Morial's Family Links To Haiti A Murky Mystery Missing Document,
Family Stories Plant Family Tree In Nation's Soil
12-11-1994 Times Picayune

*************************************************
Copyright. All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
************************************************  


An ancient passport with a smudged name is the only family
possession that links New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial with the
people of Haiti. And even that is missing.

But if family lore is correct and if the Morials are typical of
many old families in the city's Creole 7th Ward, then in
visiting Haiti this week Morial is returning to his ancestral
turf. Someone in the mayor's family tree likely emigrated from
Haiti, probably when it was known as Santo Domingue and probably
during the last years that it was under the control of the
French - in 1790 or so.

"No name. Father's side. A 1790 passport." Those were the clues
Morial gave last week in support of his assumption that his kin
came from Haiti. He could be right. There was a fairly large
emigration of Haitians to Louisiana in the 1790s and an even
larger one after 1804 - the year Haitian slaves led by Toussaint
l'Ouverture consummated their revolt against the French and
created an independent nation.

While a fair amount of documentation exists about the origins of
Sybil Morial's side of the family, the Haydels, little or
nothing has been dug up about the ancestors of the mayor's
father, Dutch. Dutch's older brother, Walter, once spoke of a
travel document he had, the one with the smudged name and the
1790 date, Marc Morial's brother Jacques said. But Walter Morial
is dead and the document has been misplaced.

"It's a travel document, a passport, I haven't seen it," Jacques
Morial said. "Uncle Walter was the historian in that
generation."

Sybil Morial could add little.

"Dutch's mother's side was the side that came from Haiti, or at
least that's what I had always heard," she said. "I guess that
passport was the only thing that could tell you for sure. I
haven't seen it."

Morial is unlikely to solve his genealogical mystery overnight.
New Orleans genealogist Augusta Bruley Elmwood, who formed a
group that traces the Haitian ancestry of area residents, said
many of the records and tombstones in Haiti have been destroyed
by years of political strife and riot.

Not that Morial will have much time to rifle through baptismal
archives or roam country cemeteries in Haiti. He will be in the
country less than 48 hours and his itinerary is carefully
scripted.

"I don't think it's that kind of trip," Sybil Morial said. "It's
all business."