| New Orleans Notarial Archives
421 Loyola Avenue
Located in the Civic Center and at 1340 Poydras Street near the Superdome in downtown New
Orleans, the Notarial
Archives is
the city's oldest archival repository. It is the only archive of notarial records in the United States, Louisiana being the
nation's only civil law state: Notarial records are amicable agreements or contracts set down into documentary language
by trained, semi-public officials who act as witness to the acts, verify identities of appearing parties, and preserve their
records as archivists of the documents they create. The Louisiana Legislature created the office of the Custodian of
Notarial Records in 1867 to collect and preserve the authentic acts of Orleans Parish notaries. Today the collection
amounts to some 35 million pages (5 linear miles, 1731 to date), and increases each year by about 45,000 to 50,000
acts.
Mardi-Gras related materials are entirely textual and legal, relating to acts of incorporation of Carnival krewes; their
charters; and sales, leases, and mortgages of property the krewes may own or once have owned. The properties include
float "dens," where designers build and store Mardi Gras parade floats for the krewes.
All acts are filed under the legal names rather than the parade names of the krewes. For example, the original act of
incorporation of the Krewe of Rex (James Fahey, notary, April 28, 1874) is actually the formation of the School
of
Design. This act contains the signatures of the 16 original members of Rex. A later School of Design charter (Wm. 0.
Hart, n.p. March 6, 1884), expands the membership to 26, making the first 16 members a Board of Trustees, and adding
delegates from the "Royal Host" or the "Carnival Court." This notary's records also contain the building contract for the
first Rex den (1883) on Calliope St.
Archival records document the legal activities of numerous other krewes, for example the Crescent Club, the
Syntax
Club, the Louisiana Debating and Literary Society, and the Krewe of NOR.
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