“Mother of the Orphans”: Margaret Haughery
Located at the intersection of Camp and Prytania Street in New Orleans, there is a public park, dedicated solely to a remarkable woman. She is elderly, but radiates affection, and is accompanied by a young girl. The plaque that adorns the statue reads simply “Margaret”. In New Orleans, everyone knows who this is – she is the “Mother of the Orphans”.
An illiterate Irish migrant to the city, Margaret Haughery would become its unofficial patron saint, using her business acumen to feed the poor and shelter the unhoused. Known as the “Big Easy”, on account of its nightlife, jazz music and raucous festivities, New Orleans nevertheless worships at the altar of this pious but extraordinary woman. Let’s tell her story.
Born in Leitrim in 1813, Margaret Gaffney, as she was then known, sailed with her family to the United States when she was just five years old, docking in Baltimore, Maryland after a gruelling six-month voyage. In 1822, both of Margaret’s parents died from disease, leaving her alone and homeless. A neighbour took her in, training her to be a domestic servant. In 1835, Margaret married Irish native Charles Haughery. Believing that a warmer climate would alleviate Charles’ ill health, the couple sailed to New Orleans.
Part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the New Orleans that Margaret had moved to had quickly emerged as the wealthiest city in the United States. Traders in its port shipped cotton, sugar and enslaved black people to the Caribbean, South America and Europe. Dominated by French and Spanish Catholics, New Orleans was an appealing place of refuge for the Irish, but their lives were not easy – up to 20,000 of them were killed during the construction of the New Basin shipping canal that bisected the city.
Margaret’s husband and their infant daughter would succumb to diseases shortly after their arrival – she was alone for the second time in her life. Now working as a laundress in an illustrious hotel, she was determined to help those who were also suffering. In her free time, she would volunteer with the Sisters of Charity, an orphanage run by Catholic nuns. She later left her job at the hotel to work at the orphanage full-time, using her savings to donate cows to provide milk to its children.
A savvy businesswoman, Margaret sold any milk left unused by the orphanage, and used the proceeds to open a dairy, selling cream and butter in New Orleans’ affluent French Quarter. She opened a bakery, selling bread and cakes, and would give unsold loaves to the city’s destitute, cutting them in half so that they couldn’t sell them to buy alcohol. Her entrepreneurial streak would give her the means to continue her noble crusade against poverty.
By 1840, she had raised enough money to open an orphanage for young girls - she would finance the construction of ten others by the end of her life. Her newfound wealth did not change her –she opened a “Baby House” for the children of those who had died during a yellow fever epidemic that swept through the city in the early 1850s. She spent little on herself, allegedly owning no more than two dresses, and became known for her distinctive Quaker bonnet.
A matriarch for the city’s poor, Margaret would not be restrained in her pursuit of justice. The largest city in the slave owning South, New Orleans’ location at the mouth of the Mississippi River made it a geostrategic battleground during the American Civil War. Controlled by the Confederate States, but subjected to attacks by the Union Army, Margaret would give additional free bread loaves to the city’s starving citizens, to reduce the hardships caused by food shortages.
In 1862, New Orleans was occupied by the Union Army, who imposed martial law in the city. A Union general, Benjamin Butler, admonished Margaret for distributing food and milk outside a mandated curfew and threatened to execute her. When she asked him if it was President Abraham Lincoln’s intention to starve the poor, General Butler responded, “You are not to go through the picket lines without my permission; is that clear?”. “Quite clear”, Margaret replied to which Butler stated, “You have my permission”.
Margaret continued her fight against destitution until the end of her life, insisting that her donations and orphanages should serve all children, regardless of ethnicity, class or creed. She died in 1882 and was granted a state funeral and a monument recognising her achievements. In her will, she gave all of her wealth to Protestant, Jewish and Catholic orphanages, inscribing an X in the spot where her name ought to have been. She had never learned to read or write.
In this essay, I have discussed the life of Margaret Haughery, a totemic matriarch for the poor and unhoused in 19th century New Orleans. Completed two years after her death, her statue was the first public monument erected in the United States to honour a woman. A leading New Orleans paper eulogised her in its obituary, proclaiming “She was the most deservedly eminent, the most justly famous, of all the women of New Orleans, of our generation or of any other, in the whole history of the city”. A fitting tribute to the “Mother of the Orphans” indeed.
