Emerette Cazenave

I represent Emerette 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 fifth child listed in my father’s 1825 will, I was probably one of the two Black females listed in her household between the ages of 10 and 24 years old.