When A Cincinnati Heiress Died, Families Had To Decide If They Were Black Or White

Few Cincinnatians remember that from 1885 until 1995 Cincinnati had its very own stock exchange housed in the Dixie Terminal building and boasting the most active trading floor between Chicago and the East Coast. Even fewer Cincinnatians are aware that the Cincinnati Stock Exchange was founded by a Black man, and therein lies a curious tale.

His name was Edward Laralde but he mostly went by his initials, E.N. Laralde. Edward was born in Louisiana in 1843. His father, also named Edward, was a prosperous importer of sugar, molasses and coffee. While Edward Junior was still a child, the family relocated to Cincinnati. Young Edward served in the 37th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, then clerked for a railroad before setting himself up in business as a broker. He was so successful that other brokers sought him out. According to Charles Westheimer, writing in Queen City Heritage in 1991:

“The Cincinnati Stock Exchange as a formal organization and in its present form was organized on March 7, 1885, by twelve brokers who agreed to meet each day at the office of E.N. Laralde, 29 West Third Street for the purpose of buying and selling securities. The participating brokers included Laralde, A.C. Conklin, A. Lepper, Charles Rice, R.E. Dunlap, H.F. Boyden, A.E. White, L.H. Leibenstein, P.H. Burt and FJ. Wade.”

A few years later, the Exchange outgrew Laralde’s office and found larger quarters on Third Street near Elm, electing Laralde as president. Throughout his career, even when Cincinnati’s financial center drifted eastward along Fourth Street, Laralde maintained his office on Third. He never married. He lived with his sister, Louise, who likewise eschewed marital vows, in a three-story house at 822 West Eighth Street. When Laralde died in 1914 at age 71, he left his entire estate, estimated at $300,000, to his sister.

The Probate Court almost immediately appointed a guardian for Louise because of her erratic behavior. The guardian discovered that Louise had squirreled away tens of thousands of dollars in dozens of bags and parcels stuffed into holes in the walls of her house. Her behavior became so extreme that she was briefly confined to an insane asylum. According to the Cincinnati Post on November 23, 1914:

“While being taken from the house she created such a disturbance that neighbors congregated. Attorneys Sayler and Suire, who represent Miss Laralde’s guardian, inspected the house, and found such disorder they called Judge Leuders, who summoned Chief of Police Copelan. Copelan ordered an immediate inquiry to determine why the police had not made a report on the unsanitary conditions.”

Louise regained her composure and her house and lived another 23 years without any further drama. Until, that is, she died intestate in 1937. In other words, she left no will to dispose of an estate valued at more than $400,000.

That kind of money inspires a mighty strong covetousness among folks with any sort of connection to the decedent and at least 150 individuals informed the court that they considered themselves heirs of Miss Laralde. It took four years and 90 court sessions to whittle the number of prospective heirs from 150 to just 29. The cost of the proceedings, investigation of claims, and loss of valuation of stock included in the estate reduced the total corpus to a still-respectable $230,000 by 1940. Among the attorneys representing the claimants was a very young Theodore M. Berry, later to become mayor of Cincinnati.

Image From New Orleans Historical Society

Quite early in the probate contest, Robert McKinney, writing for the Associated Negro Press, determined that almost all of the claimants to Louise Laralde’s estate were related to a man named Thomy Lafon, a wealthy free man of color who lived in New Orleans. McKinney was intrigued to discover Theodore Berry in New Orleans untangling Lafon’s Creole genealogy and wrote:

“The case is unique and fascinating because some of those claiming to be kin to Miss Laralde are socially and economically important people who are considered white in various parts of the country, and are attempting to prove that Thomy Lafon, widely known philanthropist who appears in Louisiana history as a Negro and who is generally known as such, is a white man.”

A few years later, Leon Lewis, also a reporter for the Associated Negro Press, again discovered that many of the prospective heirs, while living their lives as white, were busy proving their descent from African American ancestors to bolster their claims to Louise Laralde’s estate, but didn’t want anyone to notice. Writing in the Dayton Forum on January 19, 1940 Lewis noted:

“Numerous claimants as rightful heirs to the $400,000 estate of Marie Louise Laralde, who died in Cincinnati some time ago, find it difficult to discard the fact that Miss Laralde was of Negro descendancy. The prominent white Cherbonniers of Baltimore and New York, making a claim for seven-tenths of the fortune, are faced with facts showing that not only was Louise Laralde a descendant of a Negro but they, themselves, are descendants of Dr. Pierre Ovide Cherbonnier, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins hospital, who, according to correspondence between he and Thomy Lafon, admits to being Thomy Lafon’s nephew.”

This was a time when the “One-Drop Rule” was in effect whether legally or quasi-legally throughout the United States, especially in the South. The One-Drop Rule held that anyone with any African ancestors at all was considered to be Black.

Thomy Lafon was quite clearly Black. Lafon was known in his lifetime to be African American and he gave large contributions to anti-slavery societies, to Black orphanages and to people involved in the Underground Railroad. It was alleged that Modeste Foucher, mother of both Thomy Lafon and Edward Laralde, Senior, or their grandmother, Julie Brion, or both, were born in Haiti. Both were originally enslaved, but were eventually freed. Lafon was E.N. Laralde’s and Louise Laralde’s uncle because he was the half-brother of their father, Edward Laralde, Senior. The Cherbonniers, it was claimed, also descended from Modeste Foucher. By the One-Drop Rule, everyone related to the Laralde siblings would have been considered Black in 1940.

Not surprisingly, when the case was finally settled at the end of 1940, the 29 designated heirs of Louise Laralde included only those appellants who passed as white. None of the African American claimants were awarded a single penny and not one of the mainstream, white-owned newspapers mentioned the name of Thomy Lafon or the Foucher family. The closely guarded secret of 29 “white” families remained secure.