Talk:St. Augustine Catholic Church and Cemetery (Natchez, Louisiana)

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History[edit]

Thanks for adding so much to the history of the church.--Parkwells (talk) 11:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for creating this article, Parkwells. Incidentally, the online sources that are convenient to you do not clearly or accurately treat the manumission of Coincoin and Metoyer's children. I've revised that portion of your text. Metoyer did not manumit his "oldest sons" at the time he manumitted Coincoin, only their newest infant, Antoine Joseph. Nor is there any evidence that Coincoin arranged with him for the manumission of their other children, although we may fairly confidently assume there was an "understanding" between them. The actual manumissions by Metoyer were as follows: Eldest son Nicolas Augustin, 1792 (14 years after Coincoin); fourth son Dominique, 1795; second and third sons, Louis and Pierre, 1802. Younger sons were born free. The only daughter to survive childhood, Augustin's twin Susanne, was declared a statu liber in Metoyer's will of 1801, but did not become legally free until his death in 1815, when she was 47. Meanwhile, Coincoin began manumitting her pre-Metoyer children in 1786.Eshown (talk) 16:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Parkwells, I have updated this article to do four things:

1. Express the significance of St. Augustine in its lead paragraph.
2. Correct the erroneous historical assertion that St. Augustine is the oldest church erected by and for free people of color in the U.S., with appropriate documentation of the type Wikipedia prefers.
3. Eliminate the erroneous assertion that "The congregation may have gathered then [in 1803]." There is simply no evidence to support that and all evidence disputes it--including evidence not found by Gary B. Mills at the time he wrote FP. In addition to the evidence that FP offers, please consider the following. (A) A Catholic "congregation" would not be a "congregation" if it did not have a meeting house. (B) The annual administrative reports of the parish priest discuss the *need* for a mission chapel in the region where Catholics could gather, but it did not materialize. (C) The sacramental records of St. Francois (and Cloutierville in the mid-1820s) identify the homes in which Catholic families gathered when a priest made his circuit of the parish.
4. Remove the accented é from the Metoyer name. No accent was ever used in their signatures, beginning with the first Pierre, and the few times that a civil or church official used it, it was used only at the last e, with the subsequent r deleted--i.e., Metoyé.

You may be interested to know that my substantial update/revision of Forgotten People for LSU Press should be finished shortly and is scheduled for release in Fall 2013. Issues and evidence surrounding the creation of St. Augustine will be further discussed therein. Also, the winter issue of Louisiana History, to be released shortly, will carry a lengthy analysis of the evidence relating to the other Metoyer sites on Cane River. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eshown (talk • contribs) 18:14, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]