The witching hour

dozens of people could be questioned about the Mayfairs without anyone’s ever noticing us or our investigators.

So what must be borne in mind as we study the continued history of the Mayfairs is that, though the family appears tochange dramatically in the nineteenth century, it could be that the family did not change at all. The only change may have been in our investigative methods. We learned more about what went on behind closed doors.

In other words, if we knew more about the Saint-Domingue years, we might have seen greater continuity. But then again, perhaps not.

Whatever the case, the witches of the 1800s-with the exception of Mary Beth Mayfair, who was not born until 1872-appear to have been much weaker than those who ruled the family during the Saint-Domingue years. And the decline of the Mayfair Witches, which became so marked in the twentieth century, can be seen-on the basis of our fragmentary evidence-to have begun before the Civil War. But the picture is more complicated than that, as we shall see.

Changing attitudes and changing times in general may have played a significant role in the decline of the witches. That is, as the family became less aristocratic and feudal, and more “civilized” or “bourgeois,” its members might have become more confused regarding their heritage and their powers, and more generally inhibited. For though the planter class of Louisiana referred to itself as “the aristocracy,” it was definitely not aristocratic in the European sense of that word, and was characterized by what we now define as “middle-class values.”

“Modern psychiatry” also seems to have played a role in inhibiting and confusing the Mayfair Witches, and we will go into that in greater detail when we deal with the Mayfair family in the twentieth century.

But for the most part we can only speculate about these things. Even when direct contact between the order and the Mayfair Witches was established in the twentieth century, we were unable to learn as much as we had hoped.

Bearing all this in mind …

THE HISTORY CONTINUES …

Upon arrival in New Orleans, Marie Claudette moved her family into a large house in the Rue Dumaine, and immediately acquired an enormous plantation at Riverbend, south of the city, building a plantation house that was larger and more luxurious than its counterpart in Saint-Domingue. This plantation was called La Victoire at Riverbend, and was known later simply as Riverbend. It was carried away by the river in 1896; however, much of the land there is still owned by the Mayfairs, and is presently the site of an oil refinery.

Maurice Mayfair, Marie Claudette’s uncle, lived out his life at this plantation, but his two sons purchased adjacent plantations of their own, where they lived in close contact with Marie Claudette’s family. A few descendants of these men stayed on that land up until 1890, and many other descendants moved to New Orleans. They made up the ever increasing number of “cousins” who were a constant factor in Mayfair life for the next one hundred years.

There are numerous published drawings of Marie Claudette’s plantation house and even several photographs in old books, now out of print. It was large even for the period and, predating the ostentatious Greek Revival style, it was a simple colonial structure with plain rounded columns, a pitched roof, and galleries, much like the house in Saint-Domingue. It was two rooms thick, with hallways bisecting it from north to south and east to west, and had a full lower floor, as well as a very high and spacious attic floor.

The plantation included two enormous garconnieres where the male members of the family lived, including Lestan in his later widowhood, and his four sons, all of whom went by the name of Mayfair.” (Maurice always lived in the main house.)

Marie Claudette was every bit as successful in Louisiana as she and her ancestors had been in Saint- Domingue. Once again, she cultivated sugar, but gave up the cultivation of coffee and tobacco. She bought smaller plantations for each of Lestan’s sons, and gave lavish gifts to their children and their children’s children.

From the first weeks of their arrival, the family was regarded with awe and suspicion. Marie Claudette frightened people, and entered into a number of disputes in setting up business in Louisiana, and was not above threatening anyone who stood in her path. She bought up enormous numbers of slaves for her fields, and in the tradition of her ancestors, treated these slaves very well. But she did not treat merchants very well, and drove more than one merchant off her property with a whip, insisting that he had tried to cheat her.

She was described by the local witnesses as “formidable” and “unpleasant,” though still a handsome woman. And her personal slaves and free mixed-blood servants were greatly feared by the slaves she purchased in Louisiana.

Within a short time, she was heralded as a sorceress by the slaves on her land; it was said that she could not be deceived, and that she could give “the evil eye,” and that she had a demon whom she could send after anyone who crossed her. Her brother Lestan was more generally liked, and apparently fell in at once with the drinking and gambling planter class of the area.

Henri Marie Landry, her husband, seems to have been a likable but passive individual who left absolutely everything to his wife. He read botanical journals from Europe and collected rare flowers from all over the South and designed and cultivated an enormous garden at Riverbend.

He died in bed, in 1824, after receiving the sacraments.

In 1799 Marie Claudette gave birth to the last of her children, Marguerite, who later became the designee of the legacy, and who lived in Marie Claudette’s shadow until Marie Claudette’s death in 1831.

There was much gossip about Marie Claudette’s family life. It was said that her oldest daughter, Claire Marie, was feebleminded, and there are numerous stories about this young woman wandering about in her nightgown, and saying strange though often delightful things to people. She saw ghosts and talked to them all the time, sometimes right in the middle of supper before amazed guests.

She also “knew” things about people and would blurt out these secrets at odd moments. She was kept at home, and though more than one man fell in love with her, Marie Claudette never allowed Claire Marie to marry. In her old age, after the death of her husband, Henri Marie Landry, Marie Claudette slept with Claire Marie, to watch her and keep her from roaming about and getting lost.

She was often seen on the galleries in her nightgown.

Marie Claudette’s only son, Pierre, was never allowed to marry either. He “fell in love” twice, but both times gave in to his mother when she refused to grant permission for the wedding. His second “secret fiancee” tried to take her own life when she was rejected by Pierre. After that he seldom went out, but was often seen in the company of his mother.

Pierre was a doctor of sorts to the slaves, curing them with various potions and remedies. He even studied medicine for a while with an old drunken doctor in New Orleans. But nothing much came of this. He also enjoyed botany and spent much time working in the garden, and drawing pictures of flowers. Botanical sketches done by Pierre are in existence today in the famous Mayfair house on First Street.

It was no secret that about the year 1820 Pierre took a quadroon mistress in New Orleans, an exquisite young woman who might have passed for white, according to the gossip. By her Pierre had two children, a daughter who went north and passed into the white race, and a son, Francois, born in 1825, who remained in Louisiana and later handled substantial amounts of paperwork for the family in New Orleans. A genteel clerk, he seems to have been thought of affectionately by the white Mayfairs, especially the men who came into town to conduct business.

Everyone in the family apparently adored Marguerite. When she was ten years old, her portrait was painted, showing her wearing the famous emerald necklace. This is an odd picture, because the child is small and the necklace is large. As of 1927, the picture was hanging on a wall in the First Street house in New Orleans.

Marguerite was delicate of build, with dark hair and large slightly upturned black eyes. She was considered a beauty, and called La Petite Gypsy by her nurses, who loved to brush her long black wavy hair. Unlike her feebleminded sister and her compliant brother, she had a fierce temper and a violent and unpredictable sense of humor.

At age twenty, against Marie Claudette’s wishes, she married Tyrone Clifford McNamara, an opera singer, and another “very handsome” man, of an extremely impractical nature, who toured widely in the United States, starring in operas in New York, Boston, St. Louis, and other cities. It was only after he had left on one such tour