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Marie Laveau (WORD)
Marie Laveau (PDF)
You can play along with Bobby Bare! Be sure to check out the last video about the real Marie Laveau as well as the info below!
"Marie Laveau" was Bobby Bare's 34th single on the charts, his only number-one and final top-10 country hit.
Marie Catherine Laveau (September 10, 1801 – June 15, 1881) was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo, an herbalist, and a midwife who was renowned in New Orleans. Laveau was also known as a prominent female religious leader and community activist. An alternate spelling of her name, Laveaux (a plural), is considered by historians to be from the original French spelling. Historical records state that Marie Catherine Laveau was born a free woman of color in New Orleans's French Quarter, Louisiana, on Thursday, September 10, 1801. Her mother, Marguerite D'Arcantel, was a free woman of African, European, and Native American ancestry. Because Laveau's mother was not married at the time of her birth, her father was not identified on her 1801 baptismal record. In her role as a Voodoo practitioner, customers often appealed to Laveau for help with family disputes, health, finances, and more. Laveau performed her services in three main places - her own home on St. Ann Street, within Congo Square, and at Lake Pontchartrain. She was the third female leader of Voodoo in New Orleans (the first was Sanité Dédé, who ruled for a few years before being usurped by Marie Saloppé), a New Orleans voodoo "queen", or priestess. At the time of her death, The New York Times, The New Orleans Daily Picayune, the Daily States, and other news sources describe her as "woman of great beauty, intellect, and charisma who was also pious, charitable, and a skilled herbal healer." Laveau's name and her history have been surrounded by legend and lore. She is generally believed to have been buried in plot 347, the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, but this has been disputed by Robert Tallant, a journalist who used her as a character in historical novels. Tourists continue to visit and some draw X marks in accordance with a decades-old tradition that if people wanted Laveau to grant them a wish, they had to draw three Xs on the tomb, turn around three times, knock on the tomb, yell out their wish, and if it was granted, come back, circle their Xs, and leave Laveau an offering. (Wikipedia)