Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Jacques Clamorgan was a rogue who laid claim to more than one million acres of western land, then clawed his way through the American courts trying to secure it. Along the way, he was given a slave named Ester, who was then freed, and who wound up wielding more power in his household than he did. His daughter, Apoline, who coolly chose to annex money and property as a white man’s mistress. And the saga continues…
Julie Winch, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Boston, first learned of the family when she read Cyprian Clamorgan’s The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis, full of gossip and trash talk. She couldn’t resist doing a new edition and adding a brief life of the author—“and the more I found, the wilder and crazier it got.”
So you started sleuthing.
Yes, and I felt like I was working for the FBI, trying to track these people through their name changes and different identities.
How would you describe “the swashbuckling progenitor,” as one reviewer called Jacques?
As the quintessential used-car salesman. Very, very charming.
You write that in 1810s and ’20s, “arrangements in which white men and African-American women cohabited for years and raised children together were hardly unusual in St. Louis.” So Apoline’s decision wasn’t that shocking?
I’m always trying to explain that to people who say, “Oh, she was a ’ho.” She is a kept lady, and that carries some dignity. You get money, you get land, you get influence, and you play it for what it’s worth.
By the 1900s, the Clamorgan daughters were marrying white men—take Cora, for example.
It rather tickles my fancy that, when Jack Collins sues for annulment [after learning Cora was of mixed race], some other man says, “I will take you the moment you are free.” Then there’s the older sister Blanche: She turns a white guy down, and he takes vengeance by doing genealogical investigation and tries to condemn her whole family. She eventually marries an immigrant from England.
What does the Clamorgan saga reveal about St. Louis?
It surprised me how frontier St. Louis still was, not just in the 18th century but well into the 19th. There were more of those spaces, not so much physical but a less solidified structure where someone savvy could push through.
Any film options yet? Whom would you cast?
I’ve had one tentative offer, and my students have been begging for roles ever since! I see Ester inescapably as Oprah Winfrey. She is dealt such an unfavorable hand, but she tries to make it work to her advantage. For Cyprian, the actor I have in mind—this is difficult, because Cyprian could pass, and this actor couldn’t, but I see Eddie Murphy.—Jeannette Cooperman
Julie Winch will speak about The Clamorgans on October 25 at 7 p.m. at the Missouri History Museum.
