
Second Thursday Lecture Series
Gentilly: A New Orleans Plantation in the French Atlantic World, 1818–1851
with Dr. Virginia Meacham Gould
Second Thursday Lecture Series
Gentilly: A New Orleans Plantation in the French Atlantic World, 1818–1851
with Dr. Virginia Meacham Gould
Join us for a virtual evening with Dr. Virginia Meacham Gould as she discusses her upcoming book with co-author Nathalie Dessens entitled Gentilly: A New Orleans Plantation in the French Atlantic World, 1818–1851 (LSU Press, April 2025). This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Cabildo as part of the Second Thursday Lecture Series. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required. The program will take place on Zoom. Please register here and a Zoom link will be emailed to you on the day of the lecture: https://tinyurl.com/mzjjdnee
About the Book
Between 1818 and 1851, Auvignac Dorville, a Louisiana Creole, managed the day-to-day operations of the Gentilly plantation, located a few miles from New Orleans along Bayou St. John. The plantation belonged to Henri and Marguerite de Sainte-Gême, who entrusted their property to Dorville’s careful supervision when they left Louisiana for the Sainte-Gême ancestral home in France. Dorville wrote to the Sainte-Gêmes for more than thirty years, offering detailed glimpses of the plantation’s crops, financial situation, environmental challenges, and events surrounding the two dozen enslaved men, women, and children working there. Expertly translated and annotated by Nathalie Dessens and Virginia Meacham Gould, Dorville’s letters illuminate nineteenth-century life on an urban plantation that connected the rural world of Louisiana to the urban sphere of New Orleans and reached far into the Atlantic world.
About the Author
Virginia Gould received her B.S. from the University of Alabama and her M.A. and PH.D. in history from Emory University. Her historical emphasis is on American History, Women's History, and the History of the Gulf South, particularly New Orleans.
While a lecturer in history at Tulane University she received an Excellence in Teaching award. Besides teaching, she has presented more than a hundred presentations at history Conferences. She has published four books—all on women—and more than 21 essays in journals and anthologies. Her book entitled, Chained to the Rock of Adversity: To Be Free, Black and Female in the Old South, was published by the University of Georgia Press. Her second book (with Charles Nolan) is entitled No Cross, No Crown: Back Nuns in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, published by the University of Indiana Press. Her third book Henriette Delille was published by Édition du Signe. Most notably she has published extensively on free women of color, the topic of her dissertation: "In Full Enjoyment of Their Liberty: The Free Women of Color of the Gulf Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola, 1769–1860."
She has served as the historian for the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans for more than 25 years. She has also published widely on Henriette Delille and the Sisters of the Holy Family. The Sisters of the Holy Family are a religious community of African American Sisters (nuns). In 2017, she received the Henriette Delille Honorary Award for her dedication to the Sisters and the Cause for Canonization of Henriette Delille. She received the A. Elizabeth Taylor with Emily Clark from the SAWH the Prize in 2003 for the article published in the William and Mary Quarterly. The article is entitled "The Feminine Face of Afro-Creole Catholicism". She is presently revising a lengthy book manuscript on Henriette Delille. Its working title is "Henriette Delille: The Afro-Creole Founder of the Sisters of the Holy Family in Antebellum New Orleans."
