Mary Odile Chastang married Ramon (Raymond) Francisco Soto. This is a picture of Odile and all of their children at Raymond's funeral in 1908. Photo courtesy of Angie Schusse-Warren.
MCCHPS has a digitization project. There is over 1,000 linear feet of material to digitize with information tracing back to the Spanish land grants. Please consider helping us preserve this piece of Mobile history. Join us in supporting a good cause. We are raising money for Mobile Creole Cultural and Historical Preservation Society, and your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate $5 or $500. Every little bit helps. Thank you for your support.
In the revised edition of The Forgotten People: Cane River’s Creoles of Color by Gary B. Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills, the term Creole is used “to signify any person born in the colony of ancestry from abroad” (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, p. xxix). The same definition could apply to Creoles in Mobile and Baldwin counties, Alabama, particularly Creoles of color who owed their “origins to the offspring produced by relationships between the French and Spanish settlers and their white descendants and Negro women, slave and free. Not only did white males have children with their slave concubines, but they also freed their ‘wives’ and made provisions to manumit their nonwhite children. In many instances French and Spanish men publicly acknowledged their interracial relationships and children. At other times they did not admit that they had mulatto children, but various records make evident who the white parents of these mulatto children were. Usually the relationships between the white males and nonwhite females were long-term, indicating strong family ties and a genuine concern for the well-being of their offspring.” (“Free Negroes in Mobile County, Alabama”, Ph. D. dissertation, University of Alabama, 2)
Among the more prominent and numerous Creoles of color in Mobile were the Chastangs, Andrys, and Dubrocas. For a discussion of the origins and other aspects of Creole life in Mobile, please see the bibliography page on this site.
For a further discussion of the term Creole, please see the discussion on the Facebook page "Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color" at https://www.facebook.com/ForgottenPeopleCaneRiverCreoles/posts/539159849549140?hc_location=ufi
To join our mailing list for updates and events list click on this link mcchps.ck.page/fa36fd157e
In the revised edition of The Forgotten People: Cane River’s Creoles of Color by Gary B. Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills, the term Creole is used “to signify any person born in the colony of ancestry from abroad” (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, p. xxix). The same definition could apply to Creoles in Mobile and Baldwin counties, Alabama, particularly Creoles of color who owed their “origins to the offspring produced by relationships between the French and Spanish settlers and their white descendants and Negro women, slave and free. Not only did white males have children with their slave concubines, but they also freed their ‘wives’ and made provisions to manumit their nonwhite children. In many instances French and Spanish men publicly acknowledged their interracial relationships and children. At other times they did not admit that they had mulatto children, but various records make evident who the white parents of these mulatto children were. Usually the relationships between the white males and nonwhite females were long-term, indicating strong family ties and a genuine concern for the well-being of their offspring.” (“Free Negroes in Mobile County, Alabama”, Ph. D. dissertation, University of Alabama, 2)
Among the more prominent and numerous Creoles of color in Mobile were the Chastangs, Andrys, and Dubrocas. For a discussion of the origins and other aspects of Creole life in Mobile, please see the bibliography page on this site.
For a further discussion of the term Creole, please see the discussion on the Facebook page "Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color" at https://www.facebook.com/ForgottenPeopleCaneRiverCreoles/posts/539159849549140?hc_location=ufi
To join our mailing list for updates and events list click on this link mcchps.ck.page/fa36fd157e
