John McDonogh

Life and career

McDonogh was born in Baltimore and entered the shipping business there. In 1800 his employers sent him as supercargo on a ship to Liverpool, England, to procure a cargo of goods for the Louisiana trade. He was successful, and after a second such voyage decided to make his home in New Orleans. Establishing a store and engaging in the "commission and shipping business," he prospered there.

In 1818, he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate. After he lost that election, he left New Orleans and settled across the Mississippi River, establishing the town of McDonoghville, now called McDonogh, which is in present-day Algiers and Gretna. The site of his McDonoghville home has long since been eroded into the Mississippi River.

The young McDonogh was mentioned as having unsuccessfully courted Micaela Almonester, who went on to become the Baroness Pontalba, one of the most important figures in New Orleans history; however, there are no documented sources of this rumor. He was also rebuffed in courtship later in life. A failure to marry and the loss of the Senate race may have contributed to a life which has been described as reclusive. William H. Seymour, a local and near-contemporary chronicler, described him in 1896 as having been an "eccentric philanthropist" who "for twenty-two long years toiled" within the walls of his "somber dwelling."

McDonogh was a workaholic and worked long hours almost until the time of his death, administering his vast land holdings, which were believed to be the largest (but not the most valuable) of any private individual in the world in 1850 when he died. His land holdings entirely surrounded the rapidly growing city of New Orleans and elsewhere in southeast Louisiana.

Slaveholding and manumission

McDonogh was a slaveholder. In 1822 he devised a manumission scheme by which his slaves could buy their freedom. The process took about 15 years; thus he was able to profit from their labor before he set them free. McDonogh was also active in, and contributed to, the American Colonization Society, which enabled freed black slaves to emigrate back to Africa. McDonogh used the Society to provide passage to Liberia for many of his former slaves.

Legacy

Although during his life McDonogh was an infamous miser, he left the bulk of his fortune—close to $2 million—to the cities of Baltimore and New Orleans for the purpose of building public schools for poor children—specifically, white and freed black children. This was unprecedented, and proved controversial. His heirs contested the will, and the case, McDonogh's Executors v. Murdoch, went to the U.S. Supreme Court. This delayed execution of the will until 1858, with New Orleans receiving a settlement of $704,440.

Baltimore already had a substantial public school system, but McDonogh's will also stipulated the creation of a "school farm" for underprivileged boys outside of the city. McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Maryland, founded in 1873, was the result.

The New Orleans public school system had been established in 1841, but the McDonogh Fund facilitated major expansion. Eventually over 30 schools were built, most emblazoned with his name and a number. By the early 1970s there were 20 McDonogh schools remaining in New Orleans. In the 1980s and 1990s, many of those were renamed in a movement to remove the names of slaveholders from New Orleans' public schools. The following John McDonogh schools are still in operation, post-Katrina: John McDonogh High School and McDonogh #7, #15, #26, #28, #32, #35, and #42.

McDonogh's will proved difficult to administer because of the large number of properties involved, many of which were rented. Also, McDonogh had stipulated the properties to be a perpetual trust and that no properties could ever be sold. The trustees eventually got a court ruling allowing them to sell off the property. Money from the trust funded schools for about 100 years, although because of population growth the estate was not sufficient to cover the entire school systems expenses.

John McDonogh's Rules for My Guidance in Life

Gravesite and annual commemorations

After McDonogh died in 1850, he was buried alongside his slaves in the McDonogh Cemetery (now known as the McDonoghville Cemetery) on his plantation in present-day Gretna, Louisiana. In 1860, his remains were exhumed and re-buried in the Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.

In 1945, John McDonogh's remains were again exhumed and re-buried, this time on the campus of McDonogh School in Owings Mills, Maryland. McDonogh rests there to this day, under a monument on which his rules for living are inscribed. The same monument had marked McDonogh's grave in Baltimore; it was transported to the McDonogh School campus in 1945 as well.

In return for his legacy, all that McDonogh asked was "that it be permitted annually for children to plant and water a few flowers around [his] grave." Since 1875, the students at McDonogh School have honored this wish in the school's annual Founder's Day ceremony. In New Orleans, the annual ceremony became subject to one of the first protests of the civil rights era, the McDonogh Day Boycott of 1954.

McDonogh No. 26 School is the last school in the metropolitan New Orleans area, which honors this tradition. In their annual John McDonogh Day ceremony, students place flowers on the cenotaph in honor of McDonogh at the site of his former tomb in the McDonoghville Cemetery.