Arsene Lacarrière-Latour

Arsene Lacarrière-Latour

Biography

Born in Aurillac in 1778, it marries there Marie Caroline de Montal, of which it has two children.

After studies of engineer in Paris, Arsène Lacarrière-Latour embarks for the French part of the island of Santo Domingo (Haiti) in order to deal with family properties. But the blacks there again raised and fight the army sent by Bonaparte. Arsene becomes officer of the genious. After the defeat of the French Army ordered by Rochambeau (wire of the hero of American independence) it joined the United States. New York initially, in 1804, where it binds with Edouard Livingston, politician, and brother of the diplomat signatory in Paris of the treaty of transfer of Louisiana.

Important architect with the Orleans News, in Louisiana (where it left in company of Edouard Livingston) he is also (1810) the town planner founder of the town of Stick-Red, future capital of the State.

He takes part in the second war of independence of the United States at the sides of the general Andrew Jackson, as principal engineer (1814-1815). He publishes into 1816 of the memories of war which still refer.

Become Major Latour, it finds in Philadelphia, in the entourage of exiled French of the Empire joined together around Joseph Bonaparte, the general Charles Lallemand whom it had well-known in Haiti. Together they erect scaffolding the project of the colony of the Field of Asylum, in Texas. The advice of Lacarrière-Latour is not taken by Lallemand, and it is the failure in 1818. Their friendship will last however until death. The architect will have met three presidents of the United States (Madison, Monroe and Jackson)… and the famous corsairs (or pirates) the Laffite brothers. Mysterious missions towards the west will be organized with Jean Lafitte and… Mexican freedom fighters. Was this on behalf of president Monroe or for that of the ambassador of Spain (Shine of Onis)? Belonging to the " men of the lumières" , Latour seems a character with the complex evolutions.

It will be, as from 1817, architect with Havana and adviser of the Spanish authorities in Cuba. Its important reports/ratios - remarkable and visionaries - will arrive at the king Ferdinand VII.

Returned to France after 1830, it will find there and his children and his friend Charles Lallemand, become even of France and governor of Corsica.

He will die in Saint-Mamet (Cantal), in his native province, in 1837.

J.G.

Achievements

Town-planning of Stick-Red, capital of the Louisiana.
Several private and public buildings with New-Orleans like in Cuba.
Plane for the strong Mexican and wearing of war with San Juan de Ulua.
Project of the boring of an interoceanic channel in Nicaragua.

Publications

Historical to memoir off the war in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-1815 with year Atlas. Philadelphia 1816

Sources

Jean Garrigoux, an Adventurer visionary: Lacarrière-Latour, 1778-1837: the strange course of a French in Americas , 1997, Company of High-Auvergne
Arsene Lacarrière Latour, Historical to memoir off the war in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15, with year Atlas. Edited with year introduction by Gene A. Smith. The Historic New-Orleans collection and University Close off Florida. 1999.
Louis Nozières, " The family of Arsene Lacarrière-Latour" , 2002, in Re-examined of High-Auvergne n°64

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