Guide - French Colonization & Early Statehood

This guide highlights items and collections related to the French colonial history of Louisiana and early statehood. 

To use this guide, please follow the links to browse and research collections. The links go to either the collection, individual items in the collection, or search results within a collection, as noted.

Armand Duplantier Family Letters
The Armand Duplantier Family Letters date from 1777 to 1841 and reveal much about the state's colonial period, Francophone Louisiana in the territorial and antebellum era, and the enduring legacy of the state's French antecedents.

• Topics: French colonization, early statehood

Center for Louisiana Studies Archive
The link directs to results from the collection, sorted from the oldest to the most recent. The earliest items in this collection document the French settlement of North America. 

• Topics: French colonization, early statehood, maps

Early Louisiana Laws
Books of Louisiana laws from pre- and early statehood.

• Topics: slavery, colonial laws, early statehood

Free People of Color in Louisiana
This link directs to results from the collection that pre-date the Civil War; results are sorted from oldest to most recent. This collection includes papers from families or individuals that were free people of color, sometimes reuniting documents from the same family that are divided across multiple institutions.

• Topics: Louisiana, Free People of Color, slavery

French colonial, Spanish colonial, and nineteenth-century Louisiana documents
A collection of documents from 1655 to 1924 with a strong emphasis on the colonial and early nation periods. This link directs to results dated from 1700-1855 and sorted from oldest to most recent.

• Topics: French colonization, early statehood, slavery

Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Collection
The materials in this collection consist of primary sources that document the heritage, peoples, and cultures of the area that was to become the state of Louisiana during a critical and tumultuous period in its history, 1800-1815.

• Topics: Colonial Louisiana, early statehood, French colonization

Louisiana Works Progress Administration
The WPA collection at the State Library of Louisiana covers the state and includes traditional songs, beliefs, customs, sayings, stories, recipes, legends, jokes, and accounts of local history. The following links are to individual items in the collection:

• Bill for the People of the Territory of Orleans to form a Constitution and State Government
• Gov Andre Bienvenu Roman's message to the Louisiana House of Representatives and Senate in 1833: Governor Andre Bienvenu Roman's address to the Louisiana legislature. He addresses finances, recent cholera outbreak, public education, establishing colleges, the poor state of Louisiana's militias, banks, rivers, jails, construction of roads and levees, the current state of Louisiana's agriculture, etc.

Maps of Louisiana
This collection consists of historically important original maps associated with the French colonization of the territory of Louisiana, as well as the Louisiana Purchase.

• Topics: French colonization, maps

Painting in Louisiana from The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Historic New Orleans Collection owns several hundred paintings (including oils and watercolors) by Louisiana and Southern artists. The above link directs to search results dated from 1700-1855, and some individual  items depicting people and events relevant to early statehood are linked below:

• Farragut's Fleet Passing the Forts Below New Orleans, by Mauritz Frederik De Haas
• Battle of New Orleans, by Dennis Malone Carter in 1867
• Battle of New Orleans, by Dennis Malone Carter in 1856
• a href="https://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/hnoc-lph%3A1355">Battle of New Orleans, by W. A. C. Pape in 1890
• Governor Andre Bienvenu Roman, by K. Kurz Jr.

Pintado Papers
A collection of manuscript land surveys made chiefly by Vicente Pintado and Charles Trudeau, royal surveyors of Louisiana and East and West Florida during the Spanish colonial period, office of the Surveyor General of Louisiana.

• Topics: maps, exploration, discovery, Louisiana, Florida, Gulf of Mexico, colonialism, Spain

Records of the French Superior Council (1714-1769)
These civil and criminal records are an invaluable source for researching Louisiana's colonial history. They record the social, political and economic lives of rich and poor, female and male, slave and free, African, Native, European and American colonials.

• Topics: French colonization, slavery, Louisiana

(TAHIL)/America at War
This collection includes artifacts contributed by members of the Teaching American History in Louisiana (TAHIL) partnership. TAHIL providers include the Louisiana State Archives, Louisiana State Museum, The Historic New Orleans Collection and Tulane University Library Special Collections. The search results go to individual items in the collection. 

• An illustration of the Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Peckenham
• The Battle of New Orleans, a poem by Thomas Dunn English

(TAHIL)/Louisiana Purchase and Louisiana Colonial History
This Teaching American History in Louisiana  (TAHIL) collection has materials covering the Louisiana Purchase and Louisiana colonial history.

• Topics: early statehood, French colonization