The Master Who Freed His Slave to Marry Her: New Orleans’ Forbidden Promise of 1838 | HO!!!!

A Carriage by the Bayou

On a humid August night in 1838, a carriage rattled along the road beside Bayou St. John in New Orleans. Inside sat Nathaniel Budro, a prominent cotton merchant, and Adeline Harper, a woman he had freed from slavery only three days earlier.

By morning, both were gone.

The carriage was found abandoned at the water’s edge, its seats stained with what police at the time called ink—a convenient euphemism for something far darker. The case of the disappearing lovers of Burgundy Street would become one of the city’s most haunting mysteries: part romance, part scandal, and part cover-up that spanned generations.

The Unlikely Pair

Nathaniel Budro, age forty-two, was born into French wealth and Southern privilege. His family’s empire stretched from the wharves of New Orleans to the cotton exchanges of London and Paris. Their parties, held in the family’s opulent mansion on Prytania Street, were legendary—scented with magnolia and filled with waltzes that echoed down the Quarter’s narrow streets.

Adeline, by contrast, began her life in bondage. Parish records show she was purchased from a St. Bernard plantation in 1837 for an “unusually high sum.” Elizabeth Budro, Nathaniel’s formidable mother, recorded in her diary a single cryptic line:

“He insists on having her. The girl with the unusual eyes.”

Within months, the household ledger showed expenses for fine fabrics and visits from a modiste—unheard of for a servant. Then, on August 10th, 1838, Nathaniel signed papers granting Adeline her freedom. The notary, James Wilson, would later claim he never met them. Yet the document bore his seal and both their signatures.

Three days later, they vanished.

The Carriage and the Silence

When the Budros reported Nathaniel missing, investigators found the family eager to avoid attention. His mother urged discretion; a scandal involving a white merchant and a recently freed woman could ruin more than reputations—it could destroy fortunes.

Lieutenant Robert Murphy, the officer in charge, described a family “more concerned with appearances than truth.” His report noted the abandoned carriage, a man’s hat, a woman’s shawl, and stains that were “possibly ink.” Forensics didn’t exist. The case was quietly closed.

But rumors thrived in the French Quarter. Some whispered of an elopement gone wrong, others of murder at the hands of outraged rivals.

The Letter That Shouldn’t Exist

More than a century later, in 1959, workers demolishing an old boarding house on Rampart Street found a sealed envelope wedged behind a wallboard. It was addressed simply: To my dearest A.

The writer—“N”—spoke of plans to flee to France where “we may live as man and wife without the burden of society’s eyes.” The letter ended with an ominous warning:

“Beware the one who watches from the shadows. He has made his intentions clear.”

Who was the one who watched?

Business correspondence uncovered in 1963 suggests that Budro had recently clashed with other merchants over shipping routes and pricing.

Among them was Thomas Reynolds, a powerful rival whose daughter Caroline had been rumored to be Nathaniel’s intended fiancée.

When Reynolds wrote to Budro accusing him of “lapses in judgment,” it carried the tone of both threat and humiliation.

Three days after that letter, Budro and Harper disappeared.

The Shadow of the Reynolds Family

The Reynolds family’s prosperity grew rapidly in the years following the disappearance. Their company acquired several shipping contracts formerly controlled by the Budros—at suspiciously low prices.

And then came an eerie find: in 1963, a graduate student uncovered Reynolds Company ledgers listing “final payments” to operatives identified only by initials. One entry dated August 14, 1838—the day after the disappearance—read: JM. Final payment. Package secured.

“JM” may have been James Monroe, a notorious “problem solver” in antebellum New Orleans, often employed by wealthy families to handle sensitive matters discreetly. His home on Dauphine Street was a short walk from both the Budro and Reynolds mansions.

No record places him anywhere else that night.

What the House Hid

The Budro mansion still stands on Prytania Street—a Greek Revival beauty with high windows and the faint scent of camphor in its walls. But no family has ever stayed there long.

In 1966, architect Edward Lambert uncovered a secret room between Nathaniel’s study and the adjoining bedroom. Accessible only by a hidden door, the six-by-eight-foot chamber had no windows and bore signs of water damage. Inside, he found remnants of a desk, a shelf, and a loose brick hiding several items:

A silver locket containing a lock of dark hair.

A small notebook filled with poetry in a delicate, feminine hand.

A crumbling document that appeared to be a ship’s manifest or ticket.

The handwriting matched Adeline’s signature on the manumission papers.
One poem read:

“Two months until freedom comes on paper what has long lived in heart.
Then the journey begins—across water, to shores where we might simply be.”

It seems their escape had been planned for months. Whether the plan succeeded—or was intercepted—remains uncertain.

Ghosts in the Bayou

Local legend filled the silence left by the investigation. For generations, residents near Bayou St. John spoke of a lady in white walking the cypress banks, her eyes searching the dark water for something—or someone—lost.

Others claimed to hear the clatter of carriage wheels on windless nights, or see the flicker of lanterns along a road that no longer exists.

When construction workers dug near the site in 1959, they unearthed a pocket watch engraved “NB”, a comb, and several 1830s coins. Inside the watch’s casing, historians later discovered a hidden inscription:

“To N.B.—May time be kind to our future.”

It was the sort of message carved between lovers who had every reason to hide their affection.

Letters from the North

In 1962, a cache of letters surfaced in a house attic in Boston’s Marigny District. Written between 1838 and 1839, they were signed only “A” and addressed to “my dearest sister.”

They described a quiet life “in a small community outside Boston,” where Nill—believed to be Nathaniel—was recovering from “an injury sustained during our journey.”

“I thank Providence daily that we escaped with our lives,” she wrote. “Though the price was dear.”

The handwriting bore a striking resemblance to Adeline’s. The ink, paper, and phrasing matched materials from the late 1830s.
If authentic, these letters suggest that the pair survived whatever violence occurred near the bayou and fled north under assumed names.

The Browns of Cambridge

In 1965, construction near Porter Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, revealed an old family plot paved over a century earlier. Among the graves was a single stone marked “A.B.” (1815–1872) and “N.B.” (1796–1869).

City records listed the plot’s owners as Nathan and Abigail Brown, proprietors of a small printing business established in 1840.

A daguerreotype found in the Cambridge Historical Society shows an older man with a cane seated beside a woman of mixed ancestry—her calm expression unmistakably similar to descriptions of Adeline.

Their printing shop produced abolitionist pamphlets and essays advocating education for freed slaves. One 1849 article, attributed to “A.B.,” argued that “Love, once awakened, recognizes no boundaries of color or condition.”

If Abigail Brown was indeed Adeline Harper, the former slave from New Orleans had become a voice in the movement to end the very system that once enslaved her.

The Diary and the Son

Two years later, historian Robert Bell received an anonymous package. Inside was a brittle leather-bound diary covering the years 1838 to 1842.

Written in Nathaniel’s hand, it described their flight north, his lingering leg wound, and the birth of their son in February 1844:

“A promise made beside moon-dappled waters fulfilled in the cry of new life.

Every risk justified. Every sacrifice worthwhile.”

Records show the Browns did have a son, James, born that year. He would go on to attend Oberlin College, join the Freedmen’s Bureau, and help establish schools for freedmen in Washington, D.C.

A life built on courage—and secrecy.

The Woman in the Blue Dress

In 1969, during the restoration of the Budro mansion, workers found a miniature portrait hidden behind a fireplace. Painted on ivory, it depicted a young woman in a blue dress with dark hair and luminous eyes. Art historians dated it to circa 1837.

It now hangs in the Historic New Orleans Collection, labeled simply: Unknown Woman, c. 1837.
But locals know her name.

Echoes of the Past

That same year, the New Orleans City Council debated renaming a park near Bayou St. John in honor of Nathaniel and Adeline. The proposal stalled, but a small marble bench was installed instead.

Its inscription reads:

“In remembrance of all whose love defied the laws of their time.”

At the dedication, an elderly woman named Clara Williams—a great-granddaughter of James Brown—spoke softly to reporters:

“My grandmother told me we come from people who ran from the South because love wasn’t allowed there. Now I understand.”

The Promise That Endured

When Abigail Brown died in 1872, she left a final letter to her son.

“The name I live under was not given at birth, but it became mine through choice.

The life we built grew from soil watered with both blood and tears.

Let the ring buried with me mark a promise that even time could not break.”

Her grave beside Nathaniel’s bears only initials—A.B. and N.B.—and the quiet dignity of two people who reclaimed their own story.

Back in New Orleans, the Budro mansion stands restored but never truly at peace. Visitors sometimes report the faint scent of lilac, the rustle of skirts in an empty corridor, or the distant creak of carriage wheels.

Whether these are echoes of memory or the persistence of love is anyone’s guess.

But on August 13th, 1838, a man risked everything to free the woman he loved—and she, in turn, kept the promise of their shared freedom.

A century and a half later, their story still whispers through New Orleans: a forbidden promise made beside a bayou, a vow that time—and history—could never quite erase.