[wozza]

We openly dislike the French.

who doesnt? haha

[Ninong]

We don't dislike the French in this part of the country!

[schrocat]

Sorry you didn't read the memo.

That area south of you is the "Freedom Quarter"...

No more Roux either, it's now refered to as simply gravy.

[Ninong]

Only tourists call it the French Quarter. It's the Vieux Carre.

[Ninong]

Speaking of tourists, when I lived in the Vieux Carre about 35 years ago, I overheard a tourist ask a waiter in a restaurant with a view of the river, "What's the name of that river?"

Judging from the hairdo and the accent, the lady was from Texas.



P.S. -- The waiter was polite but prefaced his response with the observation that he had never been asked that question before in the more than 20 years he'd been working there.

[schrocat]

[schrocat]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Only tourists call it the French Quarter. It's the Vieux Carre.

Exactly.
Vieux Carre sounds waaaaaaaaay too French.
So the Chamber of Commerce renamed it French Quarter.
The operative being "Quarter"...denoting only a fraction of the town would be susceptible to surrenduring when a car backfired.

Don't even get me started with this guy...

See how his arms are crossed in defeat.



I keeed! I keeed!

[Ninong]

Who the hell captioned that picture? Must be a transplant from Texas!

His first name was Jean, not John. Damn Texans are everywhere! (P.S. -- I just checked out the website where you found that picture and now I understand what's wrong. Let's just say that the word "creole" originally meant someone of French or Spanish ancestry who was born in La Nouvelle Orleans and not in Europe. The people on that website have a different interpretation of the word "creole.") Creoles were natives of La Nouvelle Orleans of French or Spanish ancestry. Cajun is a name applied to the descendants of the people who were driven out of New Acadia (now Nova Scotia) by the British. Some 10,000 of them migrated to southeast Louisiana, just west of New Orleans, in 1865. The Brits drove out all the French speaking people from that part of Canada and they came to Louisiana because of the common language.

As you probably know, New Orleans was founded as a French Colony in 1718 but the French sold us to Spain in 1762. They didn't even bother to tell us about it at the time. The first we learned of it was when some Spanish dude showed up in 1764 and said he was our new governor. We didn't like that idea and told him to get lost. Then in 1769, 24 Spanish war ships showed up with 2,000 soldiers. We decided to change all our street names from French to Spanish and the city's name became Nueva Orleans. Then around 1800 Spain sold us back to France but Napoleon didn't tell us about it until just two or three months before he sold us to Thomas Jefferson in 1803. Nobody ever tells us anything. Anyway, we changed all our street names back to French and the name of the city back to Nouvelle Orleans, but within months we changed it to New Orleans. In fact, several years later, they didn't even tell us that the War of 1812 was over. We fought the Battle of New Orleans, the ONLY battle the U.S. won against the British in that war, two weeks after the U.S. had signed a peace treaty ending it. But anyway, we won. Or, I should say that Andrew Jackson won, with the help of Jean Lafitte.

Oh, I almost forgot something. When the English colonies decided to revolt against King George III, we were still a Spanish Colony but we thought of ourselves as Americans. We decided we didn't much like the British, so we sent 20 ships loaded with supplies and ammunition up the east coast to New York to aid the American colonists. This pissed off King George and in 1779 he declared war on Spain. So we proceeded to wipe out the British colonies in Mobile, Baton Rouge, Pensacola and Natchez.




P.S. -- Did you know that the parish I now live in was once part of the Free and Independent Republic of West Florida? And that we had the "Lone Star Flag" before Texas? They stole our design and then added a white and a red bar. But we had it first and it was called "The Lone Star Flag." Take that, Texas!


The Republic of West Florida, aka the State of Florida before it was annexed by the United States (P.S. -- None of East Florida, which comprises the present state of Florida, was part of West Florida, which was known as the State of Florida for all of 90 days.)

According to the constitution, the official name of the nation was the "State of Florida". The first and only governor was Fulwar Skipwith, a former American diplomat who had helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase.

Skipwith proclaimed that he was ready to "die in defense of the Lone Star flag." However, Skipwith and the legislature eventually backed down, and agreed to accept Madison's proclamation.


The Lone Star Flag, aka the Bonnie Blue Flag.

The Texans stole our design and just pushed the star over to the left side of the blue field and added a white bar to the upper right and a red bar beneath it. But their "Lone Star Flag," which was the basis of them calling themselves the "Lone Star State," was stolen from Louisiana. We had our flag in 1810. Haha! And all Texas ever had was "Six Flags Over Texas!" Ha! New Orleans has had at least 10 flags over it. I really haven't counted but I know it's at least 10. We changed hands a lot and France and Spain changed their flags a lot during that period. So we have an entire collection of flags that flew over New Orleans.

[schrocat]

We have only had 5 flags over the great walled city.

Are you counting Pirate flags or something?


P.S. The War of Northern Aggression Flags don't count.

[Ninong]

I found the following on the State's site:

A Brief History of Louisiana
Under 10 Flags


1519 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda led an expedition along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico and discovered the mouth of a great river which may have been the Mississippi.


Spanish Flag of Leone & Castile (DeSoto) [1541]
1542 The Spanish adventurer Hernando de Soto died on the shores of the Mississippi River near present-day Memphis while exploring the southeastern United States. Each year the Mississippi, an Ojibwa Indian word meaning "big river" carries 400,000,000 tons of sediment into the Gulf of Mexico and discharges more water than all European rivers combined.

1682 The French explorer Sieur de La Salle, the first to descend the Mississippi to its mouth, took possession "of the country known as Louisiana," and named it for the reigning monarch of France, Louis XIV.

1714 Louis Juchereau de St. Denis founded Fort St. Jean Baptiste, present-day Natchitoches, the first permanent settlement in Louisiana.

French Fleur-de-Lis (LaSalle) [1682]

1717-31 Louisiana experienced a surge of growth and development as a colony of the Company of the West and, after 1719, its successor the Company of the Indies. The Company of the West was an elaborate colonization scheme of the Scotsman John Law, endorsed by the French government, which wreaked havoc on the entire economy of France.

1718 Sieur de Bienville began building New Orleans as a company town for the Company of the West. By 1721 New Orleans had a population of more than 370 people, including 147 male colonists, 65 female colonists, 38 children, 28 servants, 73 slaves and 21 Indians.

1762 By the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau, France ceded its unprofitable and remote territories west of the Mississippi and the Isle of Orleans to Spain. It was 23 months later before the colonists in Louisiana learned they were no longer French subjects.

Voltaire lamented the loss of Louisiana, saying that he could not conceive how Frenchmen could abandon "the most beautiful climate of the earth, from which one may have tobacco, silk, indigo, a thousand useful products." The average annual winter temperature for the state is 50.7 degrees, for the summer it is 82 degrees. Average annual rainfall is 55.45 inches.


British Grand Union [1763]

1763 By the Peace of Paris, Great Britain acquired from France its Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi and north of the Isle of Orleans. Spain ceded to Britain its territories of East and West Florida. Baton Rouge was fortified by the British and called New Richmond.

1788 The first Saint Louis church, completed in 1727, was destroyed by the fire of 1788 which destroyed four-fifths of New 0rleans. When the city and church were rebuilt the architecture was, of Spanish rather than French style. In 1793, Louisiana and the two Floridas were formed into a new diocese and their headquarters was moved from Havana, Cuba to New Orleans. One year later, St. Louis church was dedicated as a cathedral. It underwent extensive renovations in 1850 and 1881.


Bourbon Spain [1769]

1769 Spanish Governor Alejandro O'Reilly finally established firm control of Louisiana for Spain. O'Reilly divided the province into 12 administrative districts called posts and 22 ecclesiastical parishes. The system of posts died with the end of Spanish rule, but parishes ultimately persisted as the primary county-level administrative unit under territorial and state governments.

1779 War broke out between Spain and Britain; Spanish Governor Bernardo de Galvez conducted a surprise attack on the British fort at Baton Rouge and captured the outpost. As a result of this victory, the West Florida Parishes were returned to Spanish rule.

1791 Refugee players from Santo Domingo presented in New Orleans the first professional theatrical production in Louisiana.


French Tri-Color [1803]

1800 Spain officially returned the Louisiana territory West of the Mississippi to France by the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso to avoid the continued deficits the colony caused and the growing possibility that Spain might have to fight the restless Americans to retain control of the lands. (France did not actually take control until November 1803.)

1803 The United States purchased from Napoleon the territory of Louisiana for $15,000,000. Upon concluding the purchase Robert Livingston, America's Minister to France, said of the transfer, "We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives ... From this day the United States will take their place among the powers of the first rank ... The instruments which we have just signed will cause no tears to be shed; they prepare ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures."


U.S. Flag of 15 Stars [1803] "The Star Spangled Banner"

1804 William Charles Cole Claiborne was appointed governor of the Territory of Orleans, which the area of present-day Louisiana was called. Before then he was governor of Mississippi Territory and the lone representative in Congress of Tennessee. Claiborne was selected as one of the commissioners to receive the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. In 1812 Claiborne was elected the state's first governor, a position he held until 1816 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He died in 1817.

1805 The first Protestant church in Louisiana, an Episcopal church, was established in New Orleans.

1808 The first public schools in the state were established in Pointe Coupee Parish.


West Florida Lone Star [1810]

1810 The American citizens of Spain's West Florida territory, who had dramatically increased in number, took control of the Spanish government there and declared the territory a republic. The republic comprised the area of present-day Louisiana known as the Florida Parishes.

1812 Louisiana formally became the 18th state to join the union. William Charles Cole Claiborne was elected its first governor. The New Orleans, the first steamboat to navigate the Mississippi, arrived at New Orleans from Pittsburgh beginning the golden era of the steamboat.

1815 Andrew Jackson defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans and saved control of the lower Mississippi for the United States. The British troops numbered about 8,000 to Jackson's 4,000 defenders.

1821 Artist Jean Jacques Audubon set up a studio in New Orleans.

1837 Shreveport was founded.

1838 The first Mardi Gras parade took place in New Orleans on Shrove Tuesday.

1850 The capital was transferred to Baton Rouge from New Orleans where a new statehouse was waiting. Built at a cost of $100,000, the American gothic design of the building was very much in vogue. Mark Twain said about the building, "...this little sham castle ... this architectural falsehood ... this whitewashed castle with turrets and things would never been built in this otherwise honorable place had it not been for the medieval romances of Sir Walter Scott."



Independent Louisiana [1861]

1861 For two months after seceding from the Union and before joining the Confederacy, Louisiana flew the flag of an independent nation.


Confederate Flag
[1861]1864 General Henry W. Allen was installed as governor of Confederate Louisiana and earned a reputation as the best administrator in the Confederacy.

1861-65 For a year after the Civil War broke out Louisiana was undisturbed. In 1862, however, New Orleans was captured. In 1863 the longest siege in American military history took place at Port Hudson, the southernmost point of the Confederacy's hold on the Mississippi.

1873 Black Lieutenant Governor P.B.S. Pinchback served briefly as Louisiana's Chief Executive.

1877 "The Reconstruction Period" ended in Louisiana when President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew United States Army units from the state after the longest occupation of any of the southern states.

1901 The first oil well in Louisiana was drilled in Jennings marking the start of the state's important oil industry. In 1992 Louisiana ranked second in natural gas, third in crude oil production, and second overall with regard to energy, including coal.


Louisiana Flag [1912]

1912 The Louisiana Legislature adopted an official state flag, which consists of a field of solid blue with the pelican group from the state seal in white and gold. This is the flag that is in use today.


P.S. -- They don't even list the Confederate Battle Flag but maybe that was one of those "politically correct" things?

[schrocat]

1718?
Awwwwww!

You guys are puppies!

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

1718?
Awwwwww!

You guys are puppies!

The Queen will be coming over next year for the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown. I think she's doing it just to remind her son that she was queen for the 350th anniversary, too, and might still be queen for the 450th anniversary.

How come we don't invite Juan Carlos for St. Augustine's anniversaries? Those snobby East Coast elites! They're still wannabe Tories!

Just think, if Spain had sent more Spanish colonists to New Spain, we might be speaking Spanish from Florida to California now??? The few Spanish colonists they sent to La Nouvelle Orleans during the three decades they occupied it quickly started speaking French.

[schrocat]

Originally Posted by Ninong

How come we don't invite Juan Carlos for St. Augustine's anniversaries? Those snobby East Coast elites! They're still wannabe Tories!

Sacre Bleu!

Tories? East Coast Elites?

What a great idea! We should have him visit our city sometime.

:slap:

[Ninong]

See, I told you it was a good idea!



P.S. -- Speaking of Tories, you guys were loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. That was during your Tory Period, remember? That would be the period from 1763 to 1783 when you were a British colony. The Florida Parishes in Louisiana (West Florida) were British, too, but the rowdy Americans from Nueva Orleans captured the British fort at Baton Rouge after King George declared war on Spain in 1779.

Then in 1783, the Brits gave both East and West Florida back to Spain. Nueva Orleans remained a Spanish colony until 1800 but nobody told us that we were French again until late in 1803. We hurried up and changed all the street names back to French from Spanish and changed the Plaza de Armas back to the Vieux Carre but right after we changed the name of the city back to Nouvelle Orleans, we had to change it again to New Orleans. We decided to leave the street names in French, with Spanish subtitles in some cases. I guess we were trying to be politically correct before its time?

[schrocat]

Guilty as charged.

Jesse Fish etc. if you wish to delve deeper...please don't.

My boat is in a hurricane hole on his old estate.

[Ninong]

Boy! We sure dragged this poor thread off-topic!



P.S. -- One more little bit of trivia: The "French Quarter" is almost all Spanish architecture. That's because all of the French Colonial buildings burned to the ground in the great fire of 1788 and the Spanish administrators rebuilt the city with Spanish architecture. Then they promptly gave up and ceded us back to France in 1800 without even telling us anything about it. We finally figured out that we might be French again when we read that Thomas Jefferson had offered Napoleon $3 million for Nouvelle Orleans. Napoleon countered that he would sell all of the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. for $15 million. Quite a bargain but Congress wanted to impeach Jefferson for wasting such an outrageous sum of money on a wilderness. He was supposed to purchase just the port of Nouvelle Orleans, not half the country!

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

Guilty as charged.

Jesse Fish etc. if you wish to delve deeper...please don't.

My boat is in a hurricane hole on his old estate.

Wow! You go back that far!?!

All of my ancestors (1/4 English, 1/4 German and 1/2 French) came over in the 1870's. The French side came from Normandy, not Canada.

[schrocat]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Wow! You go back that far!?!

All of my ancestors (1/4 English, 1/4 German and 1/2 French) came over in the 1870's. The French side came from Normandy, not Canada.

No, we only go back to 1830 South Ga on my Mom's side. Dad's folks show up in Fernandina Beach (from NC via England) right after the Wa'ar.
We roll into St A. a little after Henry "build it and they will come" Flagler.

I thought you were digging around some of those awful loyalist quotes from the SA historical site.
Jesse I believe was the most notorious.
He was a player.
I feel guilty respecting him so much...he had a lot to juggle politically and could apparently "sell saltwater on the beach".