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In 1837, age 13, alone, illiterate, penniless, and Jewish, Leon Godchaux crossed the Atlantic from Alsace-Lorraine and landed on the wharves of New Orleans. The city then was a burgeoning, raucous, polyglot, disease-infested entrepot, and already the third-largest city in America.

While Godchaux remained unable to read or write in either English or French his entire life, he became the owner of 14 plantations, the founder of both a long-lived retail clothing institution (Godchaux’s) and of the most productive and scientifically advanced sugar enterprise in Louisiana, and the largest taxpayer in the state.

Unsympathetic to Succession, but caught up in the Civil War, Godchaux negotiated his way successfully through the War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras having intentionally delayed entering the sugar business until slavery ended. In his progression, he was significantly aided by two African-Americans, Joachim Tassen, an enslaved man whose status both men concealed, and Norbert Rillieux, a free man of color whose ingenious invention enabled Godchaux to bring about his sugar empire.

The astounding life and times of Leon Godchaux will be the subject of the Natchez Historical Society’s monthly meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 22. The presenter will be Leon Godchaux’s great-great-grandson, Peter. M. Wolf, the author of the 2022 biography, “The Sugar King – Leon Godchaux: A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots.” This is a biography in its subject and in its telling that has been glowingly praised by Walter Isaacson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Nicholas Lemann, among others. Although the arc of Godchaux’s life is located largely in New Orleans and wider Louisiana, its themes, challenges, and issues, will resonate with the Natchez experience of the 19^th century.

Peter Wolf, a fifth-generation New Orleans native, is an award-winning author. His 2013 book, “My New Orleans Gone Away,” a vivid and poignant memoir of an advantaged Jewish life in a beyond New Orleans, reached the New York Times e-book

The Natchez Historical Society’s meeting will occur at the Historic Natchez Foundation, 108 S. Commerce St., in Natchez. The program will begin with a social at 5:30 p.m., with the presentation at 6 p.m. All are invited, members and non-members alike, and there is no charge for attendance. The Natchez Historical Society’s programing is funded by a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council through funding by the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information, call 281-731-4433 or 601-492-3004 or send email to info@natchezhistoricalsociety.org

DAYE DEARING is a trustee of the Natchez Historical Society and chair of programming.