Andrew Durnford

Andrew Durnford (born 1800, New Orleans; died 1859, St. Rosalie Plantation), Free Man of Color, was born of an English father and a free woman of color. The Louisiana Purchase made him a citizen of the United States. Thomas Durnford, his father, and John McDonogh, a prosperous merchant of New Orleans and Baltimore, were friends and business associates. On Thomas's death Andrew continued the friendship and association (McDonogh was the godfather of Andrew's first son, Thomas McDonogh Durnford). Drawing on McDonogh for credit, Durnford purchased land south of New Orleans in Plaquemines Parish and, with a small cadre of slaves, established a sugar plantation. David O. Whitten's biography of Durnford draws on extensive primary materials, including letters between the principals, that bespeak not only an active correspondence but two extraordinary careers. Had Durnford done no more than build a sugar plantation out of the wilderness with black slave labor, his accounts would be valuable, but he also practiced medicine, recounting his experiences in a journal and in letters to McDonogh. The Durnford volume offers singular accounts of American life and labor in the first half of the nineteenth century. Had he been white, the narrative would be of inestimable value, but because Durnford was black, free, and a medical practitioner, his life stands as a rare example of a man and a culture adjusting to peculiar social orders.