Henriette DeLille

Henriette Díaz DeLille, SSF (March 11, 1813 – November 17, 1862) was a Louisiana Creole of color and Catholic religious sister from New Orleans. She founded the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1836 and served as their first Mother Superior. The sisters are the second-oldest surviving congregation of African-American religious.

In 1988, the congregation formally opened the beatification process for DeLille with the Holy See. She was of mixed race: her father was a white man from France, her mother was a quadroon, and her maternal grandfather was a white man from Spain.

Biography

Early life

Henriette DeLille was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 11, 1813. Their union was a common-law marriage typical of the contemporary plaçage system. She had a brother, Jean DeLille, and other siblings.

Their maternal grandparents were Juan José (var. Jean-Joseph) Díaz, a Spanish merchant, and Henriette (Dubreuil) Laveau, a Créole of color. Their paternal grandparents were Charles Sarpy and Susanne Trenty, both natives of Fumel, France. Her maternal great-grandmother is said to be Cécile Marthe Basile Dubreuil, a woman of color considered to be a daughter of Claude Villars Dubreuil, born in 1716, who immigrated to Louisiana from France. Henriette and her family lived in the French Quarter, not far from St. Louis Cathedral.

Trained by her mother in French literature, music, and dancing, Henriette was groomed to find a white, wealthy male partner in the plaçage system, which was a type of common-law marriage. Her mother also taught her nursing skills and how to prepare medicines from herbs. As a young mixed-race woman, under her mother's watchful eye, Henriette attended many quadroon balls, a chief element of their social world. The balls were attended by creole, free women of color, and creole white men looking for young women as plaçage partners.

Raised Catholic in the French tradition, DeLille was drawn instead to a strong religious belief in the Catholic Church's teaching and resisted the life her mother suggested. She became an outspoken opponent of plaçage, in which generally young, white French or American men had extended relationships or common-law marriages with free women of color. The men often later married white, American women after they were established financially. The men entered into contracts with the mothers of the young women of color, promising support and sometimes education of their mixed-race children, as well as financial settlements. In cases where a young woman was enslaved, the man might free her and their children. Some men maintained a relationship with a woman of color after marriage, while others remained bachelors. DeLille believed the system was a violation of the Catholic sacrament of marriage.

Henriette was influenced by Sister Marthe Fontier, who had opened a school in New Orleans for girls of color. In 1827, at the age of 14, the well-educated Henriette began teaching at the local Catholic school. Over the next several years, her devotion to caring for and educating the poor grew, causing conflict with her mother.

DeLille received the sacrament of confirmation in 1834. During documentation of the beatification process for DeLille, the congregation found funeral records from the 1820s "that suggested that as a teenager, she may have given birth to two sons, each named Henry Bocno. Both boys died at a young age". (It was customary to name the first son after the father. If the child died, the next male born would be given the father's name.) The archdiocesan archivist Charles Nolan said in 2005 that, even if DeLille "had given birth to two children out of wedlock, it happened two years before her confirmation in 1834".

Opposition

Her brother Jean was strongly opposed to her activities. Like other family members, he could pass for white (the DeLille children were octoroons, or one-eighth Black). He felt that his sister's activities within the Créole community could expose his partial African ancestry to his white associates. Estranged from Henriette, he moved with his wife and children to a small Créole of color community in Iberia Parish, Louisiana.

DeLille also faced opposition from the public and from many in the church, as at the time racism ruled the day and Black women were not seen as worthy of religious life (or the religious habit). Henriette had not been able to join an existing congregation due to these prejudices, and when she formed her own congregation, they were not allowed by Bishop Antoine Blanc to wear a habit. They were also made by him to take private rather than public vows, such that there is debate as to whether DeLille was ever a fully recognized religious sister during her life. She would never be able to publicly wear the congregation's habit. In 1842, the congregation changed its name to the Sisters of the Holy Family.

Legacy At the time of DeLille's death, the congregation had 12 members. The sisters were noteworthy for their care of the sick and the dying during the yellow fever epidemics that struck New Orleans in 1853 and 1897. In 2021, it was reported that the most recent alleged miracle could not be confirmed, but another was under investigation. In 2023, Waldery Hilgeman joined the cause as postulator in Rome.

In popular media In 2001, the Lifetime television channel premiered a movie based on the life of Henriette DeLille, The Courage to Love, starring Vanessa L. Williams and Gil Bellows.