BIRTH AND PARENTAGE 71 
to Bernard Marigny in 1800, and Congress confirmed 
his title to it by a special act in 1836.2° 
Bernard Marigny served in the French army towards 
the close of the Napoleonic period, and his return to the 
United States from France, about 1818, is said to have 
been hastened by a duel which he fought with one of 
his superior officers. On his return he named Bonna- 
bel’s old tract on Lake Ponchartrain “Fontainebleau,” 
in remembrance of the place where his regiment had 
been assigned for duty in France, and eventually built 
upon the estate a sawmill and a sugar-house, and planted 
sugar cane, living meanwhile on another plantation two 
and one-half miles away. The latter estate was allotted 
by him in 1832, when he gave it the name of Mandeville: 
the settlement thus started has since grown to a village 
of some 1,500 people. Here a summer house which be- 
longed to Bernard’s father still exists, although in al- 
tered form; it has been raised to accommodate a lower 
story, and is now known as the “Casino.” According to 
those who have most carefully investigated existing rec- 
ords, this is the only house in Mandeville which belonged 
to the elder Marigny at the time of which we speak. 
*>See Laws of the United States, Treaties, Regulations, and Other 
Documents Respecting the Public Lands, vol. i, p. 301 (Washington, 1836). 
In Number 756, entitled “An Act for the Relief of Bernard Marigny, of 
the State of Louisiana,” Marigny is mentioned as assignee of Antonio 
Bonnabel, and his claim, which was confirmed, is described as follows: a 
tract of land of 4,020 superficial arpents, in the State of Louisiana, parish 
of St. Tammany, “bounded on the southwest by Lake Ponchartrain, and 
on the northwest by lands formerly owned by the heirs of Lewis Davis.” 
I am informed by Mr. Gaspar Cusachs, president of the Historical 
Society of Louisiana, who has carefully investigated the titles of this 
property and to whom I am indebted for much information concerning 
it and its owners, that the tract described above included the estate of 
“Fontainebleau.” Marigny’s claim included also a smaller tract of 774 
arpents in the same parish. This land was bounded on the southwest 
by Lake Ponchartrain, on the north by Castin Bayou, and on the south 
by the tract acquired from Bonnabel; it was granted to the heirs of 
Lewis Davis in 1777, and certain of them filed a claim for it in 1812. 
