To celebrate Mothers Day and the incredible women in New Orleans’ history, I present to you ten women who changed New Orleans because they were Mothers:
1) Lucy Bakewell Audubon
Lucy Bakewell married John James Audubon at the age of 20, you know, the guy who painted birds and who now has a zoo, a park, a school, streets and the fanciest address in New Orleans all named for him. THAT John James Audubon. Well his name wouldn’t be tossed around our city landscape like confetti if not for his wife Lucy who brought home the bacon. She supported the family as a tutor in New Orleans and then in West Felciana while her husband and their two sons worked on the masterpiece that made John famous – The Birds of America.
2) Lucille Bridges
In 1960 Lucille and her husband Abon Bridges responded to a request from the NAACP that sought children to participate in the integration of New Orleans school system. Their oldest child, six-year-old Ruby passed the test that determined whether or not she was fit to attend one of the all-white schools. Abon was initially reluctant, but Lucille convinced him that Ruby would have the opportunity to get a better education and a chance for a good job. They argued and prayed about it, but eventually Lucille convinced her husband that even with the risks they were going to face, they had to take this step forward, not just for their own children, but for the future of all African American children.
Accompanied by Federal Marshals, Lucille brought little Ruby to her new school, William Frantz Elementary and told her daughter, “Don’t be afraid. There might be some people upset outside, but I’ll be with you.” That day Ruby became the first African American to attend an all white elementary school in New Orleans and in the South. Despite the outrageous displays of hatred and racism that soon plagued the Bridges family, segregation was beginning to crumble and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to courageous mothers like Lucille who contributed to the Civil Rights movement by remaining steadfast in their resolve to provide every opportunity for their children.
3) Dr. Elizabeth Cohen
Elizabeth had five children and when she lost the youngest to measles, she felt that something more could have been done for the boy and enrolled in the Philadelphia College of Medicine to find out just what that something was. Aspiring to become a Doctor was a pretty daring thing for a woman to do, but she earned her degree in 1857 and joined her husband in New Orleans where she set up practice, making her the first female physician in the state. Her patients were mostly women and their children and she attended to many of those families through generations.
Dr. Cohen was an ardent supporter of women’s rights and an inspiration to women who sought to hold professions in fields that were dominated by men. In the final year of her incredibly long life, women gained the right to vote and she is quoted as having said, “I’m glad to see the girls of today getting an education. In my youth you had to fight for it. And I believe in suffrage, too—things will be better when women can vote and can protect their own property and their own children. Even if I am a hundred, I’m for votes for women.”
4) Margaret Haughery
Today she is largely known as the Bread Woman of New Orleans but when her statue was erected where Camp and Prytania streets meet in 1884, grateful citizens of this city affectionately called their dearly departed benefactress Mother of the Orphans. Margaret dedicated her life to caring for the orphans of New Orleans and worked tirelessly to provide for them.
Margaret was an orphan herself, and lacking any sort of formal education, she could not read or write which makes her rise and success as a sharp business woman all the more remarkable. She most notably owned a bakery and even though she gave away large quantities of bread and the proceeds to the less fortunate, hers was the most successful bakery in the city.
A few of the orphan asylums and a church that she financed are today prominent historical landmarks that decorate New Orleans’ Garden District including St. Elizabeth’s on Napoleon, St. Vincent’s at Race and Magazine and St. Teresa of Avila Church on Erato. Even in death Margaret continued to care for her children, leaving the bulk of her considerable estate to each of the various orphanages throughout the city.
5) Mary Steiner Landry
In 1938 Simon Landry and his wife Mary opened the doors to their family restaurant and named it Mother’s to honor Mary, matriarch of their large family. You can still go down to Mother’s on Poydras Street and see that little has changed in 75 plus years of operation from the historic décor to the menu. This uniquely New Orleans eatery is famous for its world’s-best baked ham, the Ferdi and Ralph Specials and the Debris Po-Boy, which requires approximately 18 paper napkins to eat with any sort of dignity.
6) Beulah Levy Ledner
The Great Depression wasn’t going to knock Beulah Ledner down without a fight and this industrious mother began baking and selling gourmet cakes and pastries from her uptown home to help provide for her family. She created supremely delicious confections, but one of her own inventions outshone them all and earned her the title of “Doberge Queen of New Orleans”. Ledner’s signature cake was an adaptation of the Hungarian dobos torta, a rich cake that she considered too heavy for the New Orleans climate. So she lightened the recipe and substituted a French sounding name to suit the locale.
Ledner did so well at her enterprise that the bakery became the sole support of her family. Her husband was the manager and their two children were in charge of folding the cake boxes and neighborhood deliveries.
Beulah left New Orleans a sweet legacy when she finally retired at the age of 87, with her last workday being Mother’s Day of 1981. In 1987, Beulah’s daughter published Let’s Bake with Beulah Ledner: A Legendary New Orleans Lady, which includes the recipe for her famous Doberge Cake.
7) Caroline Thomas Merrick
Caroline Thomas was a proper girl from a respected Southern family whose expected role in life was to serve as a wife and mother. At the age of fifteen she was married to Mr. Merrick and over the next twenty something years, she devoted herself to housekeeping and raising children. As the children grew up and moved out, Caroline began to suffer from boredom and longed to put herself to some useful task. Then the Civil War broke-out and placed responsibilities on Caroline that revolutionized her view of a woman’s place in the world, particularly her own. When the war was over Caroline, like many Southern women, had come to realize her true full potential and could not go back to the traditional role she once played in the home.
Caroline continued to pursue and define her independence by serving charitable committees and boards that were run by women who also enjoyed the atmosphere that these organizations provided where women had the ability to think and speak for themselves. In 1878 one of her committees was cheated out of a charitable donation by the state of Louisiana due to a senseless law that made the document worthless because the signed witness was a woman. That witness was Caroline and she was infuriated. The state took the money and Caroline took up the cause of women’s rights.
The same year, Caroline’s daughter Laura died in New Orleans’ yellow fever epidemic and she was so overcome with grief that she felt unable to carry on her mission. Her friend and fellow activist Elizabeth Lyle Saxon encouraged Caroline to continue their work by asking, “Instead of grieving yourself to death for your daughter who is gone, rise up out of the ashes and do something for the other women who are left!” The grieving mother took the advice of her friend and with further encouragement from her husband, Caroline spent the rest of her life crusading for women’s rights and played a major role in paving the way to women’s suffrage in the state of Louisiana.
8) Josephine Louise Le Monnier Newcomb
Stricken with grief by the death of her 15 year-old daughter Sophie, Mrs. Newcomb spent the next sixteen years in search of an “enduring benefit to humanity” that would enshrine her beloved daughter’s memory. While she weighed her options, she made generous donations to several charitable organizations in Sophie’s name, which she could afford to do because Mrs.Newcomb was a wealthy widow. In 1886, she chose the newly restructured Tulane University as her daughter’s greatest legacy and donated an initial sum of $100,000 to establish the first degree-granting college for women in the United States, which was named the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College. Mrs. Newcomb gave more than 3.6 million dollars to benefit Newcomb College, and in fact, gave a whole lot more money than Paul Tulane ever did and the whole college is named in his honor.
The women’s college operated under her daughter Sophie’s name until 2006 when it was merged with the Paul Tulane College and renamed the Newcomb College Institute of Tulane University. This merger was a huge upset not only to the New Orleans community, but a tremendous loss felt especially by the staff, students and alumni of Sophie Newcomb College. Though the title of Mrs. Newcomb’s legacy to her daughter’s memory has been diminished, the name Sophie Newcomb remains synonymous with the early advancement of women’s education in New Orleans and the United States.
9)Amelia Landry Neville
Amelia Landry and her baby brother George (A.K.A. Big Chief Jolly) loved to dance. When they were teenagers, they formed a dance team and Louis Prima was so impressed with their moves that he invited them to come on tour with his band. Their mother Mary wouldn’t allow it because she didn’t think that her children dancing their way across the country was a respectable thing to do. Amelia and George just had to content themselves with dancing anywhere they could – so long as it was also in Orleans Parish.
To Amelia, the rhythm of the music was the rhythm of joy and she married a man who loved music just as much as she did. They raised their family to the sound of a victrola that never stopped playing and Amelia and George would spend evenings dancing their routines for the family with the same spirit and energy they had in their youth. This rhythmic upbringing is where her children’s bond with music was sealed. Each of Amelia’s children would go on to careers in music and aren’t you glad she wasn’t as uptight about it as her own mother Mary was? Amelia’s daughter Athelgra became a singer with The Dixie Cups and her sons Art, Charles, Aaron and Cyril have worked on numerous projects – the most notable being The Neville Brothers.
10) Thelma Kennedy Toole
From the moment he was born, Thelma was convinced that her son John was a genius. 43 years later, that tenacious little lady proved to the world that she was right. Following John’s suicide, Thelma found his unpublished manuscript and sent it to publisher after publisher and they sent back only rejections. Finally she badgered Walker Percy into reading it and he agreed with Thelma’s assessment, it was clearly a work of genius.
Percy persuaded LSU press to publish A Confederacy of Dunces in 1980 and the following year, John Kennedy Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize, which his mother accepted on his behalf. If not for Thelma’s indomitable spirit, we would have never been introduced to her brilliant son John and the greatest literary character of all time – Ignatius J. Reilly.
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If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy reading my post featuring the Top 25 Quotes About New Orleans.
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