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PAGE 22
| When President Thomas Jefferson
appointed William Charles Cole Claiborne as Governor General and Intendant of the Province of Louisiana
in December 1803, one of Claiborne's first acts was to establish a provisional government for the territory
until a more permanent structure could be legislated by Congress. To provide for judiciary, Claiborne almost
immediately created two courts: the Court of Pleas, composed of seven justices with civil and criminal
jurisdiction over certain cases; and the Governor's Court, which gave Claiborne himself original jurisdiction in
other legal matters and appellate jurisdiction over decisions of the Court of Pleas. Both of these courts
ceased operation in November, 1804, when Congress established the Superior Court, the predecessor of
today's Louisiana Supreme Court.
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This is one of only a handful of extant documents from the Governor's Court. (Only a minute book survives
from the Court of Pleas.) In this case, Charles Lalande Dapremont, of the Cote des Allemands, asks
Governor Claiborne to rule on a matter begun in the Spanish courts but left incomplete at the time of the
Purchase. Dapremont asks that his former employer, the Widow Isabelle Renaud Trepagnier, be compelled
to pay him salary and expenses due him in his role as overseer of her plantation. The record does not
record the outcome of the case. Next page of this document
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