Jean François Canonge

Jean François Canonge (1784 – January 19, 1848) lawyer, judge, slave owner, clerk, and politician. He was the judge who provided the deposition on the mistreatment of slaves by Delphine LaLaurie. Jean studied law with French American linguist and philosopher Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. He spoke French, Spanish, and Haitian Creole and functioned as an orator, linguist, and improviser for the Louisiana legislature as a clerk for over ten years. He translated Georgics into Haitian Creole and was a Grand Master Freemason. Records indicate Jean and his wife Amelie Mercier freed two slaves Joseph and Marcel. His son was the dramatist Louis Placide Canonge.

Jean was born in Jérémie Saint-Domingue modern-day Haiti. Jean left the island at a very young age with his family due to the Haitian Revolution but eventually migrated to Philadelphia where he studied law. During the early 1810s, he was in francophone New Orleans and married a Creole woman of color named Amelie Mercier formerly Amelung who passed as white. He was a member of the Louisiana militia, director of the Louisiana State Bank, and Judge of the Criminal Court of the first judicial district of New Orleans. A dispute arose between Jean and Francois Xavier Martin, a Louisiana Supreme Court justice, which led to the order of Jean's arrest but Jean ordered the arrest of five Supreme Court justices. The issue led to the suspension of both courts until the issue was peacefully resolved.