The Newer World
My father Chas Bouguereau upped sticks some sixty years ago and left Louisiana and settled himself in Paris, a small town in Tennessee. It was 1840.
In 1840, the author's father, named Chas Bouguereau, decided to relocate from Louisiana to a small town called Paris, located in Tennessee. This move was part of a broader trend of migration during that period, as people sought new opportunities in different regions. Louisiana, at the time, was a state where slavery was legal, and the term free skin refers to a person who was not enslaved. The choice to settle in Paris, Tennessee, rather than continuing north to the Ohio River—a region often associated with freedom and economic prospects for free people—was made despite the suggestion that a wiser decision would have been to move further. The exact reasons for this choice are not detailed in the article, but it reflects the complex decisions individuals faced during this era of westward expansion in the United States.
The 1840s in the United States were a period of significant migration and territorial expansion, driven by factors such as the promise of land ownership, economic opportunities, and the search for freedom. The Ohio River was often seen as a symbolic and practical boundary between the slaveholding South and the free states of the North. Tennessee, where Paris is located, was a state where slavery was also practiced, though it was not as dominant as in deeper Southern states like Louisiana. The mention of *free skin* highlights the precarious position of free Black individuals in the South, who faced legal and social restrictions despite not being enslaved. This context helps explain why the author’s father might have chosen Paris, Tennessee, as a destination, even if it was not the most obvious path to freedom.
