The area behind St. Louis Cathedral has been called St. Anthony Place, Ballenger Square, St. Antoine’s Garden, and St. Anthony’s Garden, among other names, over the years. The current moniker dually honors St. Anthony with a little nod to Pere Antoine, the beloved priest of New Orleans, who made his home in the gardens during his reign over the Cathedral as its parish priest.
The area wasn’t always a fenced in private garden for the cathedral. Before the cathedral’s mid-19th century renovations, the area was larger and public.
Dr. Shannon L. Dawdy conducted an excavation in the area after it was completely destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. During her work, she found much evidence of a public market operating in this area during the colonial time. She also found many artifacts indicating that the Native Americans who lived here before the Europeans came interacted heavily with the early settlers.
A common tour tale is that public duels were often fought in the area until the priest decided they were too loud. They moved to the Dueling Oak in what is now City Park until they were outlawed entirely at the end of the 19th century.
There is evidence that duels were common. Many old news articles describe duels in New Orleans and around the country.
But Dr. Dawdy’s report lists no evidence of duels.
I decided to email her to ask if there was any evidence or if this is yet another tour guide perpetuated myth of 19th century New Orleans.
She was kind enough to reply.
Well, we did find a few lead musket balls and shot in the garden but since I’m convinced the space was used as a market space and campground in the 18th century, this is not at all surprising. They are ubiquitous on sites of the era. Doesn’t mean they were fired there (made of lead, they could also serve as weights for various things, or used as gaming pieces, etc., or just a random lost item from a hunter or solider). In terms of the archives, no evidence duels happened there that I’ve seen, though there are a couple of cases documented elsewhere (see The Devil’s Empire).
Dr. Shannon L. Dawdy via email to the author
It’s one of those stories that is probably half true — but we’ll never know which half.
So…no duels with guns regularly held in the center of old New Orleans as far as the documentation and archaeological evidence shows. Yet another legend where the facts — the strong relationship with Native Americans in the early city and another historic public market place — are a much better story.
This story may come from the 1938 New Orleans City Guide. In it, there is a section on fencing, once the sport of choice in the city, apparently, and the duels that were held in St. Anthony’s Garden behind the Cathedral. He also references an event still occurring, the Mardi Gras Duello, an exhibition tournament between fencing clubs held on Mardi Gras day in St. Anthony’s Garden.
I found several references to this event in the newspaper, but they were all in 1937, the year the book was written. Perhaps the duels were with swords and noise was from the humans watching?
Citation: Archaeological Investigations at St. Anthony’s Garden (160R443) New Orleans, Louisiana by Shannon Lee Dawdy. University of Chicago Department of Anthropology 2011-2014.
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