Family culture/life:

Creole life exhibited a unique, characteristic thread: the understanding that
the family was operated as an enterprise, and that the business was family.
While many had homes in New Orleans that they considered their principal
residence, the plantation was where they went to work. The majority of income
prior to Reconstruction was agricultural based; the products produced on the farm
were sold and the profits realized went back primarily into the plantation farming operations.

For many, the burgeoning sugar and cotton trade prior to the Civil war was then central to the lives
of all family members. Apart from the immediate family, the clan groups were the complementing workforce—
often which included aunts, uncles, cousins of the clan group. Also a large plantation included an overseer,
who was often a senior slave or an unlanded man. As well the work force included household servants,
field slaves and their offspring who all formed a fully functional enterprise. With the coming
of every new generation, the plantation expanded in scope primarily through arranged marriages
as a means of concentrating and preserving resources. Through this means, Creole family groups
owned most of the valuable land in networks which encompassed vast tracts, often stretching from
New Orleans to New Roads, to Baton Rouge and points south.

In an attempt to break the strangle hold on the lands possessed by the Creole clans,
the Americans passed a law in 1824 designed to force inheritances to be distributed by a new
means rather than by previously established Latin legal custom. Per Stirpes distribution was thought
to be the answer. The Americans sought to destroy the Creole estates by forcing equal
inheritance upon all clan members and thereby reducing them in size. To thwart this Anglo
intervention, the Creoles responded by turning even more inward to their family groups.
Intermarriage increased and the formation of family business accelerated. By the 1850's sugar
production was the number one enterprise of the Creoles outside of New Orleans.

In the way of the Creoles, women found fulfillment in family, duty bound service.

Women often sacrificed their personal wants and needs to those of their family and clan group.
From the earliest age, they were instructed in what was to be ultimately expected of them. Creole
women were not necessarily barred from business pursuits as they were seen as family pursuits.
Women often selflessly devoted themselves to solving the pressing problems both within their
homes and in the family enterprise. Their choice was made simple: by custom, as young women,
either acquiesce to Creole expectations and fulfill their duty, or they would be left aside and required
to make a life for themselves apart from the protection and privileges of their clan. Most often,
the women accepted their duty and lived lives considered exemplary by their contemporaries.

The prerogatives of men

While women were expected to conform, they were not necessarily obliged to marry.
In fact in some instances they did not, instead choosing to devote themselves wholly
to the family business. These women while working within the sphere of their family
were in every sense, business women making money. Men on the other hand had
greater latitude in their choices. They often, according, to custom did not marry until
they were in their 30's, choosing to go abroad for education and sometimes military
experience.
Men also by law and social convention were not required the same faithfulness as
women. While they just as often toiled in the family business, it was equally
acceptable for them to be seen in New Orleans or other cities drinking, gambling and
playing cards. Numerous clan groups were increased in numbers by the profligate activities
of men. Owing to the established custom of the Bourbon French crown, acknowledgment
of ones' natural child was all that was required for inclusion in inheritance. Thus by rights,
a man who acknowledged a child as his own, established for that child a right of succession.
This produced a number of codependencies and increased the authority of the man as the
head of the household. Their rights were largely supported by law.

Divorce for women was uncommon. It often resulted in shunning and the loss of one's children,
since they were the natural issue of the father, he retained custody of them. As a result women
turned a blind eye to the many "prerogatives of men" in favor of establishing calm and smooth
functioning households and businesses. With the advent of Anglo culture this too was to
change in a fundamental way.