"The Sergeant Conrad Episode"

Late April, 1890

   
Flooding along the Mississippi River causes Lake Pontchartrain to swell past its banks. The water rushes nearly 3.5 miles into the city, inundating the the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Ward neighborhoods.  For days and days, the rain beats down.  Thousands of homes sit submerged, their inhabitants unable to do anything except pray for relief.  

     
Mayor Joseph Shakespeare rides along the edge of the inundation, inspecting the situation with City Surveyor B.M. Harrod.  Upon surveying the Claiborne canal at its intersection with Elysian Fields, the mayor decides it is "better to save the portion of the rear not yet overflowed, although the volume of water would be temporarily increased in the portion already underwater."


The Daily Picayune tells us that at this juncture, a familiar police officer spoke up, beseeching the mayor to pursue a different course of action. Sergeant Felix Conrad "declaimed against the city authorities' programme, endeavored to incite dissatisfaction and, it is said, encouraged a movement to cut the dam and made himself generally disagreeable."  Sergeant Conrad did not disagree out of sheer obstinacy. His own house, at 2459 N. Villere Street, stood eight inches underwater. Though the city authorities worked diligently to rid the downtown neighborhoods of the water, the Picayune saw no way to complete the task before the water in Lake Pontchartrain itself receded. "This is a calamity for the poorer classes of the residents," the Picayune argued, for they are the principal ones who live in this portion of town." [NOTE: All quotes in this post from The Daily Picayune between April 23 and May 1, 1890.]


Mayor Shakespeare did not take kindly to Conrad's public denunciation. At the scene, "the mayor ordered [Conrad] away, and when he returned to the city hall he ordered Conrad's suspension and preferred charges against him of insubordination and attempting to incite a riot." Although the Police Board (on which the mayor sat as chairman) ultimately upheld the charges against Conrad on May 1, a number of people of the Eighth Ward seemed to have shared the sergeant's sentiment. "The Sergeant Conrad episode," as the Picayune referred to it, 

was followed later in the evening by a general call for police, as it was reported that some serious trouble was about to take place over the question of damming up the canal. The mayor and officials had visited the place several times during the day and a large crowd of the residents of the Eighth and Ninth wards were found on hand.  Several were loud in their protests and intimated that in preference to being drowned out they would have to kill them.

         [...]

The demonstrations made by the crowd caused a feeling of uneasiness and Chief Hennessy was notified.  He soon had a squad of about twenty-five men, two patrol wagons and his entire detective force on the scene.  The crowd disperesed and the police left the place shortly after.  As the gang of men were about to begin work building the levee at Butler’s hill they were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of Stevedore H.J. Hanselman, who was armed with a double-barreled shotgun.  He threatened to shoot the men for digging up the street to fill the sacks.  Mayor Shakespeare went down town after he heard of the trouble and made several speeches to the crowd.  He told the people that the dam across the canal would not be built, and there was applause.  But he added that if the city surveyor had ordered it built it would have been constructed, crowd to the contrary notwithstanding.

Even though the mayor assured the people that he would heed their will, a covert group took it upon themselves to cut the levee at Butler's Hill, at the corner of Poland and Villere, so as to let the water drain out of the neighborhoods and into Butler's Canal. The act, allegedly undertaken by the gardners of the neighborhood who feared losing their crops altogether, may or may not have helped the situation, though the Picayune noted "the fall of backwater into the lake" on April 27.

The Editor of the Picayune felt it necessary, as well, to publish "a long communication intended as a vindication of Police Sergeant Conrad." The letter, signed "SRETAW" ["waters" backwards?] or "SHETAW", sought to explain the circumstances from Sergeant Conrad's point of view. The letter writer portrayed Mayor Shakespeare as a "stony-hearted tyrant [who] commanded his humble supplicant to bow in reverence, and to go home and perish with his wife and children." After the mayor ordered Conrad to depart, the crowd erupted in jeers directed at the mayor but "when advised to desist, Mr. Shakespeare informed the infuriated crowd that he was the mayor." For tense moments, neither the crowd nor the mayor would yield. The people insisted "in sterner tones that...the poor have rights, and that [the mayor's] arrogance and power were less than their determination." Finally the mayor saw the futility of his position. As the mayor departed, so claims Conrad's defender, "he felt convinced that the people of the Eighth Ward had some spirit, but resolved to get even by applying his official ax to Conrad's neck, and thus screen his bad break."


The letter to the editor ends with a series of questions designed to elicit empathy for the suspended sergeant.

Who will blame Conrad for giving voice to his sentiment under such conditions? Who would censure an officer for talking to his superior as did Conrad, when all that he cherished on earth was in danger? Who will blame any man for disregarding official position, badges and emblems of office when his home is threatened with calamity? Who would dare reflect on any man because he resented a blow directed at his most vulnerable spot? Any man in Conrad's position, his home 8-inches under water with a possibility of being swamped out entirely, if he possessed just one grain of manhood, would declare himself even if he were contending with Shakespeare's assumption of importance.

We do not know today exactly what Conrad said to the mayor or to the assembled crowd that day.  We do not know what was going through his mind when he chose to speak truth to power.  One thing we know for certain, thanks to this letter writer, is that Conrad risked his livelihood in defense of his family and his home.  Though Conrad himself could not have known at the time, he was enacting the early chapters of the narrative that would become Our House Story.  

2459 N. Villere moments before its demolition in 2012

Conrad's home at 2459 N. Villere would survive the 1890 flood. Even though it sat on brick piers, the waters of 1890 rose several inches above the floor boards. The floods of that year and, indeed, many before and after, likely encouraged Conrad to take decisive steps to prevent a similar catastrophe. When he built his retirement home at 2463 N. Villere twenty years later, he did what he could to ensure his home and family would remain dry. We live in the home Conrad built in 1910, our floorboards a full 35 inches above the ground.



Of all the individuals in the crowds that gathered downtown during the last week of April, 1890, history only mentions two men by name. We are lucky that Felix Conrad was one of those men. As a closing remark, we should note that April 24 was a special day for old Felix before 1890 and that it would be for the rest of his life. By a quirk of history, April 24th was Felix Conrad's 43rd birthday.