"St.Augustine Catholic Church of New Orleans."(910-1842)

This date marks the dedication of St.Augustine's Catholic Church in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans has been a church of the free African-Americans citizens of New Orleans,welcoming both free and slave worshippers.Hearing that African-American church members were buying pews,white people in the area started a campaign to buy more pews than the African-Americans.The war of the Pews began and was ultimately won by the free people of color who brought three pews to everyone purchased by the whites.In an unprecedented social,political,and religious,move,the African-Americans members also brought all of the pews on both sides aisles.They gave these pews to the slaves in the U.S. as their exclusive place of worship,a first in the history of slavery in the U.S. This mix of the pews resulted in the most integrated congregation in the entire country:one large row of free people of color,one large row of whites with a smattering of ethnics,and two outer aisles of slaves.Except  for a brief  six-month period when its sanctuary was enlarged and blessed in time for Christmas 1925,St.Augustine Church has been in continuous use as a place of worship until the present time.The property of which St.Augustine was part of a plantation estate,tileery,and brickyard headquarters built in 1720.It was part of the province of New Orleans'supervisor,the Company of the Indies,an economic stimulus for the province.In 1731 the Company of Indies left and the plantation was sold to the Moreau,family eventually coming into the possession of Julie Moreau,manumitted slave,in 1775.Soon after Claude Treme,a Frenchman,married Julie and took title to the property.The couple subdivided the estate and sold off many lots on a first-come first-served basis to free people of color and others from the Old Quarter,including Haitian immigrants fleeing the 1791 revolution in Haiti.After selling 35 lots,the Tremes left their home in 1810.In 1834,Jeanne Marie Aliquot purchased the Treme's former home and property from the city of New Orleans and brought in the United States' first Catholic elementary school for free girls of color and a few slaves.This school had been started in 1823 by Martha Fortier,a onetime postulant of the Hospital nuns.Jeanne became a major catalyst in orgin of St.Augustine Church.Under economic pressure pressure,Jeanne Marie sold the house to the Ursuline sisters in 1836.They sold the property to the Carmmelites in 1840,then took over the cook school for colored girls and merged it with their school for white girls.The Carmelite sisters used the treme home for their mother house until 1926 when they moved out to Robert E.Lee Boulevard in the West End Section of New Orleans.Jeanne Marie Aliquot,the prime catalyst of the development of the St.Augustine campus,is rescued from the Mississippi River by a colored fisherman as she slips overboard while attempting a ship from France.She purchased the Claude Treme property for 9,000 on January 3,Soon after,at her invitation Marthe Fortiere moved the elementary school which she founded into the Claude Treme house.In the late 1830s,when free people of color got permission from Bishop Antoine to build a church,the Ursulines donated the corner property at Bayou Road (Governor Nicholls St.) and St.Claude which they had brought for $10.000 on the condition that the church be named after founder St.Angela Merci.On November 14,1842,free people layed the capstone of St.Augustine Church on the corner of St.Claude Avenue and Bayou Road(Governor Nicholls St.)On the Claude Treme Property.The omnibus civil rights bill pased on June 29, 1964,banning discrimination voting,jobs and all public accommodations.This time,the whites began to leave Treme in considerable numbers,causing St. Augustine Church to morph back into predominantly African-American congregation.On Saturday,October 30,in the midst of Gospel Extravaganza unfolding in the St.Augustine parking lot,Archbishop Alfred Schulte,standing near the church garden area and accompained by a large crowd from around the city and parts of the nation,blessed and dedicated The Tomb of the Unknown Slave,a shrine consisting of outsize marine chains welded together with shackles and iron balls to form a huge,fallen cross.An explanatory plaque hangs on the church wall next to the shrine.Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast on August 29 and New Orleans levees are breached in its aftermath,flooding the city.St.Augustine Church survives the storm with minimal damage,and,as citizens return,the parish focused on victim relief and the city's rebuilding.