This entry contains notes about enslaved people held by or associated with the Avery Family, as well as their descendants. See also mcilhenny1933.

Sarah Avery Leeds’s Census

There is a long list of the “family servants” of D. D. Avery and Sarah Marsh Avery that was probably recorded by Sarah Avery Leeds in the mid-1880s.¹ It mentions the following persons:

• Alphonse (butler) and wife Matilda (washerwoman), still alive in 1885
• Eliza Wise, given Sarah Marsh by her father, and still alive in 1885
• Eliza’s two sons were Sabra & Joe (known as “Lige” or “Lize”). According to this account, Sabra was a valet for Dudley Avery while he was in Confederate army, while “Joe went with family to Texas 1863 & remained there.”
• Elizabeth, cook
• Rachel and her daughters Molly & Eliza
• William Wells (“Will”), a hostler, & Kitty or Kilty his wife, housekeeper
• Richard alias “Dick” their son
• Ann Blount (housekeeper) & Jeannette her dauther (maid to Sara M. Avery)
• Jane, seamstress, “faithful & devoted nurse to Sara Avery, in small pox 1860, also her nurse & attendant on her trip to Cuba 1865, running blockade on Confederate Blockade runner Flamingo. Capt. Atkinson, R. N.”
• Polly, Minnie’s nurse, and [Sauney?] Williams, Polly’s husband

Listed as servants at Petite Anse Home:

• William Butler & Lizzie his wife
• Ben Keller & Georgiana his wife
• “Uncle Sabra,” gardener
• Aunt Harriet, cook. Ben & Lizzie & John Henry, her children
• Maria Houston

There is also an interesting list headed “1865–Contrabands–New regime” that includes the following:

• William Bell & Sally his wife (and their children “born while in the service of D. D. Avery & family, including Walter, Mina, Charley, and two other illegible names)
• William in the family service from 1866 to date (1883 Feb 1)
• Nace Ligins (?) & Kitty his wife & four children in family’s service from 1866 to 1885
• William Bell & family in active service of family at Salt Mines to date Oct. 1904
• Another family listed in active service of family in Plantation & House to date Oct 1904
• Albert Olivier, son-in-law of Wm. Bell, married “Ena,” Family Butler, 1898, to date 1904
• “Aunt Ann,” slave of Wm Hilliard, cook in family, from 1898 to date Oct 1904, “a fine type of Ole Virginny Cook, a resident of Attakapas since she was a young girl, devoted to family.”

Finally, there is a list of “family servants” dated 1908:

• “Aunt Ann” (Jones), cook since 1898
• Albert Olivier & family, butler since 1898
• “John Cooper” (old servant, gardener)
• Beckie, daughter of Nase Sims, maid
• Timothy Overton, “Timmie,” 2nd man, & wife Elsie
• Alice James, sister to Elise James
• Edgar & Mack Davis, garden & Hostler # Sabra and Joe

Miscellaneous

• A list of people buried at Avery Island, compiled in 1878, mentions William Odel, who may be the “Bill Odell” credited with discovering the rock salt at Petit Anse, as well as the names of other enslaved people.² He may also be the “Old Bill” mentioned in the postwar letters of Eliza Ann Marsh Robertson.
• An account with what appears to be a local doctor, Henry Stubinger, lists the names of several Avery Family slaves, including “Legey,” “William,” and “Sukey” (sp?).³
• Other “hands,” including Sam and Ben, whom the Averys hoped to “retain” after the war, are mentioned in a postbellum letter from Dudley to his father.⁴
• A postwar letter refers to “Old Sabra,” who “has a fine garden and has planted most of the seed.”⁵
• Another postwar letter mentions “Dick” as the only “servant” Dudley took on a fishing trip, while “Tom Jones” had disappeared, to the relief of Mary McIlhenny who regarded him as a “nuisance on account of his grumbling.”⁶
• A woman named “Jeanette” is mentioned as having “returned to my service” on July 8, 1866, by Sarah Marsh Avery (Leeds) in the back of her wedding book.⁷
• “Aunt Maria” Houston and Perry Thomas, married couple, mentioned twice in the 1870s and 1880s as “faithful servant[s]” of the family since the days of John Craig Marsh.⁸