One thing about the good old Roman Catholic church, they always wanted a warm body regardless of color!! Also, the priests didn't want people "living in sin" and since they knew they had been and would continue to do so they figured they might as well bless it and catch the kids to keep on upping Church numbers of "saved souls". I wonder about dispensation for consanguinity as well. I've never found this issue addressed re LA. However, the other custom you describe where widowers and widows married their in-laws is quite common. Among the Hebrews it was called the Levirate and it passed into (Judeo)Christian practice. > From: carolynlong@earthlink.net > To: laorlean@rootsweb.com > Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:50:47 -0400 > Subject: [LAORLEAN] Catholic church on interracial relationshops and consanguinity > > During the French, Spanish, and most of the American periods in Louisiana, European/Caucasion and African/Negro persons could not marry each other--although I've heard of a few such marriages during the colonial period. I can't put my hands on any examples just now. Civil marriage licenses weren't required until later, but the priest/minister knew better then to try it. One exception I found was that in 1845 Eugene Macarty (white) and Eulalie Mandeville (fwc) were married at St. Augustin's Church when they were both in their 70s (they'd been together for over 50 years and had seven children together) and Eugene was on his deathbed (thanks to Sonja MacCarthy for finding this). The priest slipped the record into the "white" book years later. From 1870 to 1894 interracial marriages were actually legal, but, as we all know, from the late nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century, Jim Crow racism prevailed. > > I've found that in the 1700s and the early 1800s, the Catholic Church was sympathetic to interracial couples, baptized their children, allowed the white fathers to sign the baptismal record and/or claim paternity, and the parents, who were theoretically "living in sin," were not barred from receiving communion. > > I don't know much about dispensations for consanguinity, because it didn't come up in the New Orleans Catholic families I've been researching. I did find several cases here in the District of Columbia where I live, where a man's wife died and left him with young children and he married his late wife's sister or cousin. When I expressed shock at this, a more seasoned local researcher said it was common. These people were most often Anglican (Episcoplaian) not Catholic. > > Carolyn Long > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LAORLEAN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

From: calyxcorolla@hotmail.com To: carolynlong@earthlink.net; laorlean@rootsweb.com Subject: RE: [LAORLEAN] Catholic church on interracial relationshops and consanguinity Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 15:54:07 -0700 One thing about the good old Roman Catholic church, they always wanted a warm body regardless of color!! Also, the priests didn't want people "living in sin" and since they knew they had been and would continue to do so they figured they might as well bless it and catch the kids to keep on upping Church numbers of "saved souls". I wonder about dispensation for consanguinity as well. I've never found this issue addressed re LA. However, the other custom you describe where widowers and widows married their in-laws is quite common. Among the Hebrews it was called the Levirate and it passed into (Judeo)Christian practice. > From: carolynlong@earthlink.net > To: laorlean@rootsweb.com > Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:50:47 -0400 > Subject: [LAORLEAN] Catholic church on interracial relationshops and consanguinity > > During the French, Spanish, and most of the American periods in Louisiana, European/Caucasion and African/Negro persons could not marry each other--although I've heard of a few such marriages during the colonial period. I can't put my hands on any examples just now. Civil marriage licenses weren't required until later, but the priest/minister knew better then to try it. One exception I found was that in 1845 Eugene Macarty (white) and Eulalie Mandeville (fwc) were married at St. Augustin's Church when they were both in their 70s (they'd been together for over 50 years and had seven children together) and Eugene was on his deathbed (thanks to Sonja MacCarthy for finding this). The priest slipped the record into the "white" book years later. From 1870 to 1894 interracial marriages were actually legal, but, as we all know, from the late nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century, Jim Crow racism prevailed. > > I've found that in the 1700s and the early 1800s, the Catholic Church was sympathetic to interracial couples, baptized their children, allowed the white fathers to sign the baptismal record and/or claim paternity, and the parents, who were theoretically "living in sin," were not barred from receiving communion. > > I don't know much about dispensations for consanguinity, because it didn't come up in the New Orleans Catholic families I've been researching. I did find several cases here in the District of Columbia where I live, where a man's wife died and left him with young children and he married his late wife's sister or cousin. When I expressed shock at this, a more seasoned local researcher said it was common. These people were most often Anglican (Episcoplaian) not Catholic. > > Carolyn Long > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LAORLEAN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message