Norbert Badin papers. Financial papers. Folder 02-06, 1872-1892. - Norbert Badin papers. Financial papers. Folder 02-06, 1872-1892.

The Badin family was the oldest family of free people of color of creole heritage and their descendants who lived in the Cane River settlement, a large community of free people of color in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The family is descended from the slaves of Pierre Badin, a planter of tobacco from Thorigne, France in the diocese of Poitiers. In 1791, Pierre manumitted all twenty enslaved persons in his possession. The freed slaves continued to live with Pierre and adopted his surname. Prior to Pierre’s death in 1805, he drafted a will naming his former enslaved persons as his legatees.</br></br>Celestin LaCaze (born July 18, 1798) was a free man of color who lived in the Cane River colony of free people of color (Isle Brevelle) in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Celestin and his brother Michel (born 1801) were the sons of an enslaved woman named Rosalie, whose slaveholder was a white planter of Little River named Jacques LaCaze. Celestin married Elisa Rouquier on March 22, 1835.</br></br>Norbert Badin (died 1903) was a free man of color from the Cane River settlement of Melrose in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, an area that was home to a large community of free people of color. Badin and his family were planters and landowners, owning rental property on Bayou Bourbraux.</br></br>Norbert Badin married Sylvia Phermance on February 12, 1885. Their children included: Zeline (born approximately 1860), Oscarine (born approximately 1862), Justinian L. (born approximately 1866), Pascali (born approximately 1868), and Nerestin. Zeline married Joseph Roques, a descendent of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, in 1893, and the couple lived in the Badin-Roque House, an early colonial bousillage home built by Jean Baptiste Metoyer. The couple's other daughter became a Catholic nun at the Holy Family Convent in New Orleans and took the name Sister Mary Celestine.</br></br>Badin and his descendants appear to have stayed in the Cane River (Isle Brevelle) area of Natchitoches Parish during the creation of the papers, with the exception of Joe and Tony Antee (sometimes spelled Anty), who corresponded from Beaumont, Texas and Mansfield, Ohio, respectively. Their Aunt Zeline Roque lived in Natchez, Louisiana.