Background
Armand Garreau was born on September 13, 1817, in France at Cognac. He was the son of Louis Armand Garreau and Marie Rose Dumontet of Saint-Pierre, Martinique. His father served under Moreau and practised law.
Armand Garreau was born on September 13, 1817, in France at Cognac. He was the son of Louis Armand Garreau and Marie Rose Dumontet of Saint-Pierre, Martinique. His father served under Moreau and practised law.
Garreau received a classical education as a preparation for teaching, then taught in the department of Gironde.
Garreau Emigrating to America, he opened a school in New Orleans, and in addition to teaching contributed extensively to the French newspapers of New Orleans, especially La Revue de la Semaine.
He studied local history and wrote a voluminous novel entitled “Louisiana, ” which appeared in 1849 in Les Veillées Louisianaises. It abounded in local color and dramatic situations and narrated the story of the inhabitants of Louisiana who revolted against the Spanish rule in 1768.
Upon the proclamation of the »Second Republic, Garreau returned to France and established himself at Barbezieux. He became a printer and publisher and founded in 1850 a newspaper, Le Narrateur impartial, for which he wrote prose and verse.
He published a complete novel, Ogine, Chronique Angoumoisine du Xe Siècle, which appeared in 1852, and began a second, “La Maison maudite. ” In the meanwhile, his friend Paul Coq published in Paris an illustrated edition of “Louisiana” in La Semaine.
In 1854, Garreau discontinued his daily to establish, with the cooperation of H. d’Aussy, the monthly Légendes et Chroniques de VAngoumois, de la Saintonge et des provinces limitrophes in which he completed “La Maison maudite” under the title of “La Grotte maudite” and began “Le Canal des moines. ”
Persecuted by the local officials of the Second Empire, Garreau was forced to go to Paris, where for a time he studied law and taught school in Saint-Denis, but in 1858 he was again teaching in New Orleans.
He continued his literary activities by writing for Les Cinq Centimes, L’Indépendant, Le Courrier de Bruges, and L’Estafette du sud.
He died in New Orleans at the age of forty-seven, survived by his widow and six children. In his writing, Garreau followed the romantic lead of Hugo, Musset, and Dumas père.
Garreau was endowed with a fervid imagination but complained that he was unable to discipline his style, that his pen was too facile, that he confused history and drama, and that he could not organize his work.
Returning to Cincinnati, Garrard devoted much time to the management of his large real-estate interests, and, declining to enter politics, to the promotion of the welfare of the city.
In November 1838, Garreau was married to Marie Anais Boraud. The couple had 6 children.