P. M. Lapice

Pierre Michel La Pice de Bergondy (March 1797February 2, 1884), generally known as P. M. Lapice, sometimes Peter Lapice, was a merchant, sugar planter, and large-scale enslaver of 19th-century Mississippi and Louisiana in the United States. He was credited with Louisiana sugar-industry firsts, including producing the first white sugar, erecting the first cane-mill with five rollers, and building the first successful bagasse burner. Biography Lapice was born on Santo Domingo (now Haiti) and escaped during the Haitian Revolution, traveling as a young boy to New Orleans with his parents and brother. Lapice's father, a sugar and coffee planter of Santo Domingo, was said to be descended from "a noble Normandy family to whom were granted lands by Louis XIV of France...but losing his fortune by the [Haitian] Revolution, adopted Jeffersonian principles, dropped the name of De Bergondy and threw in the Mississippi river his jeweled sword, so often drawn for France and his king". Once in the United States, Pierre was sometimes known as Peter Lapice. Lapice fought with the Orleans Battalion of Jean Baptiste Plauché and Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. In his early career "he became a partner of Mr. Millandon, one of the first merchants of New Orleans, and went to Natchez, Miss., to represent the interests of his house at that point. While a resident of that city he became one of the most popular and prominent men and had built up under his direction the famous Bullet Bayou levee, which saved a large section from overflow". Lapice was initially a local merchant and cotton shipper. In 1833 he advertised that he wished to buy cypress logs for a steam mill he was building; "raftsmen will find it in their interest to stop their rafts a few miles above Natchez and give him a call at the Saw-Mill". In 1835 he was the director of a company that insured cotton shipped via the Mississippi River.