| Louisiana Division/City Archives | New Orleans Public Library |
|
|
INTRODUCTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREVIOUS
NEXT
Click on the images to magnify. Use your browser's back button to return to this page. |
| MEDORA AURORA LYONS MCGEE
Medora Aurora Lyons McGee was a native of Mississippi who married Thomas L. McGee in Natchez on April 3, 1844. By 1850 they were living in the City of Lafayette, and three years later Mrs. McGee bought a sugar plantation on the Right Bank of the Mississippi (present day Algiers) for $95,000. The act of sale noted that the purchase money, which included $20,000 in cash, was her separate property, inherited from her father’s estate. She named the property Aurora Plantation in honor of her mother, Aurora Lyons. |
|
 |
The Statement of Sugar made in Louisiana in 1855-1856 compiled by P. A. Champomier shows that Mrs. McGee produced 387 hogsheads of sugar during that period. Her crops in other years: 370 hogsheads (1853-1854), 247 hogsheads (1857-1858), and 350 hogsheads (1861-1862). |
 |
The McGees appear to have fallen on hard times after the Civil War. Thomas McGee emigrated to Brazil in 1867, and Medora McGee had to contend with at least two lawsuits. In one proceeding she was sued by the Police Jury of Orleans Parish, Right Bank, and in the other by Robert Patterson. The latter suit involved mortgages on the plantation property and led to the plantation’s sale by the U.S. Marshal, shown here. Elements of the dispute with Patterson made it all the way up to the U. S. Supreme Court. The family lived in Washington, D. C. for a while thereafter, but came back to New Orleans where Mr. McGee died in 1883. Medora McGee had a private school in the city around 1886, but she died in New York City in 1901. Her legacy lives on, though, in the Aurora neighborhood of Algiers, built on the site of McGee’s Aurora Plantation.
(New Orleans Republican, December 28, 1867) |