"No legal ancestors or descendants"
My 3 great Grandfather Louis Bertonneau was a merchant and free man of color in New Orleans, born about 1805. I believe he came from Haiti at the turn of the century while the French and Spanish were fighting. I would like to find his parents' names if possible. His marriage record states that he has no legal descendants or ancestors. He died on a merchant voyage to Mexico and there is no death certificate. Are there any civil records in Louisiana that might have included names of parents? I am at a brick wall. Microfilms from location Cap Francais, and period in Haiti are scarce, destroyed by civil unrest, slave revolts, etc.
Answers
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It seem you have already checked every possible place I know of.
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The 1850 U.S. census for New Orleans lists a Louis Bertonneau as a “Coffee H. Keeper” with a wife and five children. This census does not confirm the family relationships, but it is probably safe to assume this is a family. He also appears to be listed in the 1840 census. It does not appear that his parents are living with him so it is likely they are still in Haiti.
Louis was clearly living in New Orleans by 1831. Louis Bertonneau is listed, on the manifest of the schooner Peru of Baltimore, as the owner of a cargo shipment of about 170 bags of coffee bound from Port au Prince to New Orleans on November 23, 1831. His residence is given as New Orleans. See link below.
A search on Ancestry.com turns up a bunch of French birth records referencing a Louis Bertonneau. I do not speak French and have no idea whether one or more of these might be the same Louis Bertonneau. The Ancestry documents are all covered by copyright so I cannot upload the images here. If you search Ancestry.com for Louis Bertonneau in Haiti, you will find the same records.
I am curious as to where you found his marriage certificate that states he has no legal ancestors or descendants? Seems like an odd thing to put on a marriage record.
If he immigrated to Louisiana and his parents remained in Haiti, there is not like to be a record of the parents unless they are listed on a death certificate. You say he died on a ship enroute to Mexico. If that is the case, he was either buried at sea or removed from the ship in a Mexican port. In either event, the death should have been reported to Mexican authorities upon arrival. If you know the Mexican port, you might try looking for a death record or a coroners record in Mexico? These records are not likely to include information on his parentage.
Remember, online records represent only a tiny portion of the records held by government agencies in the U.S. as well as in other countries. Haiti became independent of France in 1804 so records before that date may be housed in France. If he was born (baptized?) in Haiti, there would likely be a church record in the church where the baptism took place. The fighting between the French and Spanish could have destroyed government records but the fact that France and Spain were both very Catholic, it is hard to imagine that they would have intentionally destroyed church records.
Following a slave revolution in 1804, which was essentially a massacre, nearly all the clergy left and very few religious services were held for a period of about two years. It wasn’t until 1806 that some missionaries returned. Louis was born during this intervening time when the church in Haiti was virtually nonexistent so church records may not exist.
Have you checked to see if there is a genealogical society in Haiti? Or even a historical society? Coffee was a major industry in Haiti and there may be a museum or archive dedicated to the commodity. If so, it may hold bills of sale with names of plantations. Maybe his parents owned and operated a coffee plantation? I feel your research is at the point where it will need to move away from traditional genealogical sosurces to search for unusual sources of information.
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