LOUISIANA STATE ARCHIVES, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 
DIVISION OF ARCHIVES, RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND HISTORY  - 
SELECT INVENTORY

• This institution has research material which Louisbourg does not hold as a copied manuscript from any other institution as follows:

(A) PUBLICATIONS/MANUSCRIPTS

(I) An examination of its reference material (which institution revealed a series of materials which the Fortress should purchase):

(i) Calendar of the Natchez Trace Collection Provincial & Territorial Documents, 1759-1813, 
Compiled by Judy Riffel, 
Le Comité des Archives de la Louisiane, 
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1999

- The research material in question includes documents which are evocative of the same descriptive records found in the Louisbourg G2 and G3 series which Louisbourg’s historians have used extensively as research fodder for reconstructing the domestic buildings of the town. This is a sub-collection (civil records such as marriage contracts, conveyances, probates, land surveys, receipts, letters, journals) of the Natchez Trace Collection which is owned by the University of Texas which was microfilmed by the Louisiana State Archives as Accession Number N1999-1.

- Both the published calendar and the microfilm should be obtained

(ii) Archives of the Spanish Government of West Florida. A Series of Eighteen Bound Volumes of Written Documents, Mostly in the Spanish Language Deposited in the Record Room of the Nineteenth Judicial District Court, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Survey of Federal Archives, Dr. P.M. Hamer, Volumes 1-18, 1937-1939.

- This area, that included Baton Rouge, was known as West Florida for the period 1753-1810

- The research material in question includes documents which are evocative of the same descriptive records found in the Louisbourg G2 and G3 series which Louisbourg’s historians have used extensively as research fodder for reconstructing the domestic buildings of the town.

- The Louisiana State Archives held only volumes 1-4 and 18 of the published translations of the original manuscripts (which have been microfilmed) which the contractor was able to examine

- If the microfilm is purchased, a zerox of the publication will be required as an essential finding aid

- Some examples from the translated manuscripts:

(a) Inventory of the property of the deceased, Pierre Avare [Written in French, Baton Rouge, District Post of Pointe Coupée]

[p. 334 of the original] "... The habitation where the deceased resided, about five [p. 335 of the original] arpents of land front, with a little storehouse, and a bad little house of posts in earth making a red wall [potteaux en terre bousillee], estimated without the house at two hundred piastres, as above .... 200 ..." [Volume 1, pp. 129-131]

(b) Inventory of Jacob Nash [Written in Spanish, Baton Rouge District, December 17, 1789]

[p. 482 of the original] "... Item: last by the habitation was inventoried in which the said deceased died of ten arpents front cleared about seventy arpents [p. 483 of the original] with sufficient fences for cultivating, with the edifices of one little house, all of wood twenty-five feet long and fifteen wide, set on pillars of the same, a kitchen of stakes in earth [Estacas en tierra], two small store storerooms of rough timber construction in the English fashion [de palos sin labrar, contruida a la ynglesa] ..."

[Volume 1, pp. 189-195]

(c) Inventory and Estimation [John Joyce and John Turnbull, May 5, 1800]

[p. 739 of the original] " ... upon which land is built the principal house, raised about three feet high, mud walls between stakes, about forty-seven feet long by twenty feet wide, roofed with shingles, with a gallery ten and one-half-feet long, the said house having a double brick chimney and divided into four rooms, two of them in good condition, together with its doors and windows ..."

[Volume 3, p. 311]

(iii) Mississippi Valley Mélange, 
A Collection of Notes and Documents for the Genealogy and History of the Province of Louisiana and the Territory of Orleans, by Winston de Ville (Ville Platte, Louisiana)

- Xeroxes of the following articles should be ordered in their complete form. Extracts from the said articles are as follows:

(1) Volume 1, 1995

"Building Fort Miro in the Ouachita Valley of Spanish Louisiana: 1790-1791", pp. 48-51

[Translation of a letter by Jean Filhiol. Original at: Papeles Procedentes de Cuba, General Archives of the Indies, Seville, legajo 204, ff. 637-639, 642] "... was debated that this fort should be made of poteaux de bout [upright posts, actually small logs] I was [however] compelled to change its form, Considering that the habitants informed me that their axes were not effective against the chêne à gland sucré [a red oak], and other wood that resists rot, and that, having no blacksmith here [to repair broken axes apparently] work would come to a halt. I allowed them to construct the horizontal pieces from cypress, sassafras, and oaks of all kinds. So that they would not be less durable, I had them made with 3-inch grooves. The [vertical] parts of the chêne à gland sucré are three feet into the ground [with the] bottoms [made more impervious to rot] by [charring in] fire, and all the mainpieces are of white-oak ...."

(2) Volume 3, 1998

"Constructing A Future Cathedral: The Fabric of the New Orleans Church in 1724, With a Glossary by Malcolm Lionel Miller", pp. 27-32.

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