St. Augustine Parish (Isle Brevelle) Church

St. Augustine Catholic Church (Isle Brevelle) is in Natchez, Louisiana. Tradition holds that the church was established by Nicolas Augustin Métoyer, a newly freed slave, in 1803 and that services have been held continuously since then. As is often the case, historical records challenge the local lore. [The parish registers from 1803-29 document each time the parish priest traveled to Cane River and Isle Brevelle to conduct services. They explicitly name the site at which the services were held. Those records repeatedly document that Augustin Metoyer and his family brought their children and slaves to one or another named site for baptism or marriage. The first services were held on Augustin's plantation on 19 July 1829; see Parish of St. François of Natchitoches, Register 6: 116. The second occurred four days later when Augustin's great-nephew Louis Monet married at the Chapel of St. Augustine; see St. François Register 11, entry 1829-#10.] Parish records document the founding of the Chapel of St. Augustine "as a mission of the church of St. François of Natchitoches" in July 1829, when the church was constructed. It did not become a parish church with a resident priest until 1856.

The church is included in the Cane River National Heritage Area. [ [http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/caneriver/creoleculture.htm "Creoles in the Cane River Region"] , "Cane River National Heritage Area: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary", National Park Service, accessed 15 Jul 2008] Because of the significance of the church and the Créole community, it is listed on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. [ [http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/travel/25trail.html?scp=4&sq=Louisiana&st=nyt Ron Stodghill, "Driving Back Into Louisiana’s History"] , "New York Times", 25 May 2008, accessed 7 Jul 2008]

History

When Father Jean Baptiste Blanc consecrated the chapel for religious use (19 July 1829), he reported that it had been "erected on Isle Brevelle on the plantation of Sieur Augustin Métoyer through the care and generosity of the above-named Augustin Métoyer, aided by Louis Métoyer, his brother. ... The said chapel ... having been dedicated to St. Augustine, shall be considered as under the protection of this great doctor." [ Fr. J.B. Blanc, Reg. 6: 116. For a lengthy analysis of the evidence surrounding the creation of the chapel, see Gary B. Mills, "The Forgotten People: Cane River's Créoles of Color" (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 197), 145-50.] Tradition also describes the role of Augustin's brother Louis (founder of the nearby National Historic Landmark, Melrose Plantation), as the chapel's designer and builder. [ [http://www.diocesealex.org/default.aspx?tabid=237 Clyde Roque, "St. Augustine Church"] , Diocese of Alexandria, accessed 15 Jul 2008.]

Whether dated by evidence or local lore, the Church of St. Augustine is believed to be the oldest church built by free people of color for their own use. Among Southern churches of all denominations, it is also distinctive for its racial role reversals. Surviving pew records show that the front seats were occupied by the "Créole de couleur" Metoyer family that built the chapel. Seated behind them were the families of prominent white planters within the community.

St. Augustin Chapel was named a parish in 1856, which meant that it received a resident priest. Post-Civil War, it chalked up another apparent first in U.S. racial history. Its own congregation by this time was almost exclusively non-white; however, it was the mother church for the predominantly white Mission Ste. Anne on Old River.

The original structure has not survived. Union forces during the Red River Campaign of May 1864 were said to have torched the first church. [Mills, "The Forgotten People," chapter 9, summarizes the testimony in the numerous Civil War damage claims by St. Augustine parishioners.] A second church burned in the early 1900s. Tradition holds that early furnishings included paintings of patron saints Augustine and Louis in honor of the Métoyer brothers [ [http://www.diocesealex.org/default.aspx?tabid=237 Clyde Roque, "St. Augustine Church"] , Diocese of Alexandria, accessed 15 Jul 2008] , as well as an altar brought from Europe by other family members. The original bell that hung in the belfry above the vestibule is said to be the one still in use. [Father J. J. Callahan et al., "The History of St. Augustine's Parish; Isle Brevelle, Natchez, La.; 1803-1853; 1829-1954; 1856-1856" (Natchitoches: The Parish, 1956).] An image of the original church survives as a backdrop in the contemporary oil portrait of its founder that hangs in the church today. [A black and white image of the portrait is reproduced online in the archived edition of Ken Ringle, "Up through Slavery," "The Washington Post," 12 May 2002 [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1069-2002May10.html] ."]

The Métoyer brothers were two of ten children of the French merchant Claude Thomas Pierre Métoyer and the former slave Marie Thérèse Coincoin, sometimes (albeit erroneously) called Marie Thérèse Metoyer, whose services he had initially rented. When the parish priest filed charges against the black Coincoin for bearing half-white children while living in the residence of a white man, and threatened to sell her away to New Orleans, Métoyer bought her from her owner and privately manumitted her. [ Elizabeth Shown Mills, “Quintanilla’s Crusade, 1775–1783: ‘Moral Reform’ and Its Consequences on the Natchitoches Frontier.” "Louisiana History" 42 (Summer 2001): 277–302.] Across the next thirty-seven years he manumitted their offspring. [Metoyer to Augustin, doc. 2409 (1792) and Metoyer to Dominique, doc. 2584 (1795), Colonial Archives, Office of the Clerk of Court, Natchitoches. Metoyer to Louis, Pierre, and Marie Susanne, Misc. Book 2: 207–11, Office of the Clerk of Court, Natchitoches.] Coincoin, as a "médecine", planter, and businesswoman, then labored to buy the freedom of five black children previously born to her of a slave union. Together, her offspring created a large Créole community in Natchitoches Parish that spread the length of Cane River. Its core would be, and still is, St. Augustine Parish on Isle Brevelle. [Mills, "The Forgotten People." http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/caneriver/creoleculture.htm "Creoles in the Cane River Region"] , "Cane River National Heritage Area: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary", National Park Service, accessed 15 Jul 2008]

Citations

External links

* [http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/caneriver/creoleculture.htm "Creoles in the Cane River Region"] , "Cane River National Heritage Area: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary", National Park Service
* [http://www.louisianatravel.com/explore/cultural_history/african_american_heritage_trail/ "Louisiana's African American Heritage Trail"] , Louisiana Travel
* [http://www.diocesealex.org/default.aspx?tabid=237 "St. Augustine Church"] , (Natchez) Isle Brevelle, Louisiana, Diocese of Alexandria