Marie Catherine Laveau is believed to have been born in 1801 in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Her mother, Margarite de Cantrell, was a freed slave, and her father, Charles Laveau, was the illegitimate son of a surveyor and politician who had served as mayor of the city. Both parents were free people of color, though surviving records are too thin to say much more about their lives. Some accounts describe her father as a wealthy plantation owner; others claim he ran a shop.
To understand the woman who would become New Orleans’ legendary Voodoo Queen, it is necessary to look back at the world that shaped her. France had claimed the Louisiana Territory in 1682, and French colonists frequently married Indigenous women, surviving in large part thanks to Native American assistance. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne founded New Orleans, and in 1722 the city became the capital of French Louisiana. The French wanted to expand the colony and make it profitable, but they lacked both resources and manpower.
The solution was the mass importation of enslaved West and Central Africans, shipped to New Orleans and sold in its ports. That is precisely what happened to Laveau’s great-grandmother in 1743, when she was stolen from her family and sold into slavery in a foreign land. By that time, the French legal code known as the Black Code had become more liberal, in part because Louisiana had passed into Spanish hands. Through the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762, France ceded the territory to Spain, which had acquired it after years of costly conflict.
Spanish rule brought slightly better conditions for the enslaved. They could work in their free time and save money to purchase their freedom, and on Sundays they were permitted to gather in the square and dance to African rhythms. Relationships similar to marriage between white men and free women of color were also tolerated. Laveau’s grandmother Catherine was born into slavery a few years before her daughter’s birth.
She was eventually purchased by François Pumith, a successful entrepreneur of color, and through hard work she bought her own freedom. At the age of 42, she built a small home in the French Quarter on Saint Anne Street, a cottage that would later become famous as the residence of the city’s Voodoo Queen. Laveau’s mother also began life enslaved, but after diligent service she was freed at just 18. In October 1800, Spanish rule in Louisiana came to an end.
Under the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain returned the territory to France in exchange for the Duchy of Parma. Napoleon Bonaparte, however, soon decided against keeping the vast colony. Following a revolution in Haiti and the breakdown of relations with Britain, he sold Louisiana to the newly formed United States for 15 million dollars in 1803. In April 1812, Louisiana became the eighteenth state.
It was unlike the rest of the country in almost every way. French remained the dominant spoken language, official documents were written in Spanish, and Catholicism was the established religion. Many white southerners were disturbed by the fact that people of color could own property and businesses, and that enslaved people had genuine opportunities to earn their freedom. Marie Laveau embodied that cultural diversity.
She was a free woman of color of African, Native American, and French descent. Little is known of her early life, but she is remembered as a child who attended Mass nearly every day. She was likely raised in her grandmother’s home, where she learned the trade that would serve her so well: she became a hairdresser. In the New Orleans of her youth, Roman Catholic practice was often mixed with Voodoo.
Practitioners believed in God, but they also communicated with ancestral spirits, and the rituals intrigued her. Many of these traditions had been passed down through her mother and grandmother. On the 4th of August 1819, Marie married Jacques Paris, a free man of color who worked as a carpenter. He had come to New Orleans as a refugee during the Haitian Revolution, one of thousands who fled the island.
The couple already had a daughter, Félicité, born in 1817, and their second daughter was baptized in 1820. Then the records fall silent. The daughters disappear from the archives, and Jacques Paris vanishes as well. There is no documentation of his death, only a declaration on his daughter’s baptismal record.
It is one of the many mysteries surrounding Marie’s life. What is known is that around this time she began calling herself the Widow Paris. In 1826, she entered into a relationship with Louis Christophe de Glapion, a wealthy white nobleman of French descent from a prominent New Orleans family. Interracial marriage was forbidden, and so they never wed.
Their relationship lasted until his death. Reports claim the couple had fifteen children, though records show that Marie gave birth to only seven, three of whom died in infancy. It is thought that her youngest daughter became the infamous Marie Laveau the Second, though the evidence is uncertain. How Marie Laveau rose to become the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans is unknown.
Some have theorized that she trained under earlier practitioners, or even under the celebrated Dr. John, but it is more likely that she was propelled by the teachings of her mother and grandmother. When she gained such prominence is also unclear, though perhaps it was during the 1840s. A newspaper article from 1869 claimed that she had reigned as Voodoo Queen for a quarter of a century.
Life for free people of color in New Orleans was precarious, perched between poverty and enslavement. Marie supported her fellow citizens and wielded great influence in the city. Much of her power came from her profession. As a hairdresser, she styled the hair of some of the most powerful women in town, and she listened carefully to their secrets, complaints, and gossip.
This knowledge made many believe she had powers of divination, and her reputation grew so great that the police were afraid to confront her. She conducted Voodoo rituals in her cottage on Saint Anne Street, danced in Congo Square, and led ceremonies along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain on Saint John’s Eve. She walked the streets as if she owned them and danced as if she commanded the spirit world. She was known to dance with her snake, Le Grand Zombi, the great serpent spirit of New Orleans Voodoo, a symbol of her power in the community.
Though the city had other Voodoo queens, her influence was such that she reigned over them all. Legend claimed that her powers made her feared, and stories circulated of what happened to those who offended her. Her abilities ranged from casting spells to performing exorcisms, and her practices brought her income through the sale of amulets called gris-gris, charms of African origin believed to bring luck or protect the wearer. She offered sacrifices to the spirits and acted as an oracle.
Her strange potions, her complex rituals, and the sudden disappearance of her first husband led many to believe she consorted with the devil. One early twentieth-century writer, John Kendall, described how carriages would roll up to her door after dark, and unveiled ladies in elegant attire would hurry inside to buy what the old witch had for sale. He called her an arrant fraud, though he was one of many ill-informed observers who associated Voodoo with dark arts. The core value of New Orleans Voodoo was protection and healing.
Marie’s home was filled with images of saints, and she attended Catholic Mass almost daily. She had a strong desire to help her community. When free women of color were accused of crimes, she frequently posted their bonds. She comforted prisoners with food and prayers and offered them guidance toward redemption.
She sponsored the education of orphans and came to the aid of Native American women. Her kindness was so well known that she was regarded by many as a living saint. In 1855, Christophe Glapion died, leaving Marie deeply in debt. Combined with her philanthropic nature, this placed her in a difficult financial position, yet her devotion to the people of New Orleans continued.
The city’s poor sanitation, subtropical climate, and frequent flooding spread disease, and yellow fever epidemics were common. The medicine of the time did little good, relying on bleeding, emetics, and laxatives. The natural remedies provided by Afro-Creole nurses such as Marie were far more helpful. Working with parish priests, they gave patients nutritional herbal teas and refreshing baths.
The Civil War brought worse times for Marie and other Voodoo practitioners. Racial tensions produced new laws, including the prohibition of Voodoo ceremonies. After the war and the Emancipation Proclamation, white supremacists worked to degrade Voodoo, associating it with evil. Some mocked its dances and rituals as orgies; others claimed the practices proved that Africans were ignorant.
As the years passed, Marie grew old and weak, slowly becoming more impoverished. She died in her cottage on the 15th of June 1881. A large and diverse crowd attended her funeral, including members of the white elite, and thousands took to the streets to pay their respects to the woman who had helped so many. She was buried in Saint Louis Cemetery Number One.
The distinguished writer Lafcadio Hearn called her one of the kindest women who ever lived, and reporters of the time described her as a saintly figure who nursed the sick and prayed incessantly. Marie Laveau’s life and legend endure. Every year, thousands visit her tomb in New Orleans. Her story has inspired books, songs, television shows, and films, though most of them emphasize and exaggerate her powers.
Much of her life remains shrouded in mystery, and we will never truly know just how much of a Voodoo Queen she really was.