rt were quite
numerous. Prominent among them by reason of his wealth and philanthropy was
Thomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender who systematically accumulated
houses and lots during a lifetime extending both before and after the
Civil War and whose possessions when he died at the age of eighty-two were
appraised at nearly half a million dollars.[28] Prosperity and good repute,
however, did not always go hand in hand. The keeper of the one good tavern
in the Louisiana village of Bayou Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whom
Anne Royall wrote: "This _nigger_ or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern and
several slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuable
property and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it is
true. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [an
Irishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to her
and it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was the
ugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they were
well matched."[29] One might ascribe the tone of this description to the
tartness of Mrs. Royall's pen were it not that she recorded just afterward
that a body-servant of General Ripley who was placed at her command in St.
Francisville was "certainly the most accomplished servant I ever saw."[30]

[Footnote 27: W.C. Nell, _Colored Patriots_, pp. 244, 245.]

[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Picayune_, Dec. 23, 1893. His many charitable
bequests are scheduled in the _Picayune_ of a week later.]

[Footnote 29: Anne Royall, _Southern Tour_ (Washington, 1831), pp. 87-89.]

[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., p. 91.]

The property of colored freemen oftentimes included slaves. Such instances
were quite numerous in pre-revolutionary San Domingo; and some in
the British West Indies achieved notoriety through the exposure of
cruelties.[31] On the continent a negro planter in St. Paul's Parish, South
Carolina, was reported before the close of the eighteenth century to have
two hundred slaves as well as a white wife and son-in-law, and the returns
of the first federal census appear to corroborate it.[32] In Louisiana
colored planters on a considerable scale became fairly numerous. Among them
were Cyprien Ricard who bought at a sheriff's sale in 1851 an estate in
Iberville Parish along with its ninety-one slaves for nearly a quarter of
a million dollars; Marie Metoyer of Natchitoches Parish had fifty-eight
slaves and more tha