Now an empty lot and the site of two pop-up restaurants, this corner was once the location of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart church. It was here, on Sunday, October 17, that the cartoonist George Joseph Herriman was baptized by Father Antoine Borias.…

At the former intersection of Exchange Alley and St. Louis Street — now a parking gate for the Louisiana Supreme Court — once stood the meeting place for Fraternité No. 20, a racially integrated Masonic lodge that included George Herriman’s…

There is no way of knowing if young George Herriman ever accompanied his parents to the historic Café du Monde Coffee Stand, which was established in the New Orleans French Market in 1862, eighteen years before Herriman’s birth. What is certain,…

Here — near the corner of Royal Street and Esplanade Avenue — a white riverboat captain named Stephen Herriman, originally from Long Island, made his home from 1843 until his death in 1854. Stephen Herriman’s house is no longer standing. It…

On September 4, 1846 — just one year after the New Orleans Archdiocese constructed this church adjacent to the Old Ursuline Convent — George Herriman Sr. and Louisa Eckel arrived here to be married by Etienne Rousselon, a French missionary who had…

This peach-colored commercial building is a landmark of both journalism and the struggle for civil rights in 19th Century New Orleans. Here were the original offices of the New Orleans Tribune, first Black-owned daily newspaper in the United States…

There are three buildings still standing in New Orleans where it is most likely young George Herriman spent his childhood days: St. Augustine Church, the site of the Herriman & Chessé tailor shop, and this handsomely restored Creole cottage on…

George Joseph Herriman’s grandfather had been working as a tailor since at least 1847, when he was twenty-seven years old, and he had been in business with his half-brother Alexander Laurent Chessé since at least 1850. In 1854, shortly following the…

Devout Catholics and energetic members of a radical integrated Masonic lodge, the Herrimans also were regular participants in a remarkable series of seances that were led by their friend, neighbor, and fellow lodge-member, Henry Louis Rey. Born into…

The first historical record of George Herriman Sr. — the cartoonist George Herriman’s grandfather — is the New Orleans Archdiocese’s confirmation records for St. Louis Cathedral on March 1, 1836. Among those confirmed that day was a young “George…

The Herrimans were devoutly Catholic. They attended Masses and celebrated sacraments at numerous churches surrounding their neighborhood. Yet the historic St. Augustine Church was their “home” church. Celebrated as the first African-American…

The house where George Herriman was born no longer stands; in its place is a gate leading into a school parking lot. But it was here that, on August 22, 1880, George Joseph Herriman was born into a mixed-race, middle- to upper-class family headed by…