Territory of Orleans

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Territory of Orleans was an organized U.S. territory from October 1, 1804, until April 30, 1812, when it joined the Union as the State of Louisiana. It came from the Louisiana Purchase: the part south of the 33rd parallel became the Orleans Territory, while the rest became the District of Louisiana (later renamed the Louisiana Territory, and after Orleans became a state, that territory was renamed the Missouri Territory).

Congress created the territory in the Organic Act of 1804 and set up a U.S. district court for Orleans with powers equal to those of state courts, plus a Territorial Superior Court.

Government and officials
- Governor: William C. C. Claiborne (1804–1812). He later became the first Governor of Louisiana.
- Territorial Secretaries: James Brown (1804–1807) and Thomas B. Robertson (1807–1811).
- First Territorial Delegate to Congress: Daniel Clark (from December 1806).

Territorial organization and borders
- In 1805, the Territorial Legislature created 12 counties. In 1807 these were reorganized into 19 civil parishes.
- The Florida Parishes on the east side of the Mississippi were not part of Orleans at first; they were annexed to the territory in 1812 after the U.S. had seized West Florida in 1810 (Spain did not officially cede West Florida until 1821).
- A neutral buffer zone known as the Sabine Free State existed near the Sabine River from about 1807 until the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1821.

Key events
- The 1811 German Coast Uprising, the largest slave revolt in U.S. history, took place in the Orleans Territory.
- The 1810 U.S. census recorded population data for 20 parishes in the territory.

Judiciary
- U.S. District Judge: Dominic Augustin Hall.
- Superior Court judges included John Bartow Prevost, Ephraim Kirby, Peter Stephen Du Ponceau, William Sprigg, George Mathews Jr., Joshua Lewis, and Francois Xavier Martin.

First legislative session
- The Legislative Council met for the first time on December 3, 1804. Notable members included Julien de Lallande Poydras, William Kenner, John Watkins, William Wikoff, Benjamin Morgan, Eugene Dorcier, and George Pollock.