Researching St Vincents Infant Asylum New Orleans History: A Field Guide
The record-keeping at St. Vincent's Infant Asylum in New Orleans is a mess, and you will struggle if you approach it like a standard genealogical hunt. The institution existed in various forms from the mid-19th century through the early 1900s, and the paper trail is fragmented across multiple repositories. I spent about three weeks tracking down admission records for a child who died before age two, and I nearly gave up twice. Most people assume the records are at the diocesan archive or the state archives. They are not entirely there. The primary collection for the St Vincents Infant Asylum New Orleans History is split. You need to check the Archive of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, but also the Louisiana State Museum system, particularly the Historic New Orleans Collection. I found the bulk of admission ledgers at the Historic New Orleans Collection, which sits on Royal Street in the French Quarter. They have a finding aid that is somewhat outdated, so do not rely on their online catalog alone. Go there in person and ask for the asylum records explicitly. The staff are used to researchers asking about this stuff. The dates matter more than you think. The original asylum opened around 1856 as the New Orleans Foundling Asylum, affiliated with the Catholic Charities system. It changed names and management several times. By the 1920s, the state began taking over orphan care functions, and the institutional records start merging into broader Department of Public Welfare files. If you are looking for records after 1920, check the Louisiana State Archives in Baton Rouge, not the city archives. I wasted two trips to the wrong building before realizing my subjects had been born after the transition period.
What the Records Look Like
Admission registers are the most useful document type. They typically list the child's name at admission (often a made-up name if the parents were unknown), approximate age, physical description, date of admission, source (who brought the child in), and fate (return to family, death, placement in service, death). The handwriting varies wildly. Some entries are in French, some in English, and a few are just initials. You need to be comfortable with both languages and cursive from the 1800s. Death records are separately filed and harder to access. The asylum had its own burial plots, and some death certificates are at the Orleans Parish coroner records, but many are just marginal notes in the admission ledger. I found a workaround by cross-referencing the daily logs kept by the convent sisters who ran the facility. Those daily logs are at the Archive of the Archdiocese, and they contain death notations that never made it into the official registers. The downside is the daily logs are unindexed. I spent a full day flipping through them by hand.
A Practical Problem I Ran Into
Here is the edge case that cost me the most time. I was researching a child admitted under one name who appeared in a census record under a completely different surname, possibly from a later foster placement. The asylum records had no notation about the name change, and the census showed the child living with a family in the 7th Ward by 1880. Standard searching turned up nothing because the names did not match. The workaround was to look at the admission source field, which listed the name of the person who brought the child in. That person was listed as a boarding house keeper on St. Charles Avenue. I tracked down that boarding house through city directories and found the establishment operated by a woman who was also listed as a sponsor for several other asylum admissions. Cross-referencing all the children she sponsored led me to a cluster of records that included the child under both names. It took four days of directory research. I would have missed it entirely by searching only the child's name.
Get the Full Details
Common Pitfalls
First, do not assume the asylum records are complete. Children died quickly, especially infants. Mortality rates were high, and the records for deceased children are the sparsest. Second, the institution absorbed children from other sources over time. Some entries are transfers from the Charity Hospital or from private orphanages. Third, the geographic boundaries shift. New Orleans annexed surrounding areas throughout the 19th century, and a child admitted from what is now Jefferson Parish might have been processed through the Orleans County system. Check both. Another issue is the confusion with similarly named institutions. There was a St. Vincent's Home for Children elsewhere in the state, and the name appears in various Catholic charitable contexts. Make sure you are looking at the New Orleans infant asylum specifically and not a different organization with a similar title. The Historic New Orleans Collection has a reference guide that helps with this, but it is not prominently displayed.
How Long This Actually Takes
A focused search for a single child with a clear admission date and name usually takes one to two days if you hit the right repository on the first try. A ambiguous case with name changes and possible transfers can take two to three weeks. I recommend starting with the admission registers at the Historic New Orleans Collection, then moving to the archdiocesan daily logs, and only then going to the state archives for post-1920 records. Trying to go straight to the state archives first will waste your time if the child was admitted before the state takeover. There is no digitized full-text database for these records. Some finding aids are online, but the actual documents are paper. Budget for travel time if you are not local. The records are fragile, so photocopying is often restricted, and you may need to request scans through the repository's reading room procedures, which adds another day or two to the process.
