Alexander J. Dallas to Sister Marie Olivier, 17 June 1815 (Abstract)
Alexander J. Dallas to Sister Marie Olivier, 17 June 1815 (Abstract)
§ Alexander J. Dallas to Sister Marie Olivier. 17 June 1815, War Department. “General Jackson has been so good as to transmit to me a copy of the letter which you addressed to him, relative to the exchange of lands with the Ursuline nuns of New Orleans, as authorised by an act of Congress, passed on the 23 d. of April, 1812.1 I very much regret that the exchange was not effected in time to spare the ladies of your convent, the inconvenience and mortifications which your letter describes; and it gives me great pleasure to hasten to their relief.
“I have requested the officer commanding at New Orleans, Mr. Duplessis, the collector of the port, and Mr. Benjamin Morgan, a respectable merchant, to complete the task which was confided to general Wilkinson, under the act of Congress; and I inclose for your information, a copy of the instructions that have been sent to those gentlemen.”2
Tr and Tr of enclosure (DNA: RG 107, LRUS, D-1815). Tr 1 p. Cover sheet bears JM’s note: “Genl. Jackson may make a final arrangement if the Attorney Genl thinks it within the provisions of law.” For enclosure, see n. 2.
1. Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson wrote the secretary of war on 27 May 1815 from Nashville, enclosing copies of two letters dated 4 Apr. 1815 from Sister Marie Olivier, mother superior of the Ursuline convent in New Orleans (DNA: RG 107, LRRS, J-257:8). The first letter requested that the military hospital adjacent to the convent be moved to land to be provided by the nuns in exchange for the lot on which the hospital currently stood, as authorized by a 23 Apr. 1812 private act of Congress (, 6:107). Sister Olivier noted that Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson had been commissioned to report on the matter in 1813 but had left the city before completing the task. She explained that the “sick or convalescent” denizens of the hospital not only habitually trespassed on the convent’s property but “continually plundered” it, and that the nuns were “often assailed in their own house by drunk soldiers.” The second letter invited Jackson to visit the convent before he left New Orleans.
2. The enclosed copy of Dallas’s 17 June 1815 letter to Edmund Pendleton Gaines, “or other officer commanding at New Orleans,” Peter L. B. Duplessis, and Benjamin Morgan (3 pp.) instructed them to have the hospital and lot appraised, to select one of the Ursulines’ lots of equal value for the exchange, and to submit their opinion on how long it would take to build and move to a new hospital. The three men were, however, unable to reach an agreement with the convent, and on 7 Oct. 1815, War Department chief clerk George Graham wrote Jackson requesting that he attempt to resolve the matter (DLC: Andrew Jackson Papers).