faubourg
Marigny was built by free black artisans for free people of
color or for French-speaking white Creoles.
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Rochon speculated
in real estate in the French Quarter and Marigny, owned rental
property, opened grocery stores, made loans, bought and sold
mortgages, and owned and rented out slaves.
She also traveled extensively back to Haiti, where her son by
Hardy had become a government official. Her social circle in
New Orleans included Marie Laveau, Jean Lafitte, the free black
contractors and real estate developers Ursain Guesnon and the
Dolliole brothers.
Through Rochon's real estate ventures
in the neighborhood, she became closely associated with the
free black contractor Bernard Couvent. Couvent's wife
Marie later left her fortune to find the best school open to
free black people in the United States before the Civil War
(succeeded by Bishop Perry Middle School at 1941 Dauphine, also
in Faubourg Marigny). Based on the architectural details, it
appears that Rochon had her home now known as the Musee built
in about the mid-1820s. The prominent free black businesswoman
Eulalie de Mandeville lived next door. Rochon died in 1860 at
the age of 100, leaving behind an estate valued at $100,000
(worth at least $1million today) a spectacular accomplishment
for a woman who remained illiterate.
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