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Martin Duralde

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Louisiana colonial administrator (c. 1736–1822)
Portrait of Martin Duralde, painted by José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza, from the family archive of Dr. and Mrs. Martin Duralde Claiborne III (photo by Historic New Orleans Collection, 2023)

Martin Molinoy Duralde (c. 1736 – November 21, 1822) was a native of France who came to American with the fur trade, surveyed the original square for St. Louis, and served as a Spanish colonial administrator in Louisiana, North America. He is an important source on the Indigenous people of Louisiana and their languages. He served as a Louisiana state legislator, and was considered an important figure in the Francophone community in the early years of the American era of Louisiana history. Three of his children married into notable American political families.

Biography

Duralde was born in Aix-les-Bains, in the Basque Country of Spain and France. His father was French, and his mother was Spanish, and he himself "spoke several languages" and enjoyed the study of dialects. He migrated to North America in 1767 and was involved in the establishment of St. Louis in what is now the U.S. state of Missouri, surveying the first town square. He worked in the fur trade, hunting and exporting peltry, and eventually moved from the Illinois country to Louisiana for business. By 1781 he owned a 1,423-acre (5.76 km) tract of land along the upper Bayou Teche. In 1795 governor Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet appointed Duralde commandant of the Opelousas post, which position he held until 1803. Construction on his house, now called Maison Stephanie, was completed in 1796. The bricks used in constructing the house were made on site from local clay, and bald cypress was used for the framing and the doors. The house stands near Bayou Teche, in present-day St. Martin Parish.

Duralde was interested in "the natural world and used geologic evidence and Native American oral histories to compare contemporary and historical landscapes and vegetation." He is a primary source on the language of the Atakapa people. Further, he is "virtually the only source" on the Chitimacha and Opelousa.

His wife was a woman from Quebec, Marie Josèphe Perrault. They had six children together: Martin Duralde Jr., Joseph Valmon Duralde, Celeste Duralde, Louise Duralde, Julie Duralde, and Clarice Duralde. In 1806, one of his daughters, Clarisse, married the governor of Mississippi Territory and American Louisiana W. C. C. Claiborne. Duralde Jr. married Susan Hart Clay, a daughter of Henry Clay, in Lexington, Kentucky in 1822. Henry Clay's brother John Clay married Julie Duralde. Celeste and Louise married Valerian Allain and Pierre Soniat. Joseph Valmon, known as Col. J. V. Duralde, married Gertrude de Vahamonde, daughter of a Spanish officer stationed at Baton Rouge, José Vázquez Bahamonde (also spelled Josef, Baamonde, Vaamonde, Vahamonde), who was possibly born 1748 in Galicia.

There is a surviving portrait of Duralde that was painted by Josef Salazar. Duralde served in the Louisiana State Legislature in 1812 as a representative from Attakapas. He died on his plantation in the Attakapas section of Louisiana in 1822. He specified in his will that some of his slaves were to be emancipated but most were auctioned off as part of the estate. His plantation was purchased by Charles Henri Lastrapes. Duralde was remembered in 1845 as having been "enlightened and highly respected."

Descendants

Martin Duralde Jr. was appointed to be U.S. marshal of New Orleans in 1811. After Susan Clay Duralde died in 1825 her children went to live with their grandparents Henry and Lucretia Clay at Ashland in Kentucky. Martin Duralde Jr. was a candidate for governor of Louisiana in 1830. Clay stayed at Duralde Jr. house's "three miles below" New Orleans for several months in 1831. Duralde was appointed to a patronage position in 1841. Duralde died on the return trip from the Mexican-American War, where he had worked as some kind of merchant to the troops; the entire ship caught yellow fever, except for one young boy, possibly an enslaved cabin boy, and Duralde was found dying beside the dead captain after the ship drifted aground near New Orleans.

Martin Duralde III was involved in a bloodless duel with Dr. Mosby of Virginia in 1841 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The humorous and charming journal of Martin Duralde III, described as a "tubercular gambler," during a tour of Virginia therapeutic hot springs in 1846 is held in the special collections of the Virginia State Library. Martin Duralde III died in Philadelphia later that year. Henry C. Duralde, his brother, went to California for the gold rush but died by drowning after falling overboard from the steamer Yuba on the Sacramento River in 1850.

J. V. Duralde Jr. was once a candidate for Louisiana state office on the Know Nothing ticket and was president of the Grosse Tete and Opelousas Railroad.

References

  1. ^ "Les Vieux Tenps by Floyd Knott". Teche News. 2010-06-30. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  2. ^ "Church of the Annuciation Is Center of Duralde Life by Darrel LeJeune". Basile Weekly. 2022-09-01. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  3. ^ Mamalakis, Mario (1981-01-18). "Huron Plantation Dates Back to 1811". The Daily Advertiser. p. 77. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  4. "Historical Maison Stephanie Is Now Bed and Breakfast". Teche News. 2021-11-17. p. 9. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  5. "Historical Maison Stephanie Is Now Bed and Breakfast". Teche News. 2021-11-17. p. 9. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  6. "Salazar's Surprises". Historic New Orleans Collection.
  7. Usner, Daniel H. (2021). "Chitimacha Diplomacy and Commerce in Colonial Louisiana". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 62 (2): 133–176. ISSN 0024-6816.
  8. Randolph, Ned. “A Mudscape in Motion.” Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta: A Call for Reclamation, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2024, pp. 20–38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.10782300.7 Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.
  9. Redman, Harry (1990). "Chateaubriand and his Memoirs' "Louisianaise"". Nineteenth-Century French Studies. 19 (1): 22–35. ISSN 0146-7891.
  10. "Standard history of New Orleans, Louisiana; giving a description of the natural advantages, natural history ... settlement, Indians, Creoles, municipal ..." HathiTrust. p. 259. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
  11. "MARRIED". The Evening Post. 1822-05-13. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  12. ^ Apple, Lindsey (2011). The family legacy of Henry Clay: in the shadow of a Kentucky patriarch. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-3410-9.
  13. ^ "Col. J. V. Duralde Dead". The Times-Democrat. 1900-11-02. p. 8. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  14. "SPAIN's Louisiana Patriots in its 1779–1783 War with England • During the AMERICAN Revolution PART 6 OF SPANISH BORDERLANDS STUDIES by Granville W. and N. C. Hough" (PDF).
  15. "Colonial-era painter featured in tricentennial show at Ogden". NOLA.com. 2018-08-01. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  16. "DIED, on the 21st ult". Baton-Rouge Gazette. 1822-12-07. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  17. Clift, G. Glenn (1941). "KENTUCKY MARRIAGES AND OBITUARIES: Volume Two: OBITUARIES (Continued)". Register of Kentucky State Historical Society. 39 (127): 116–137. ISSN 2328-8183.
  18. "Bayou Carrion Crow - Martin Duralde". The Semi-Weekly Mississippi Free Trader. 1845-12-02. p. 1. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  19. Kastor, Peter J. (2001). ""Motives of Peculiar Urgency": Local Diplomacy in Louisiana, 1803–1821". The William and Mary Quarterly. 58 (4): 819–848. doi:10.2307/2674501. ISSN 0043-5597.
  20. "Appointments". National Intelligencer. 1811-01-26. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  21. "Governor of Louisiana". Republican Banner. 1830-02-16. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  22. "Departure of Henry Clay". The Weekly Natchez Courier. 1831-03-26. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  23. "The Proscribed and the Spoilsmen". The Weekly Standard. 1841-05-12. p. 1. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  24. "Martin Duralde Jr". New Orleans Weekly Delta. 1848-10-23. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  25. "Duel at Cincinnati". Baton-Rouge Gazette. 1845-02-01. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  26. "Clay's Gambling Grandson's Letter Record Trip Here". Richmond Times-Dispatch. 1944-12-06. p. 7. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  27. "California". Daily Richmond Times. 1850-10-21. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
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