The Untold Story of Rose Nicaud, Coffee Queen of New Orleans

The earliest records of Rose Nicaud’s life relate to her status as an enslaved person. Rose was born in 1812 or 1813 in the possession of Diego Morphy, the Spanish consul to New Orleans. Morphy (grandfather to chess champion Paul Morphy) lived with his family in a house and outbuildings on the downriver side of Iberville Street, between Chartres and Royal Streets, in the French Quarter. She was the third of six known children of Nelly, an enslaved woman described as négresse américaine, who was born in approximately 1784. The physical description of her mother as a négresse indicates that she was of a dark brown complexion, and the ethnic identification of américaine means that she was not a native of Louisiana, but rather born in what was the United States prior to the Louisiana Purchase. It is possible that Nelly came from South Carolina, where the Morphy family lived before they moved to Louisiana, in 1809.

As enslaved people, Rose and her relatives lived under the constant threat of sale. That threat became real on December 7, 1819, when Nelly, six-year-old Rose, and her five siblings, ranging in age from 16 years to 18 months, were sold by the Widow Louise (Peire) Morphy to Paul Rossignoldes Dunes Poincy. A native of St. Marc, Saint-Domingue, Poincy belonged to a network of commercial bakers from Saint-Domingue, which also included the Nicaud and Bouny families. Historian Paul Lachance, who specializes in demographic studies, investigated the origins of 43 bakers who published declarations of their flour usage in the newspaper LeMoniteur de la Louisiane, the state’s first newspaper, between October 1806 and January 1813. Of that number, 20—almost half—had origins in colonial Saint-Domingue.

The 1819 sale to Poincy was the first of six transactions between 1819 and 1839 in which Rose and her family were sold to and between this closely linked group of bakers. These sales would have disrupted Rose’s family’s daily lives but, thankfully, did not result in their separation. The association with an interconnected network of urban enslavers in the same neighborhood allowed Rose and her kin to remain intact.

The Poincy Bakery was located in what is now the 500 block of Dumaine Street and consisted of a complex of buildings stretching back to parallel Madison Street. In 1831, Rose and her family were sold to baker Michel Nicaud, who operated his own commercial baking enterprise around the corner from the Poincy Bakery, at 919–925 Chartres Street.

Rose grew up and worked as a street vendor selling bread, called a marchande de pain or vendeuse de pain, as did her mother, Nelly, and her sisters Venus, Becky, and Fanny. Her younger brother Denis initially worked as a marchand but later became a baker like their brother Victor. Work as bakers and vendors allowed urban enslaved people like Rose and her siblings more freedom of movement than that of people enslaved on rural plantations, as well as more opportunities for interaction with the wider population. As one white urban Southerner described the enslaved population, “They are divided out among us and mingled up with us, and we with them in a thousand ways.”

In late 1838, Michel Nicaud began the process of manumitting Rose by petitioning the Orleans Parish Police Jury, the governmental body responsible for keeping order among the enslaved population and policing runaways. The police jury considered and favorably ruled upon Nicaud’s petition in two meetings held November 30, 1838, and March 1, 1839. Though the actual notarial act granting Rose her freedom has yet to be found, it was undoubtedly recorded at some point between the police jury’s March 1839 meeting and June 1840, when, at age 27 or 28, she was enumerated in the federal census for the first time as a free woman of color and as head of her own household. She lived on Ursulines Street, quite likely in the household of Edmond and Rosemond Forstall. The Forstalls were connected by marriage to the Poincy family, Rose’s former owners.

It was around this time, in the early 1840s, that Rose began selling coffee in the French Market. Other members of her family were still enslaved; her siblings were counted in the household of Michel Nicaud. The December1840 inventory of his estate included 54 enslaved men, 21 enslaved women, and 3 enslaved small children. Even as a free person, Rose would have remained connected to the enslaved community. In fact, another set of documents shows that connection in action.

On February 7, 1848, Rose, now using the surname Williams, testified on behalf of her sister Fanny (sometimes spelled Phany). Fanny had filed suit against her enslaver, the Widow Bouny, who had taken her to France. Much as Dred Scott would argue in front of the US Supreme Court in 1857, Fanny claimed that because her owner had taken her out of the US South, she had effectively been freed. Furthermore, Fanny argued, she was owed back wages for her labor in France and since returning to New Orleans. Rose testified that Fanny “was a good bread seller” and that “bread sellers are generally paid $20 or $25 per month.” In the end, Fanny won her suit, earning her freedom. The court ordered the Widow Bouny to pay Fanny’s court fees but did not grant her back pay.

Rose’s family members are not the only enslaved people who appear alongside her in the historical record. By the time of the 1850 federal census, Rose, who was enumerated under the name Rose Williams, lived in the French Quarter with two young women whom she enslaved. A search of the conveyance books for New Orleans in the 1850s reveals that Rose purchased and sold at least three young women during that decade. Rose likely compelled these young women to work as marchandes, street vendors like herself, or as domestics whose labor she hired out. The prices of enslaved people skyrocketed during these years, making them lucrative capital investments. For Rose, the purchase and subsequent sale of these women may have been a path to economic security.

For many women at the time, marriage was another means of pursuing financial stability. On February 13, 1855, Rose married free man of color Oscar Nezat at St. Augustine Church, just outside of the French Quarter in Faubourg Tremé. Roseand Oscar were enumerated together in the 1860 federal census, which identifies Oscar as a laborer. Their marriage ended with divorce after 13 years, in February 1868.

After her marriage and even into the 1870s, Rose is sometimes listed in city directories as Mrs. Oscar Nezat. She also appears as Rose Williams, but she is most often listed as Rose Nicaud. No known surviving records explain why Rose chose the surname Williams or why, years after being manumitted by Michel Nicaud, she retained his name. It may have been organic, with people ascribing the surname to her from when she lived in his household. It is also possible that her use of Nicaud was strategic, shaping perception by connecting the French Market coffee stand Rose opened shortly after gaining her freedom to a well-known French Quarter bakery in customers’ minds.

Over her decades in business, Rose and her coffee stand gained renown, appearing in the local press and literary dispatches from the city. George Washington Cable, who wrote for The Daily Picayune from 1865 to 1879, included a reference to Rose in his 1884 novel Dr. Sevier. In it, a New Orleans Creole named Narcisse has just left “the celebrated coffee-stand of Rose Nicaud.”

“I dunno by what fawmule she makes that coffee,” he says in his heavy Creole accent, “but ’tis astonishin’ how good.”

In the June 4, 1879, issue of The Daily Democrat, one writer suggested that a large delegation of visiting newspapermen from Mississippi, if drowsy from sightseeing the day before, could “pay a visit to the French Market [to] take a matutinal cup of coffee with ‘Rose.’”

Rose Nicaud died of apoplexy at 68 years old on September 13, 1880. The next day, her remains were led from her last residence on Bourbon Street to Square 3 of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, at North Claiborne and Bienville Streets. She was interred in the imposing tomb of the Société des Fleurs de Marie, an antebellum benevolent society made up of women of color. Her death was noted on the front page of The Daily States on September 15, 1880, the headline declaring, “Rose Is Dead: The Last of the Café-au-Lait Venders of the French Market.” Recalling her “cheery spirit and hearty good humor,” the paper recounted the New Orleans in which she began her profession.

This laudatory reflection demonstrates the success that Rose Nicaud achieved in making her place of business a landmark and gathering place for New Orleanians. She was so successful, in fact, that nearly a half century later, local writer Catherine Cole included the coffee seller in a promotional pamphlet called The Story of the Old French Market: “Her coffee was like the benediction that follows after prayer; or if you prefer it, like the benedictine after dinner.” The presence of “Old Rose,” Cole said, was still “embalmed in the amber” of local memory. And, though another century has passed, she remains that way.