The noble Louisiana Ben Charlatans: French Jewish Southerners and their roots in the mists of time . . .

Lafayette descends from a line of French aristocrats, granted nobility by Louise XV in recognition of loans given, and forgiven, to the king, following the great South Sea bubble of 1720. The cash infusion was critical in keeping the Capetian crown afloat, and in enabling the liege to avoid making a call for increased funds by re-engaging the ancient institution of the Estates General. When the crown finally was forced to do so some decades later, it was, in the end, at their own peril. The Ben-Charlatans were given nobility “sub rosa”, as they were Jews. Louise concealed the fact from his Most Catholic aristocratic cousins by granting the Ben-Charlatans a Marquise title only on condition that they take their grant of royal land in the newly settled territories in North America. The destruction of confirming records of the Ben-Charlatan’s nobility at the storming of the Bastille in 1789 stuck in every Ben-Charlatan’s craw, but truth was handed down faithfully father to son, and their noble station was assumed by one and all. Like all elder males in his line, Lafayette’s formal name is Louise, in recognition of the king’s magnaminity, and to this day, most Ben Charlatan’s are, politically, royalists, with a distinct tilt toward the fleur du lis.