Bossier on the brain

J.S. Bossier, you are on my mind.

I think about you in the moments of soft denial that I can remain in bed wrapped in a homemade quilt and the assumption that the day will wait for me. I think about you when I am running on the track in the gym and trying not to look at the elderly man with long gray hair and a beer belly wearing white spandex, a headband, and black socks (Bossier would never wear that!). I think about you between clicks of the camera, during the stirring of the wooden spoon in the wok, and when I wipe the toothpaste spray off the mirror that inevitability comes after every tooth brushing.

I think about you.

You have been dead for over a hundred years.

You had one leg since the other was shot.

You were a Confederate solider at age 15, were captured twice, and served under the legendary Stonewall Jackson.

You spent time in prison for various charges.

You were a Justice of the Peace.

You fought many duels and killed a man with a double barreled gun, one barrel loaded.

You were a judge.

It’s possible you were committed at one time in your life.

You were a teacher.

You were in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

You owned vast lands and were sued by members of your family.

You were one of the founders and editors of the Mascot.

You spoke your mind – no matter what the cost.

What I have learned about you from the few articles, books, legal documents, and newspapers I have read is that you were a man feared and respected, although it’s difficult to tell which feeling was elicited more. If fate can be traced by your bloodlines than yours was certainly a destiny that was predetermined to be filled with passion, intelligence, and a mania for anything or anyone you deemed unjust.

Your paternal grandfather was commander of a division of the French army under Rochambeau, aiding in storming Cornwallis out of Yorktown. Your maternal grandfather was a colonel from the Revolutionary War who was an aide to Lafayette and died during the battle of Brandywine. Your father (after whom you were named) was a captain and a descendant of an illustrious French family. Your mother, a ward with another family, was engaged to an unknown cousin but your father, upon seeing her and learning of her situation, impersonated the cousin, married her and took off on a tour of the world. The sensational scandal satisfied many a gossip for months to come. Aside from his romantic triumphs, your father could also speak and write fluently in seventeen languages.  You were already a war hero, but still not quite a man, when your father was killed in a quarrel over a business transaction.

I recently learned from an 1897 magazine that you were also founder and editor of the New Orleans Herald, a newspaper that I now must research.

I know where you were born. I know where and how you died.

I basically know nothing.

I purposefully keep everything I find about you in a red folder.

Where did you serve as a judge in Saint Tammany Parish? I must find and read some of your rulings! The Covington Archives Department can not find any record of you.

Are any of your relatives still alive?

Where are you buried (I can probably find that out on my next City Library visit)?

Did you spend time in an insane asylum?

Were you arrested in other places aside from New Orleans?

Why did you leave the Mascot and when?

These are just a few of the things I am yet to discover. I HOPE to discover.

 

J.S. Bossier, you are on my mind….

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