We made it!

After some long travel today, we made it to New Orleans, by about 3:30.

Yesterday, I went to the National Archives and looked at the Civil War pension file for Julian Atlas of (Algiers) New Orleans, LA. There was no direct link to our line of Atlas', but I made copies of important documents from the file. He was shot in the hand during the war and had to have his middle finger on his right hand amputated. After going through all that, he eventually became very sick and died. His daughter died the same year at age 12 and then his wife died a year later from breast cancer. He was allegedly Creole and could speak very little english. His owner was someone named Cassilar in the an area on the "west of the Mississippi." I have never heard of such a name before. Speaking of names, there was some debate in his file regarding his actual last name and whether it was Atlas, Attalas, Atanas or something else. The name Atlas was never confirmed, although his children did use that as their last name. I will hold onto the file in hopes that more information will make a connection clear.

This morning we spent some time talking and eating muffalata sandwiches. LOL After that, we headed to the airport and picked up RaiChel. We had a funny picture in the airport with one of the employees there. We had initially asked him to take a picture of us but he decided to jump in the picture with her, Jean and I.

From there, we took the opportunity to show RaiChel around, especially since there was a lot of traffic on 10 East. We took her to the French Quarter, being sure to hit up Cafe Du Monde. We'll probably have to go back down there because we only walked around a little bit and didn't get a chance to really go down Bourbon, especially down to the black art store that I love. We picked up a dozen beginets and will probably eat them for breakfast tomorrow.

We are heading to Baton Rouge tomorrow at about 8 or 8:30am to meet Gene and to go to the State Archives. We have a list of things that we need to look for that is a couple of pages long, and shouldn't take a whole lot of time to look at. Gene has said that he's going to make us breakfast or lunch, which was nice. We're trying to hook up with some other cousins in the area while we are there. We planning to stay until Sunday night or so.

To view the pictures from today, please visit http://atlasfamily.shutterfly.com