Michael Schlatre
Survived
1819 – 1900
Enterprise Plantation, Plaquemine
Michael Schlatre was born on April 10, 1819 on Homestead Plantation in Plaquemine, Louisiana.
Michael worked on his father’s sugar plantation; during this time, he learned carpentry work and blacksmithing; later he became the owner of Enterprise Plantation.
The Pughs had been staying at Muggah’s hotels with Dr. John Carlton Beattie (1808 – 1856, Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court), his wife Mary Foley Beattie, and their two children from Bayou Lafourche.
Schlatre survived the storm, but his wife and 7 children. He, suffering with a broken leg, and Thomas Mille floated for almost a week.
“From my injuries I accepted that I would be the first to die,” Schlatre conceded. “Were you ever this near death, dearest reader? My children [seven] flocked around their father, some crying, some quiet, my wife facing the Gulf, the negro women crying, old Hannah with the baby sitting close to me.”
After breaking his leg during the storm, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
He lost 7 children in the Great Storm and then went on to remarry and have more than 7 children after the storm.
Memory
“My little girl [most probably the 3-year-old Francis Harriet] gave a scream and jumped and caught me around the neck and held fast, as if to choke the life out of me,” Schlatre recalled.
