The Donatos of St. Landry Parish
His portrait stares back at me across time,a distinguished and well-dressed man in the winter of his life . He exudes the confidence of an aristocrat. Martin Donato was one of the wealthiest planters in antebellum Louisiana; leaving behind an estate containing nearly one hundred slaves in St. Landry parish by the time of his death in 1847. On the surface, Martin’s story isn’t all that unusual. You can find thousands of Martins scattered across the historical record of the deep South, participants in what was once called the “peculiar institution” by Americans in the 19th century.
What makes Martin Donato’s story stand out is that unlike most slaveholders, he was a free man of color. Martin Donato’s story and the history of my family are intertwined and connected because he not only owned my ancestors, but he IS my ancestor.
Martin Donato was born around 1762 in New Orleans not long before the Louisiana colony was given to Spain according to the conditions of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Year’s War. His father was Donato Bello, an Italian officer in the Spanish militia from Naples and Marie-Jeanne Taillifer, a free mulatto and Creole of New Orleans. The year of Martin and his mother’s freedom is unknown. What is known is that Martin Donato appears for the first time in the colonial records of the Opelousas post(present-day St. Landry Parish)purchasing slaves by the 1780’s.
My great-great-great grandmother,Olympie, was one of two twin girls born to Celeste, a slave of Martin Donato in the 1820s near Opelousas. They were fathered by Martin Donato’s son François Auguste. On September 2, 1847, according to the stipulations of Martin Donato’s will, Olympie, her twin sister, Meurice and their older brother Sabin were emancipated out of slavery.
A few years later, Olympie gave birth to a baby girl named Marie-Thérèse.
Marie-Thérèse Donato would grow up, meet and marry Leonard LaChapelle, a Blacksmith who created crosses for the Catholic graves in the community.
They are my grandmother’s grandparents.
The descendants of Martin Donato are numerous. They include Oklahoma City Thunder Forward Paul George(See the genealogical work of Alex Lee via his Facebook page Alex Genealogy), Journalist Suzanne Malveaux and the eminent African-American historian, Nell Painter among others.
Our individual pasts are a complex amalgamation of contradictions that often challenge the narratives we receive by the past.
