Marie Laveau (September 10, 1794 – June 16, 1881) was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo renown in New Orleans. She was born free in New Orleans to a white planter and a free Creole woman. She was married from 1819 to 1820, when here husband died under unknown circumstances. While her reputation as a Voodoo priestess is the stuff of legend, the actual details of her life are uncertain. She is known to have been a hairdresser for several of the city's wealthy citizens. She is believed to have had several children, at least one of whom, also named Marie, followed in her mother's footsteps as a Voodoo practitioner. Historical records appear to have confused the mother and the daughter at times. It is believed she died of natural causes in 1881.
In the days before the Battle of the Mississippi, Sgt. Charles Ball entered into a brief relationship with Marie Laveau, who'd already made a name for herself as a voodou queen in New Orleans. She was also fairly friendly with Ball's commanding officer, Lt. Patrick Driscol, enough so that the three had a drunken debate in her living room about the nature of race relations and wealth. She did not quite accept Driscol's assertion that the wealthy actively kept the poor, regardless of skin color, at each other's throats. [1]
