Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba (November 6, 1795[1]-April 20, 1874) was a wealthy New Orleans businesswoman, and one of the most colorful personalities of that city's history. An opera and many novels have been written about her dramatic life.
Contents |
[edit] Family
Micaela Leonarda Antonia Almonester was born November 6, 1795, in New Orleans Louisiana, the only child of Andres Almonester y Rojas and his aristocratic French wife, Louise de la Ronde, member of one of the oldest white Creole families in the city, and a cousin of General Pierre G.T. Beauregard.[2] Don Andres, a native of Andalucia Spain was a wealthy notary and politician who amassed a fortune in real estate due to the power he held inside the Cabildo, the Spanish governing council of New Orleans, and his contacts with the Spanish Crown[3] When Micaela was only three years old her father died and her mother quickly remarried. Micaela was likely the richest little girl in the city. She was educated, along with other daughters of the elite, by the nuns at the old Ursulines Convent which was situated on la Rue Conde, which is now Chartres Street.[4]
[edit] Marriage
In keeping with Creole tradition, a marriage was arranged for Micaela in 1811 when she was fifteen. Her husband was her cousin, Xavier Celestin de Pontalba. Her father-in-law, Baron Joseph Delfau de Pontalba who had served in the French and Spanish armies as military officer, was a mentally-unstable, greedy man, and would soon make Micaela's life a complete misery. Shortly after her wedding, the Pontalbas left Louisiana for France, where Micaela would trade her privileged life as a spoilt Creole girl for a terrifying existence at Mont l'Eveque, the Pontalba chateau outside Paris. She bore her husband five children but due to the interference of her eccentric father-in-law, the marriage became a disaster. The old baron, being intent upon seizing the sizeable Almonester fortune, forced Micaela into signing a general Power of Attorney giving her husband control over her assets, rents, and capital, both dotal, and as heir of her father. By the 1830s, she was a virtual prisoner of the Pontalbas. Whenever she returned to New Orleans to visit her family, the baron accused her of deserting her husband. In Paris she began a series of lawsuits to obtain a separation from Xavier, but lost to the strictures of French law as regards to marriage. Her attempts to protect her fortune, enraged the baron, and thus in November 1834, he shot Micaela point-blank with a pair of duelling pistols. Afterward, he committed suicide with the same pistols. She survived, despite having been shot in the chest, hands, with her fingers shattered.[5]
[edit] The Pontalba Buildings
Micaela finally, after several more lawsuits,was granted legal separation from her husband, who was now Baron de Pontalba.In New Orleans, a civil law judge ordered the restitution of her property. At that time contemporaries described her as shrewd, intelligent,vivacious, and business-like. In the late 1840s, Micaela designed, and commissioned the construction of the beautifully elegant town houses in Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter, which are today known as the Pontalba Buildings. They cost more than $300,000 to build. When the Swedish singer Jenny Lind visited New Orleans in 1851 she stayed at the apartments. Afterward, the shrewd Micaela auctioned the furniture Lind had used. She also commissioned the construction of a large hotel in Paris that is now used as the American Embassy. When Micaela Almonester Pontalba died in Paris on April 20, 1874 at the age of seventy-eight, she was already a legend in the city of her birth.
[edit] Sources
- http://www.FrenchQuarter.com.
- Jackson Square by Henry Renshaw.Louisiana Historical Quarterly
- Old Ursulines Convent.Website.
