Merced Cazenave

I represent Merced Cazenave, a free parda girl. (My first name is the closest anyone can make out the clerk’s handwriting). My parents were Jean Baptiste Cazenave, a Frenchman who was part owner of the Tivoli House; and Nancy Cazenave, a free woman of color. Families of mixed ethnicity like ours were quite common in Spanish West Florida, as the Spanish did not have the same social taboos as Anglo-American society. In the 1830 census of Pensacola, my mother was widowed, and as I was the last child listed in my father’s 1825 will, I was probably the Black female listed in her household under the age of ten years old, which would make me an infant in 1821.