| Benjamin Laurent Millaudon | |
| Birth Date: | 1786 |
| Birth Place: | Avignon, France |
| Death Date: | 1868 |
| Nationality: | French, then American |
| Occupation: | Merchant, real estate investor, railroad developer, planter |
Benjamin Laurent Millaudon (1786–1868) was an wealthy merchant, real-estate investor, and railroad developer of early 19th-century New Orleans.[1] Described as a "self-made tycoon", he had emigrated to the United States from Avignon, France around 1802.[2] In additional to his mercantile investments, he owned huge and lucrative sugar plantations worked by hundreds of slaves.[3]
The Historic New Orleans Collection holds documents from Millaudon's life and career, including the Benjamin–Millaudon Papers (90-21-L), which relate to business between Millaudon and future Confederate cabinet officer Judah P. Benjamin, and the Millaudon and Gardanne Family Papers (2015.0073), which relate to two of his children, Philippe Millaudon (1823–1855), and Jeanne Henriette Millaudon Gardanne (1821–1902), and to Millaudon's legal ownership of 490 people who were enslaved to sugar work at Millaudon Plantation, which was "located in the vicinity of present-day Marrero on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish and encompass[ed] roughly eight square miles."[4]
A coastwise slave-ship manifest from 1837, held at the New-York Historical Society, lists "Lawrence Millaudon" and George Lane as the consignees of a shipment of 73 enslaved people sailing from Alexandria, Virginia, to New Orleans on the brig Isaac Franklin.[5] His railroad interests included cofounding the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad. The 1856 steamship Laurent Millaudon was either named for him or built by him.
Just before the American Civil War, Millaudon sold his million-dollar (in 1859 currency) sugar plantation to his son. In 1862, there was a violent altercation involving whips, axes, and guns, between Henry Clement "H.C." Millaudon, the overseer (Millaudon's son, who had purchased the property from his father in 1859, along with 443 slavehands). The result was that H.C. Millaudon was killed, and several people were wounded before 150 slaves self-emancipated and left the plantation for good en masse.[6] After the war, investors from Boston who had purchased the plantation relatively cheap hired Chinese immigrant laborers to take the slaves' place.