c. 2000 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ Patty McDuffee tossed her curly blond hair, trying to dash away the tears welling in her light-blue eyes as she recounted the mystery that had bewildered her family for generations.

As she sat for the first time in New Orleans, where many of her previously unknown relatives lived for generations, she began to cry as she thought again about how lucky she is to have finally discovered ancestors her grandparents had kept carefully hidden.”We found that we didn’t come from France,”McDuffee, 52, said,”but that we have ancestors here from Africa, not France. Our grandmother, nine times removed from me, … was a black slave.” That same woman also was the grandmother of Henriette Delille, a celebrated 19th-century New Orleans nun and sainthood candidate who founded the Sisters of the Holy Family, the city’s first locally established religious order and the second-oldest order for black women in the United States.”We could not believe this,”said McDuffee, who is white.”We were overwhelmed. I mean, not only to find out that we have black blood, but to find out that we were biologically connected to a saint.” McDuffee, whose father is Irish, is a grant administrator for the Resource Conservation District in San Diego County, Calif., where she lives. Her husband is Irish, and they have five children. She was in New Orleans for the first time in December for a job-related conference. While here, McDuffee spent hours eagerly combing through convent archives for information on her African ancestry.”My mother lived in a house where they never spoke about their past,”McDuffee said.”There was always a mystery in the house. She didn’t know where she came from. There was a lot of secrecy.”For her, this (news) meant that she finally had a family. She had roots.” Growing up, the only thing her mother was told was that her great-grandparents came from France, settled in Louisiana and later migrated to Los Angeles, McDuffee said.

But now, decades later, the secret McDuffee’s long-deceased grandparents guarded so relentlessly has been exposed. And it all happened by chance at St. Agatha’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles.

McDuffee’s sister was there, talking to a member of the congregation who just happened to be helping trace the history of Henriette Delille, a name that meant nothing at the time to McDuffee or her sister, Kathy Gangi.”The woman said she had traced some ancestry to Los Angeles, but that they haven’t been able to go any further than George Decuir,”McDuffee said.”My sister about fell over. She said, `George Decuir is my grandfather.'” Since that fateful day, McDuffee’s family has spent the past year, with the help of Sisters of the Holy Family and convent archives, cobbling together a snapshot of her grandparents’ journey from rural Louisiana to Los Angeles.

They now know that Delille was the great-great-aunt of their grandfather, George Decuir. Decuir’s great-grandfather was Jean Batiste Delille, the nun’s brother. That part of the family later settled in New Iberia, La.

McDuffee’s grandparents were married in New Iberia around 1910 and later moved to Los Angeles, she said.

She said she now believes the reason her grandparents staunchly sidestepped any mention of family history was to secure their undetected passage into the white world.”Passe blanc”was the mode of travel to upward mobility used by many fair-skinned Creoles of color during the early part of this century.

As they transcended their history, the family changed more than race. They also changed the pronunciation of their last name. While the spelling was retained, Decuir, pronounced”Dequeer”in Louisiana, became”Dekeer”in California, McDuffee said.”That explained so much,”she said.”My mother always thought the secrecy was because of her mother’s mental illness. They were Creoles. That explains why they were so secretive: It was advantageous for them to pass for white.”That’s what makes what Sister Henriette did so incredible. She could have passed, but she chose not to. She gave up the privilege that she could have had to care for the poor.” Delille, who died in 1862, was born into one of the city’s oldest families of free people of color. Her maternal grandmother and mother both were registered as”free quadroons.”Her father was a wealthy white merchant from north Louisiana named Jean Batiste Delille Sarpy.

A decade ago, she became the first U.S.-born black person whose cause for canonization has been opened by the Roman Catholic Church.

McDuffee said she and other family members, including her mother, Verlie McArdle, 85, plan to return to New Orleans in April.

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