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• 1 2017-05-08T20:27:21-07:00 Julien Poydras de Lalande: Who was he? 18 Created by Sarah Dase plain 2017-05-10T01:26:12-07:00 Born in France, little is known about Poydras’ childhood, but “as a very young man he enlisted in the navy of King Louis XV” and was “captured by the British and taken to England in 1760” (1). He spent three years in prison, after he escaped England and came to New Orleans.
  
  He quickly, became one of the wealthiest men in Pointe Coupee establishing “a business…a small stock of hardware, cutlery, household necessities, and sundry trinkets” and within a quick period of time he “acquired a planation” (1). It is here where one of his slaves, “Antoine Sarrasin…of the Poydras estate, was the main leader of the 1795 conspiracy. He was the son of a white settler of Pointe Coupee and bore his father’s full name. He had one Indian grandmother and one African grandfather, and his other grandmother and grandfather were French. Antoine Sarrasin was a true creole” (342). 
  
  "Even though the conspiracy formed at the plantation of Julien Poydras, who was in Philadelphia at the time, it extended throughout the parish" (4). Stating in a letter to his brother that "sixteen of his best negroes of the plantation were hung which causes me a loss of thirty piastres in one lump...I was doing well where I was but everything went so badly here during my absence" (4).
  
  
  
  His speech once chosen as a representative for Louisiana making possible allusions to the conspiracy:
  
  
  
  His poetry, glamorously translated by google:
  
   
  

  the bold , black, italicized words from this translation are taken and used in the poem 

  
  
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