Death Rites as Birthrights in Atlantic New Orleans: Kinship and Race in the Case of María Teresa v. Perine Dauphine

Abstract

In 1789, a New Orleans free woman of colour named María Teresa initiated legal proceedings against Pelagia ‘Perine’ Dauphine dit Demasillier, another free woman of colour living in the city. More than a question of inheritance, the case of María Tereza, grifa libre v. Perine Demasillier, mulata libre was a dispute between two women over the meanings of and obligations to family in late eighteenth-century New Orleans. Their legal battle exemplified ways free women of colour constructed kinship beyond biological ties, gradations of race and bonded status even while seeking redress from institutions with imperial definitions of the same.