Exploring the deep roots behind The Louisiana Weekly
22nd September 2015 · 0 Comments
By Jari C. Honore
Contributing Writer
(Special from creolegen.org) – One of those names which appears quite often on CreoleGen is that of the Dejoie family. One of the principal sources on New Orleans of yesteryear, The Louisiana Weekly, was in fact founded by a member of that family 90 years ago. In honor of this milestone, we attempt here to give an overview of the genealogy of this large and widely-known family.
The progenitors of the Dejoie family are Jules Dejoie, a native of France, born about 1801 and Celestine, an enslaved woman of African descent, from St. Charles Parish, born about 1816. Jules Dejoie was among the group called the “Foreign French,” migrants from France who settled in Louisiana in the antebellum years after the Louisiana Purchase. Many people credit this population, along with the emigres from Saint-Domingue with the perpetuation of French language and culture in Louisiana. Many of the single young men who settled in Louisiana traveled upriver from New Orleans to sugarcane country, seeking employment as tutors, clerks, or managers on plantations. Jules Dejoie declared in his will dated 1850 that he had been in the country “about 20 years,” which would place his arrival somewhere about 1830. Later census records indicate that Jules Dejoie kept a grocery store in Uptown New Orleans, then a part of Jefferson Parish. Perhaps it was his interests in storekeeping that initially drew him upriver in the 1830s; or like many others he could have found work as a tutor or overseer.
At some point in the late 1830s, Jules met an enslaved woman named Celestine, who was born about 1816. Celestine, a negresse creole described as “very dark,” was owned by Madame Cesaire Dorvin Kinler on February 12, 1838 before J.L. LaBranche, who was then a judge in St. Charles Parish. The sale was made in the amount of $690.00.
Over the course of the next decade, Jules and Celestine had six children, all boys, born in St. James Parish. On August 28, 1844, Jules Dejoie appeared before notary Victor Foulon in New Orleans to manumit the members of his family. Celestine, then age 28, was freed along with their mulatto children: Theodore, age five; Paul-Hypolite, age three-and-a-half; Jules, age two; and Constant, age three months. Eventually two more sons, Prudhomme and Aristide, would be born.
In the year 1850, Jules and his family moved to Jefferson City, then a suburb of New Orleans. In that year, on May 21, he purchased a piece of property on Valence Street between Annunciation and Tchoupitoulas streets, where he established his residence and a grocery store. Tragedy would soon strike however, for on December 11, 1850, Jules died at the age of 50.
Celestine was left to rear the six boys, ranging in age from 12 to three, alone. On December 8, three days before his death, Jules made a will in which he recognized Celestine and her sons as his children and his universal legatees. The proceeds from the sale of the groceries, the property, and some debts due to Jules, minus the expenses and debts he owed, left Celestine and the children with $1,117.75, thus ensuring them some sort of a start in life. At some point, between 1850 and 1860, Theodore died, leaving the five surviving brothers who lived to adulthood.
The boys, with the possible exception of Prudhomme, all seem to have acquired skills at baking, for they all are identified at some point as pastry cooks or bakers. Paul-Hypolite, Jules, and Constant all earned livings as cooks, while Prudhomme worked as a barber and Aristide, the youngest, abandoned the kitchen to engage in politics and government work.
Being reared by a widowed mother, the boys all went to work early in life. A surviving case in the records of the Fifth District Court from 1859, documents the victory Celestine won against the captain and owners of the steamboat Osceola for failing to pay her 16-year-old son, Constant, for his work as a “cook and pastry cook” for nine months. It was probably from his work on riverboats that Constant earned the nickname “Major,” which he kept throughout his life.
Aristide (who also went by the nickname “Bird”) most certainly had a knack for leadership and quickly made a name for himself among the Republicans of the city during Reconstruction. He served as Assessor for the Sixth District of the city and later served two terms in the State House of Representatives from 1870 to 1874. In March 1875, along with his fellow Uptowner, Sen. Tobias S. Stamps, Dejoie challenged the Civil Rights Act of 1875 by purchasing tickets for and sitting in a previously whites-only section in the St. Charles Theatre. The two men were seated without incident, an event widely reported in the press. Aristide likely used his influence to get positions for his brothers, Jules and Paul-Hypolite, as banquette inspector and port warden, respectively.
The matriarch of the Dejoie family, Celestine, was able to see the initial success of her sons before she died on January 19, 1892 and was buried from St. Stephen’s Church.
Paul-Hypolite never had children from either of his two marriages. Prudhomme and his wife Elodie Riggs only had one daughter named Louisa, born in 1875. Constant and his wife Celestine Rowe had two children, a son named Joseph who died as a young man and without children, and Mary, who married Xavier Albert of St. James Parish.
These circumstances left Aristide and Jules as the progenitors of the subsequent generations of the Dejoies.
The descendants of these two brothers comprise the two family groups which exist today. Though too much is made of the distinction, these groups have been often termed the “Uptown Dejoies” and the “Downtown Dejoies.” While in more recent decades the relatives have moved all around the city (and while their common roots are all indeed “uptown”), Aristide’s descendants were long based downtown, while Jules’ descendants claimed uptown as their home base. The other dividing factor is that while Jules’ descendants continue to be Catholics, most of Aristide’s descendants have been protestant, affiliated with either St. Luke’s Episcopal Church or Central Congregational Church.
Aristide Dejoie (1847-1917) married Ellen Chambers (ca. 1852-1920) on May 9, 1872. Their marriage of 45 years produced seven children: Paul Hypolite Vital Dejoie (1872-1921); Aristide Romas Stamps Dejoie (1874-1947); Florence Frances Dejoie (Mrs. Leonidas T. Burbridge), (1875-1916); Nellie Dejoie (Mrs. John A. Palfrey), (1877-1922); Paul Prudhomme Dejoie (1879-1964); Constant Charles Dejoie Sr. (1881-1970); and Bernardine Dejoie (Mrs. Lawrence E. Webb), (1885-1956).
Jules Dejoie married Octavie Segue on December 15, 1870. Their union produced four children: Frederick Dejoie Sr. (1873-1937); Edmond Dejoie (1874-1924); Mary Arnocieal Dejoie (Mrs. Ernest T. Bauduit Jr.) (1876-1903) and Joseph John Dejoie Sr. (1881-1929).
Frederick Dejoie (who married Aurelie Estelle Armant) and Edmond Dejoie (who married Augustine Dutrey) both engaged in the skilled work of slaters for the length of their careers, leaving their brother, Joseph to continue the family’s entrepreneurial spirit. Frederick’s children were: Joseph Adolph Blaine Dejoie Sr., Stephen John Dejoie, Aurelia Dejoie Brewer, Frederick John “Fred” Dejoie, Beatrice Dejoie, Leona Dejoie and Marie Dejoie Gordon. Edmond’s children were Earl Anthony Dejoie, Christine Dejoie, Jules Dejoie, Zella Dejoie and Ivernia Dejoie.
The Dejoie brothers (Aristide and Jules) expanded their professional interests in the 1880s, establishing a restaurant and confectionary at 236 Canal Street, which was later renumbered 1316 Canal Street. Prudhomme initially ran the business and was later joined by Aristide’s older sons, Paul H.V. and Aristide Jr.
In 1895, Aristide’s oldest son, Paul Hypolite Vital Dejoie, graduated from the Medical College of New Orleans University. In 1896, Aristide’s oldest daughter, Florence Frances Dejoie, married Leonidas Tullius Burbridge, a successful young physician. The addition of two doctors to the family opened the path to a new business venture – pharmacies. Initially located on Canal Street, the Dejoie & Burbridge Pharmacy, later known as Dejoie’s Cut Rate Pharmacy, was located at 1832 Dryades Street. It was managed by Dr. Burbridge and Aristide Dejoie Jr. It contained the medical offices of both Dr. Burbridge and his brother-in-law, Dr. Paul H. V. Dejoie.
At the same time, Jules and Octavie Segue Dejoie’s youngest son, Joseph John Dejoie Sr. (1881-1929), followed the example of his first cousins, when he established Joseph Dejoie’s Cut Rate Pharmacy at the corner of South Rampart and Seventh streets, which was later designated as Danneel and Seventh streets. This business, along with his second drugstore in the office of the Louisiana Life Insurance Company (of which he was an officer and shareholder), enabled him to provide a secure upbringing for his 10 children: Alvin Dejoie, Joseph John Dejoie Jr., Lucille Dejoie Tureaud, Marie Dejoie Prudeau, Leonidas B. Dejoie, Myrtle Dejoie Williams, Byron Anthony Dejoie, Anna Tureaud Daniels, Burel Francis Dejoie and Wellington A. Dejoie. He and his wife sent many of their children to Talladega College for their educations, including Joseph Jr. and Lucille, who furthered their studies at Howard University in pharmacy.
While his sons engaged in the fields of medicine and pharmacy, and his daughters in teaching, Aristide Dejoie sought to improve the business life of Black New Orleanians. He was the founder and president of the New Orleans chapter of the National Negro Business League, which was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900. Until his death in 1917, Dejoie was the recognized leader of the city’s Black businessmen. In 1917, he helped orchestrate the merger of several Black mutual aid and beneficial societies into the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company, which was the first company of that sort organized among Blacks in Louisiana. The other principal figures in the company were undertaker George D. Geddes and contractor William E. Roberson. Aristide served on the company’s board, as did his son, Dr. Paul H. V. Dejoie, who served as its longtime president. After Dr. Dejoie’s death in 1921, his brother, Constant C. Dejoie Sr., became president of Unity.
Under the leadership of C. C. Dejoie Sr., Unity grew by leaps and bounds, Branch offices extended across the state of Louisiana and a subsidiary company was organized in the ever-growing metropolis of Chicago. During the same era, in 1925, C.C. Dejoie Sr founded a weekly newspaper which he initially named The New Orleans Herald. With Dejoie’s leadership and the skilled editorial oversight of O.C.W. Taylor, the paper soon gained a statewide and national readership and was renamed The Louisiana Weekly. C.C. Dejoie Sr. invested in a variety of business interests including, at one point, a Black-owned oil company in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. C.C. Dejoie was joined in marriage in 1914 by the former Miss Vivian Baxter, with whom he had three children, Constant Charles Jr., Vivian (Mrs. John V. Roussell) and Henry Baxter Dejoie.
The Great Depression took its toll on life insurance companies as it did all other businesses. The assets of Unity Industrial were greatly reduced. Under C.C. Dejoie Sr.’s leadership, the company ceased issuing sick and accident policies and began writing only whole life policies. In the late 1930s, differences within the Dejoie family over the management of Unity reached a boiling point. In August 1939, in a scandal widely reported by the Black Press as the “Dejoie Affair,” C.C. Dejoie Sr. stood accused of conspiring to have his nephew, Prudhomme John Earl Dejoie, murdered. While Dejoie was cleared of any connection to the incident, his friend and company employee, Henry Wilcox, was found guilty of shooting Prudhomme with the intent to kill, but served no jail time.
Ultimately, C.C. Dejoie Sr., who led the majority faction in the dispute, sold the majority interest in the company to First National Insurance Company, a white firm. C.C. Dejoie survived the negative publicity, including a scathing editorial in a competitor paper, The Sepia Socialite, which labeled him a traitor to his race.
Prudhomme Dejoie also survived the incident and focused his interests on the Louisiana Life Insurance Company and Louisiana Undertaking Company. Louisiana Life (founded in March 1920) and subsequently Louisiana Undertaking, owed much of their existence to Dr. Rivers Frederick, a noted surgeon and Prudhomme Dejoie’s father-in-law.
The Dejoies had significant interests in Louisiana Life, including the children of Joseph J. Dejoie, who was an officer of the company. Prudhomme J.E. Dejoie served as treasurer of the company beginning in 1929, succeeding his mother, Ella Brown Dejoie. In 1954, Prudhomme John Frederick Dejoie was elected president of Louisiana Life and Louisiana Undertaking, succeeding his grandfather, Dr. Frederick. In 1960, he negotiated the sale of Louisiana Life to Universal Life Insurance Company of Memphis, one of the nation’s largest Black insurance companies.
Other business concerns of the Dejoie family in the 20th century included the Hub Shoe Store, in which Aristide Dejoie had an interest. Ella Brown Dejoie oversaw the Broadmoor Laundry, Cleaning and Dying Company prior to her death, and was succeeded by her son, Prudhomme J. E. Dejoie. Leonidas Dejoie continued his father’s pharmacy business and with his brother, Wellington, oversaw the Dejoie Cab Company beginning in the 1940s. Thelma Epps Dejoie, wife of Paul H. V. Dejoie Jr., ran the well-known Dejoie Flower Shoppe for many years.
C.C. Dejoie was one of only two Black businessmen to be initial investors in the New Orleans Saints franchise.
The family history of The Dejoies was researched and developed by CreoleGen, a 501©(3) non-profit organization comprised of family historians and genealogists who are focused on researching and documenting the lives of ethnically diverse Louisiana and the Gulf Coast Creole families. There currently are over 200 articles on the site. The original posting of this article is one of those articles and can be found at www.creolegen.org.
This article originally published in the September 21, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
