Record Details

Catalog Search

Search The Catalog


Back To Results
Showing Item 1 of 1

Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, or, Inside views of Southern domestic life

Summary: Louisa Picquet, child of a slave mother and her white master, was born in Columbia, S.C., but was soon sold with her mother because she looked too much like her master's other child. Around age thirteen, her mother was sold to Mr. Horton, in Texas, and Louisa was sold to Mr. Williams in New Orleans. Louisa lived with him until his death and bore four of his seven children. After his death, she was set free and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. The rest of the narrative describes her successful efforts to raise funds to free her mother. As she was only 1/8 African American, much of the narrative is concerned with Louisa's whiteness and that of her mother and other light-skinned slaves and the sexual exploitation they experienced at the hands of white men. Hiram Mattison met and interviewed Louisa Picquet in Buffalo, New York, in May 1860 and published this narrative, much of it written in interview style to preserve Picquet's own words. He included his own "Conclusion and Moral," emphasizing the many instances of slave women bearing their masters' children, and concludes the work with somber details of slaves being burned alive as punishment.

Electronic resources

Record details

  • Physical Description: Electronic data (1 file : ca. 139 kilobytes).
    remote
    1 electronic resource
  • Edition: Electronic ed.
  • Publisher: [Chapel Hill, N.C.] : Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003.

Content descriptions

General Note:
Images provided by Manuscripts, Archives & Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Text encoded by Apex Data Services, Inc., Tampathia Evans and Elizabeth S. Wright.
This electronic edition has been transcribed from a microfiche provided by Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-CH digitization project's database, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection North American slave narratives.
Title from electronic title page (viewed Dec. 3, 2003).
Type of Computer File or Data Note:
Text (HTML and SGML) and images (JPEG).
Original Version Note:
Transcribed from microfiche of: Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, or, Inside views of Southern domestic life / by H. Mattison, Pastor of Union Chapel, New York. New York : Published by the author, 1861. 60 p. Cover title: Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, a tale of Southern slave life. Caption title: Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon slave. Related to H. Mattison by Louisa Picquet. cf. p. 6.
Funding Information Note:
Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported the electronic publication of this title.
System Details Note:
System requirements: PC with modem or direct Internet connection; SGML viewer required for SGML files.
Subject: Picquet, Louisa 1828?-
African American women Biography
Plantation life Southern States
Racially mixed people United States Biography
Sex crimes United States
Slave trade United States
Slaveholders Sexual behavior Southern States
Slavery United States
Enslaved women Sexual behavior Southern States
Enslaved women United States Social conditions
Genre: Slave narratives.

Back To Results
Showing Item 1 of 1