Deadly Pedigree

12



At sunset Nick sat in a wicker rocker below ceiling fans on the balcony of his B&B room, overlooking Cane River. He was studying the documents he had stolen a few hours before and working on a third glass of sparkling wine, from the bottle chilling in a wine bucket at his feet. There were other important records of other individuals on some of the pages; he felt bad about that, as he sipped. But his crime was in the interest of one of his favorite causes–keeping himself alive.

He learned as he read that the life of Hyam Balazar would have interested him, whether he was being paid fifty thousand or nothing.

From court proceedings, tax rolls, marriage records, newspaper stories (he’d found a stack of old brittle issues of defunct local newspapers), and a few partial parish censuses, Nick was able to see the outlines of Hyam’s life.

His birthplace appeared variously as France, Martinique, St. Lucia, and St.-Domingue, today’s Haiti. He apparently used whatever factual invention benefited him most at the time. Nick guessed that he was born between 1780 and 1792. Definitely in Louisiana by the time of the Purchase, Hyam thus instantly became a citizen of the United States. Nick found no evidence to back up Coldbread’s identification of him with Hiram, he of the Packenham Five treasure; but the time frame was right.

Early on, records referred to Hyam as a “Hebrew itinerant peddler.” From his wagon he sold pots and pans, cloth, spices, newly mass-produced sundries, whatever the country folk and the Indians needed and couldn’t readily provide for themselves. He teamed up with a Natchitoches shop owner, one Isaac Makher. Hyam became the traveling salesman for Isaac. Their enterprise was lucrative, their territory broad. They sued frequently over contractual disputes, and from court documents Nick inferred the large amounts of capital involved in their growing enterprise. They were making money hand over fist.

Hyam made the leap to landowner in a very few years. Nick wasn’t sure how he had obtained the land, whether from a Spanish land patent or through purchase during the early American period. He had not come across records that would help on that question. Had he missed them? Maybe Hiram and Hyam Balazar were one and the same, as Coldbread thought. Could the lost treasure have financed Hyam’s land purchase?

Nick shook his head. He was slipping into Coldbread’s fantasy world, where verifiable facts and convincing evidence were no better than dream visions between sleeping and waking. He took a deep breath and forced himself to reason like the professional genealogist he was.

Local land records are vastly important in genealogy. Often they mention birth and death dates, relationships, neighbors, and other crucial family information. Before he left New Orleans, Nick had already checked the American State Papers and other relevant references that might have mentioned Hyam making a private land claim to establish a first-title deed to his land. But this lack of primary evidence wasn’t unusual. Title to land from the colonial period was sometimes established a hundred years later for lack of contemporary documentation. In the South, land records are complicated and incomplete; add frequent fraud to the mixture, and it’s enough to give any genealogist indigestion.

Nick was glad he couldn’t locate any record of a patent or a deed: that meant probably that no one else had found one either, and his scavenger hunt for Mrs. Armiger was that much closer to being complete.

All Nick knew was what he could piece together from the records he had found. In the mid-1830s Hyam owned a large tract of land in a remote area of St. Denis Parish. He bought slaves and started farming in a big way, experimenting with several crops in various combinations. Corn first, then indigo, then wood for barrels, then cane, which was certainly familiar to him from his childhood on the island–whichever it was–and finally, cotton. He was involved in a few court cases with buyers of his commodities, but these records provided Nick with little personal information.

Hyam’s financial successes were blighted by family tragedies. Life was perilous, then as now–though Nick didn’t need reminding. He’d found two marriage-license returns (1817 and 1826), which the ministers presented as proof that they had performed the legal ceremonies. There was a death listing only for the second wife (1840). The cause: “fever in consequence of childbirth.” Nick found no birth registration for surviving children of these marriages; but that wasn’t unusual, even in Louisiana, which began such civil record keeping relatively early.

Nick thought of Hyam’s descendant, Natalie Armiger, when he saw the planter’s willingness to change religious overcoats. His first wife, Sarah Whortleberry, was Methodist; his second, Mary Debuis, was Catholic. On both marriage documents, there was peculiar reference by the minister to Hyam’s conversion; such a prominent man must have been a catch. Hyam was playing the roulette game of life with obvious skill, and was determined to have enough chips to cash out and enter Heaven, whether Moses or St. Peter manned the gates. On his next trip to Natchitoches, Nick would need to visit the churches, if they still existed, and attempt to gain access to congregational records.

If he could continue to silence his conscience.

His prize discovery was a clerk’s transcript of Hyam’s nuncupative will, a type of dictated testament, in a batch of district criminal court records with singed page edges. There had been a fire, after all.

A genealogist is never surprised where he finds wills. Judges heard cases when and where it pleased them, and clerks sometimes recorded proceedings in the wrong register books through convenience, incompetence, or laziness. Sometimes multiple copies were made, sometimes only the original can be found, sometimes nothing. This clerk was plain messy, or maybe drunk or nervous, in making his blotted copy. Was he the last person to touch the actual document that was Hyam’s will and know its fate? It wasn’t in the courthouse basement now; Nick had been rushed, but thorough.

Strange. Hyam, a man of business, dying without a formalized written will to dispose of his considerable property. It didn’t seem in character for him to leave such loose ends, to treat succession as a mere afterthought. He waited until his final illness before assembling witnesses to make his last wishes known. What if he’d died a moment earlier?

At any rate, the heirs would have come out all right, valid will or no will, thanks to Louisiana’s civil law of the day, founded on French and Spanish legal traditions stretching back to Roman times. When there was a valid will, the state’s unique law of forced heirship then in effect guaranteed legitimate children a portion of the estate; after 1870, illegitimate children, also, could inherit from the natural parent. Without a valid will, the children inherited a parent’s entire estate, though the surviving spouse had life usage over community property. In Hyam’s case, there appeared to be no living wife’s “usufruct” to consider.

In terms of spontaneity, the nuncupative will is as close to an oral last will and testament as Louisiana’s Civil Code allows. Was Hyam replacing an earlier written will because of some final changes of mind? Or had he indeed been content to let state law divvy up his property, giving in finally to someone’s persuasion to make a formal record?

Hyam’s deathbed statement of his wishes for his estate may not have been the tidiest, most prudent way to do it, but it was binding nonetheless.

Memorandum. That on the Eighteenth Day of May, 1859, these Declarants do solemnly affirm that Hayam Balazare was Sick upon his bed unto Death, and instructed us to write this Will with respect to his Estate. He being, in the best of our determination, of Sound Mind to direct and dictate such Disposition. Said Hayam did desire that his Immovables, along with his Movables, be given and bequeathed to his Son, one Jacob Balazare, and to his unmarried daughter, Euphrozine Balazare. To wit, his Immovable Property, set down in the books of this Parish, St. Denis; and his Movable Property, to wit, his gold, his silver, his crops in field, his 43 slaves, his furnishings and clothing, his animals, and all chattels inclusive which are not herein set forth. Further, that his son Jacob Balazare be made his executor. This Will being read back to him by these Declarants, and being too weak but to make his mark with some aid, the said Hayam Balazare then did declare and affirm that this Will was true. We bear witness, or words to that effect, accordingly.



Ransom Coulton

HB John Swett X (his mark)

(mark of said Hayam Balazare) Wlm. Nason

A true gem of genealogical information! Here, Nick had learned of two of Hyam’s children, and three men who were perhaps business associates, lawyers or notaries (not Swett, who was unlettered), friends, or relatives. He had a certain death date, and he’d also seen important details of Hyam’s elevated financial circumstances.

More questions to answer, but a good day’s work.

Dusk had given way to gentle evening, and the lamplights on the street below had switched on, giving a distinctly nostalgic glow to the smooth river-lake and the French Quarter-like section of buildings that faced it. Nick was hungry and tired. He shuffled his pilfered documents back into his battered briefcase and stood up for a stretch, intending to go downstairs to investigate the possibilities of dinner. He was thinking he was actually earning the obscene fee Armiger had paid him.

Noises from his now dimly lit room stopped him cold.

Ah, so this was Natalie Armiger’s plan: let him stumble across the important facts, like an unwitting retriever, and then knock him off. She’d taken care of Corban–maybe; now it was his turn. Was an assassin waiting in his room?

His paranoia had shifted into overdrive.

“I knocked…a little,” Sharla said from the dimness, coyly penitent, when Nick confronted her in his room. “I thought you might be in the shower or something, so I just came on in. I brought you a club sandwich. And another bottle of wine. On me.” She gave the last two words a sultry intonation.

He switched on a bedside lamp and put down the nearly empty, dripping bottle of bubbly he’d grasped as a weapon. Sharla’s flowing floral dress was very sheer, and light from the balcony magically illuminated her young figure to delightful advantage. She wore nothing underneath. Nick couldn’t look away.

There were two wineglasses on her tray. He recognized the expensive California chardonnay.

“Guess I’m nuts,” Nick said, “or old-fashioned, but that would seem a reason not to come in.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me.” She demonstrated with a mock zip of her lips. “My mother teaches all us hotel staff to be the soul of discretion. Don’t you just want to tell me some of your deepest, darkest secrets? I keep my mouth shut…when I want to.” She giggled.

In spite of his scruples to the contrary, Nick smiled.

He was just a man, fallible and helpless, ultimately, in the big scheme of things. Why should he fight his nature? Nature with a big “N”?

He uncorked the new bottle. “How old are you, by the way? Somehow I get the feeling you’re trouble in a pretty package. But a very pretty package, Sharla, I have to say.” He poured wine into the two glasses.

Sharla gave a throaty laugh that did to Nick exactly what it was no doubt supposed to do. “Why thank you kindly, sir.” She moved even closer, almost touching him.

He saw the pulse jumping at the base of her neck, felt the warmth of her body, and learned in an instant her distinctive combination of scents.

She kissed him.

And when she was through, running a finger around Nick’s lips, she said, “How old do you have to be to have fun, Mr. Nick Herald from New Orleenz? Maybe you should unwrap me and find out.”

She saved him the trouble and flicked off the straps of her dress; it fell to the floor.

Nick switched off the lamp. In the final blush of twilight, she eagerly helped him out of his clothes.





.