Dixie: From someone who knows the truth

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Dixie was named because of the persecution of French settlers who came to North America on chartered ships from France to escape religious and political persecution in France. They landed in a place they named Acadia ( Acadie in French) and settled in what now are New Brunswick,and Nova Scotia. Others came behind them, and once again forced them to move. The persecution continued, and again they moved on. Down the St.Lawrence River into what is now the Province of Quebec,into Ontario, and New York, what is now Michigan, Detroit is a French word which means “where waters meet”. Some of the persecuted kept going and ran as far as they could, down into the swamps of what became Louisiana, named for King Louis of France. Baton Rouge is French for “red stick”, Terre Haute is both French and Latin for “high ground”, and the French influence is rampant.
When the French located in Louisiana, settled there, they had a large number of French notes which they used as common currency. The most common was the “dix” or ten franc note. Americans of the day, called them “dixies” and the misnomer stuck fast. The name has nothing to do with the Mason Dixon line which is far to the North.
At settlement in Louisiana they still called themselves “Acadians”, which bastardised down to “Cajuns” over time. I know this to be true because My mother’s maiden name is Marjolet which is from paris France in the Montemartre section of that city and I have distant cousins in Louisiana whose name is also Marjolet, and even though My surname is Jones for My father, I am close to MY relations in Louisiana, and haver seen records of these facts

ETA: Link to column in question: Where did the name "Dixie" come from? - The Straight Dope

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Um …

  1. Thanks for sharing.

  2. You’re right about “cajun” but the origin of “dixie” is disputed. The etymology you provide is one of three or four popular ones, but is by no means definitive.

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I think you may be responding to one of Cecil’s columns, no?

I’ll let a mod know, and maybe move this thread to the forum for column discussion.

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You also might want to check a dictionary for the definition of “fact.”

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Welcome to the board, Enigmatus. I’ve moved your thread to the Comments on Cecil’s Columns forum because it’s a response to “Where did the name “Dixie” come from?”

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You mean a strait.

According to dictionary.com:

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Welcome, Enigmatus. If you haven’t been to Montmartre yet, I hope you see it for yourself soon. Some of my ancestors were French also.

We have Cajun friends and I miss their cooking! Their elderly parents spoke only French. Our friends speak French and English, but with a Cajun accent. Their children (young adults) speak English with no accent and quite a bit of French. I wonder if their children will speak French much at all.

The controversy about the origin of Dixie is interesting. I had forgotten about the money.

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Acadia was never a Huguenot foundation as such. Some Huguenots were present at first, but the colony quickly became exclusively Roman Catholic. And Louisiana was not founded by the former Acadians, though many of them ended up there after le grand dérangement.

The “Dix” theory is one of several commonly encountered explanations for “Dixie”, but the use of the French language in Louisiana had been established by French colonists and by Haitians long before the Cajuns arrived.

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I find this extremely unlikely. Paper currency was not in wide use at the time, and most people were suspicious of any money that was not gold or silver. I find it very unlikely that Acadian expatriates would have large numbers of French banknotes, or that they would take them to Louisiana, which was, by the time of the Acadian exodus in 1763, governed by Spain. They would be much more likely to convert any French currency they did have into gold or silver, which is negotiable in any country. I’ll need something besides family oral history to confirm this story.

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You are right that there were no banknotes in early colonial Louisiana, but there were at a much later date, and some of them were indeed denominated in French. See this Flickr page. It is entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that the ten-dollar note of the Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana (La Banque des Citoyens de la Lousiane) gave its name to Dixie. But we do not have proof.

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Is there any reason to believe that “Dixie” originally just referred to Louisiana (or areas strongly influenced by French culture) as this theory would imply?

Also, if it did, why should the term have broadened to encompass the Confederate states as a whole? I am no expert on either the area or the relevant history, but my general impression is that Louisiana (with its swamps and, indeed, its strong French influences) was rather atypical of the Confederacy as a whole. Also, to the best of my knowledge, it was far from being the most important or influential state within the Confederacy. If you asked me to name the most “Dixieish” states (assuming it means something more than a former Confederate state), I think Louisiana would be fairly far down on my list.

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It’s hard to tell, because the song only came out in 1859, right before the Civil War, and became wildly popular as a symbol of the entire Confederacy.

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And then there is the region in which I live.

Southwestern Utah is known as “Utah’s Dixie” because in the early Mormon pioneer days, the settlers attempted to grow cotton.

There was some success, but ultimately the 115F summers won out.

Around here there are many institutions and businesses named “Dixie.” Such as Dixie High School, Dixie College, Dixie Auto Repair, etc.

There’s also a big flap around here because Dixie College just changed it’s mascot and logo. The old one was “The Rebels” and the logo was a Confederate flag. Old-timers are horrified that it would even be considered to drop those symbols!

Starting this year they’re known as “The Red Storm” and the logo is still being finalized. The version I saw in the newspaper today looks like a block letter “D” surrounded by a tornado.

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Sorry, that was my cat.

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Several misconceptions I must correct from grade school Canadian history - the “Acadians” were not religious refugees; France was nowhere near as tolerant as protestant England in allowing weird sects to associate, or start remote colonies. They generally tried to kill the members from time to time (“Massacre of the Hugenots”, e.g.). New France (now Quebec), and Acadia (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) were generally populated with poor people recruited by the crown.

The “Expulsion of the Acadians” happened after the conquest of Acadia by the English. They got it from the French in 1713 and turned it into “Nova Scotia”. The locals had to swear alliegance to the king of England. Things got heated during the 7-years’ war (when Wolfe captured Quebec). I heard a discussion once that said the governor of Nova Scotia had been sent there after being run out of New England for displaying the sort of governor traits that eventually earned England the American Revolution.

he applied those same talents to the Acadians. At the hight of the war with France, eh demanded they take an complete oath of support for England. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

In the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, France ceded the portion of Acadia that is now Nova Scotia (minus Cape Breton Island) to the British for the last time. In 1730, the Acadians signed an oath swearing allegiance to the British Crown, but stipulating that Acadians would not have to take up arms against the French or Indians. But, in 1754 with the outbreak of tensions with France, the British government, no longer accepting the neutrality previously granted, demanded that the Acadians take an absolute oath of allegiance to the British monarch, which would require their taking up arms. Not wanting to take up arms against family members in French territory, and believing that the oath would compromise their Roman Catholic faith, the Acadians refused. Colonel Charles Lawrence ordered the mass deportation of the Acadians. Contemporary historian John Mack Faragher has used the late 20th century term, “ethnic cleansing”, to describe the British actions.

Of course, Louisiana was French not Spanish territory at the time, So it, plus New Brunswick (away from the action) and back to France were the preferred locations to unload uncooperative colonists. I’m sure too that the fact they freed up cleared farmland for resale did not go unnoticed by the local authorities.

There was no “continuing persection” or wave after wave of moving on. The Acadians relocated that once after the expulsion. In fact, the British treated the French in Quebec with kid gloves after that, possibly recognizing the mistake and problems they had caused with the expulsion.

Places like Michigan, cenral Ontario, Detroit, and even down the Mississippi were sparsely populated areas containing French forts and fur-trading outposts. (Fur was where the real money was.) They may have given their place-names to vast swaths of central-eastern USA (i.e. Des Moines), but the population was very small and actual settlements were few and far between. Part of the fighting in what is now central USA came from the apprehension of the British at being contained by French forts from Louisiana up to Detroit.

Like the British and later the Americans, the French displayed a talent for getting the local Indians really riled up. Also, the French and English did put the local indians up to attacking the other side if they could, since indians were extremely effective at guerilla raids.

This had the effect of severely limiting settlement westward for quite a while. The major first settlement of southern Ontario, for example, was not from Quebec but from English “United Empire Loyalists” who found it prudent to leave the USA before their disapproval of independence got them killed.

Whether Dix comes from “dix” - who knows? The frenchified culture of Louisiana was pretty irrelevant to the larger, established states of Georgia, Virginia, or the Carolinas. I have trouble imagining the larger population there seeing anything in common with one bawdy town half a continent away.

Besides, if the Americans were so hung up on Spanish currency that they called their money “dollars”, why would French currency have any relevance beyond New Orleans?

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Actually, they seem to have considered making the experiment with Acadia; there were Huguenots at the highest level in both the failed colony of 1604 and the successful attempt of 1610. But Huguenot worship was barred in Acadia by 1640.

“Bawdyness” is neither here nor there; New Orleans was America’s third-largest city, and was the only metropolis of the South.

At the time, paper money was the responsibility of banks, not the US Treasury, and the Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana was large and respected, which meant that their notes were respected, too.

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During the early part of the century, before railroads and heavy settlement of the Misissippi - New Orleans would have been a remote and difficult-to-reach place for the larger, coastal southern states. Maybe by the late 1840’s or in the 1850’s travel across the states east-west would have been more common… I guess the trick is to get a “feel” for how settled the areas were, and by when.

When the Loiusiana purchase happened, people were barely spilling over the Appalachians, rafts on places likfe the Ohio river were typical transportation. Before 1860 we had the steamboats and settlements of Tom Sawyer fame, and the railroads for Sherman to chew up.

Did it still say “Dix” on the notes? After 50 years or more of American “occupation” and American dollars? How French was New Orleans at the time time that such commerce could easily spread across the South? After all, most of the new arrivals by then were American, not French I assume.

Were the largest areas of cotton commerce the ones that fed New Orleans via “Old Man River” or the coastal areas of Georgia etc. that really didn’t care about the Mississippi?

The other question is, did the “Mason-Dixon” line actually have the importance at the time that we ascribe to it nowadays? As the alleged dividing line between free and slave, at the time when that was the biggest issue in the nation, presumably it was mentioned often by every level of politician in every speech-du-jour, hence ingraining itself in the public mind. …IF the name was as important and well known as we think it is today…

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…has little to do with it, since “Dixie” is rather later. But even by then, New Orleans had become of great importance to the US. Jefferson’s ministers were sent to Napoleon to buy New Orleans and New Orleans only; the whole of French North America (“Louisiana”) was Napoleon’s counter-offer.

They were still reading “Dix” at least as late as 1860.

French continues to be widely spoken in New Orleans to this day, although attempts have been made to suppress it on and off since 1812.

Banknotes don’t care. Most of the small-head Federal Reserve Notes I used to see here in New Jersey were issued by the New York bank – but not all of them were.

The actual Mason-Dixon Line is the southern boundary of Pennsylvania. Its use as a symbolic slavery line appears to date from the debates that led up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but the actual slavery line determined at the time was 36° 30’, while the M-D line roughly follows 39° 43’.

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See http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/cabildo/cab9a.htm (about halfway down) for an example from 1860.