Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, or, Inside views of Southern domestic life
By: by H. Mattison
Contributors: Mattison, Hiram, 1811-1868; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: African American women; Biography; Racially mixed people; Women slaves; Social conditions; Sexual behavior; Slaveholders; Sex crimes; Plantation life; Slave trade; Slavery
Other titles: Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon; Inside views of Southern domestic life; Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, a tale of Southern slave life.; Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon slave.; North American slave narratives.
Description: 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.
Notes: Title from electronic title page (viewed December 3, 2003)

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.

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.

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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 from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported the electronic publication of this title.

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