A Look Toward Dixie
As I puzzled over things, I went back and carefully re-read everything I had ever seen about Mme. R, including items which I had dismissed earlier because they seemed farfetched. Eventually, I found an odd recurrence which I previously had missed: Louisiana. I now pondered the following items:
- In Rosa's testimony at the first Merrigan murder trial, she talked about having discovered her clairvoyant abilities while living in New Orleans, and about having since used those abilities for twelve years.
- According to a census, her daughter Amy F. Harper had been born in Louisiana in October of 1862 - the year to which Rosa alluded in 1874 when talking about events twelve years in the past.
- Reviewing data for all the George Harpers in New York, I found that only one of them reported having been born in Louisiana (I had missed that earlier, because he had reported this fact on only one of the censuses for which he was enumerated). This man resided in Brooklyn. His birth year was around 1859; his birth month was August. His name was George W. Harper.
So... there was a George W. Harper of interest, too young to have been Rosa's lover, but with the same name as her Hicksville neighbor. Could a document from Louisiana, where he had been born, clarify whether this man was a new-found relative of Rosa, or merely a stranger whose name was a coincidence? I now worked my way through old records from Louisiana, where I eventually found something significant.
The Index of Births for New Orleans, Louisiana told me that on August 15, 1860, Amy Allison, who had been born in New York State, gave birth to a boy named George Washington Harper. The baby's father was George M. Harper, born in England. Unpacking this information led to these conclusions:
- Amy Allison(aka Madame Rosa) was in New Orleans in 1860, giving birth.
- George M. Harper, her baby's father, was the man to whom Edward Stevens feared Rosa would return.
- George M. Harper was British, which fit with the information about Amy F. Harper's father provided for the 1880 U.S. Census.
- George W. Harper, who sold the property in Hicksville, could be assumed to be the brother of Amy F.
I found no entry in the Index of Births for Amy F. Harper, but that made sense. Unlike her apparent brother George W. Harper, she was born during the Civil War. During the pregnancy, New Orleans - the largest city in the Confederacy - was being attacked by, and ultimately fell to, Union forces. Its residents panicked. Once Northern troops were able to establish order, every English resident, including George M. Harper, would be suspected of subverting the Union cause. It is probable that, like a great many others, he and his family fled the city during the bombardment. If they did, Rosa's being pregnant would have limited how far they could flee; they may have found a haven further inland in Louisiana, and remained there until baby Amy F was born.
***
