Date of Award

Fall 12-2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Program

History

Department

History

Major Professor

Mary Niall Mitchell

Second Advisor

Albert Kennedy

Third Advisor

Connie Atkinson

Abstract

Women in antebellum New Orleans have often been memorialized as Voudou queens, slave-torturers who continue to haunt houses, prostitutes, and light-skinned concubines to wealthy, white men. This study focuses on women’s contribution to New Orleans’s economy through the hospitality industry as female bar owners from 1830-1861. In addition, it provides an overview of the role that alcohol and beverage consumption patterns played among men and women of all races, classes, and cultural backgrounds in antebellum New Orleans. Antebellum tourists, in addition to cotton and sugar, were an important source of income for many New Orleanians before the Civil War. As bar owners, these women profited from male-dominated spaces while providing for themselves, and in some cases, their families. A study of the hospitality industry in antebellum New Orleans is essential to those studying both economic and social histories of the city during the antebellum era.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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